If you love her, you’ll give her whatever she needs.
Even if that “whatever” involves 8 gallons of the slippery stuff…
“Thar She blows!”
I quickly ran to the window of our humble trailer home and looked out towards the dusty-ass dirt road that connected our farm to Kansas Highway 51. Soon enough, I saw what the heck my bro, 1SkinnyJ, was going on about.
However, the image of a white whale of a car–an early-80s1I’m embarrassed to say that I don’t remember the exact year, and may have been as old as a 1978 model. Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, to be exact–barrelling down our driveway amidst a whirlwind of dirt and sand just didn’t quite compute in my head.
“What in the heck? We don’t know anybody who drives that kind of car…right?”
I turned to 1SJ, hoping he knew who might be paying us a visit on such a fine spring evening, but he appeared to be lost in thought.
“Let’s see, it’s 1998–that car must be pushing 20 years–yet from what I can make out, it’s in mint condition…”
We both stood there, frozen in suspense, as moments later it pulled up to our driveway, and out popped…
“DAD?!?” we exclaimed in unison, still not understanding what was unfolding before our eyes.
” ‘Tis I, your Noble and Beloved Father, and I come bearing gifts!”
I had never seen a bigger sh*t-eating grin on my old man’s face before in my life.
He continued: “Well, not ‘gifts’ per se, just one gift…”
His two dumbfounded sons just continued to stare blankly back at him.
“Do I really have to go all Oprah on y’all? Okay, here goes…*ahem*:”
“Well…to be clear, you two get a car to share…”
Seeing as how, at the ages of 17 and 19, respectively, we were basically grown-ass men who hadn’t had their own vehicle up until that point, you can only imagine that we were pretty ----- pleased as a pair of pickles with this turn of events.
I feel I need to pause here for a sec and provide some context regarding our transportation situation at the time. You see, during the entire 1997-98 school year, we would roll up to RHS for class in Kountry Kommodities, a sweet, sweet–but somewhat awkward–ride…that looked much like this:
“Holy shizzle, it’s even got that velvet-like interior!” 1SJ exclaimed as he peered inside our new ride.
“This day just keeps getting better and better!”
I could not contain my joy, as this was indeed one of the best unexpected and very pleasant surprises of my entire life.
Dad went on to regale us with the tale of how he was at an auction a few towns over, and saw this car, which had been owned solely by an older couple for its entire existence, and since they had mostly kept in their garage, had only 30k miles on it(!!!). He proudly recounted how he decided ‘what the heck!’ and put in a few strategic bids on, driving away with it for only $1200.
Dang straight, he should have been proud of himself–you score for your sons classic wheels like that that’s in mint condition, and for only $1200? That’s Dad of the Year level sh*t right there.
Unlike us, though, “Daisy”, our stepmom was none too pleased that he had gone out and dropped that chunk of money on a lark, but for once he put her in her place, and let her know that dammit if he wanted to do something nice for his boys, he wasn’t going to hear any crap from anyone who might think otherwise.
That there? Now that was a Dad of the Decade performance…
“Oh, one last thing, boys…”
The two of us turned our gaze away from our newfound love, and back towards the Amazing Father of ours.
“…you can do whatever you like with your car, but I will need you to drive it to work.”
Not that the “other shoe dropping” could put that much of a damper on our day, but nonetheless, the realization that our beloved Moby D*ck2If you’re curious, my censorship software can’t tell when I use words such as D-I-C-K in a non-profane manner, and will indiscriminately censor it unless I trick it by spelling it “d*ck”. would have to double as a farm truck wasn’t a pleasant one. So much for keeping it in mint condition…
…anyways, that’s how the Summer of ’98–not to be confused with the Crazy-Ass Summer of ’99–got off to a hot start.
We drove the hell out of that thing–well, 1SJ, in true big brother form, did most of the driving, and if I got lucky, I got to ride in the front seat on the rare occasion that one of his pothead friends didn’t join us for one of our many, many late-night joyrides around the desolate 5-state area.
Of course, during the day, ol’ MD served us faithfully as our farm vehicle, and surprisingly didn’t get too trashed or greasy as one might have expected under such conditions.
At least that was the case when I left my love behind in late June, as I headed off to Southern California to spend the remainder of my summer with my mom. But 1SJ was a pretty responsible guy, and I knew he loved Moby as much I did, so I was confident that our beloved white whale would be in good hands…
“So…she developed a bit of a drinking problem while you were away…”
It was early August, and my first full day back from SoCal, so 1SJ was catching me up on all that I had missed while I was gone.
“If you’re going to be driving ye ol’ D*ck to sunrise football practices, it’s important that you understand the oil situation. She’s been burning through motor oil like crazy, and you’ll need to fill her up with 2-3 gallons3Or was it 2-3 quarts? Maybe my inability to tell the difference was what led to the following events… every morning.”
“Dang, she burns more oil than gas…that’s crazy!”
“Yeah, I know, but we don’t have to really worry about it since we’re on the farm, and have plenty of 55-gallon drums of oil just laying around…”
“That makes sense…”
“…so just make sure you always have at least one 5-gallon jug in the trunk, and be sure to top ‘er off every morning before you take her out, okay?”
“You got it, dude!”
Never in my life had I encountered instructions so simple and so clear…
“That’s odd…the oil line hasn’t changed, and I’ve already put a whole gallon in…”
I stared at Moby Dick’s dipstick, slightly confused. Normally, you could pretty easily tell where the oil level was as you topped her off, but not this day.
Dad and Daisy were headed away for the weekend4The historical veracity of this needs to be double-checked, as another shit-hits-the-fan-when-the-parents-are-away story also happened under similar circumstances. and 1SJ had already took off for the day. Although I had taken a different vehicle to football practice that morning, somebody had picked it up and so our grand plan involved my grandma bringing me back out to the farm to pick up MD, and then I would ultimately meet 1SJ at the field he was plowing that day.
Okay, look, I know it sounds convoluted, but it made sense to Dad at the time, and the upshot is that I was the first one to drive her that day, so the responsibility of oiling her up fell squarely on my shoulders–and thus denying me the luxury of a second opinion in my moment of discombobulation.
I poured another gallon in, yet it still appeared that I wasn’t making any difference. I was starting to get nervous–last thing I wanted was to burn up the only reliable vehicle we had for the next few days, simply because I didn’t put enough oil in it. It would be another classic Farm F*ck-Up on my part, and I desperately wanted to avoid that if I could.
“Well…” I mused to myself, “…it’s much better to have too much than too little I suppose. Guess, I’ll just dump this whole 5-gallon container in here, and hope that the leak is slow enough that it’ll at least get us through the day…”
“SCHLUB SCHLUB SCHLUUUUUUUB…”
“Well, shoot, so much for ‘getting us through the day’!” I muttered as I rolled to a dead stop.
Not even 4 miles down the road, and I was discovering firsthand what a dying (land) whale sounded like. But given that I had no clue if I had really put enough oil in MD, I wasn’t exactly surprised when I found myself stranded on the side of KS-51–aka, ‘The Road Less Traveled.’
“Dang it, cellphones aren’t going to be commonplace for folk like us for another 2-3 years, so…I guess I better start walkin’ then, hadn’t I?”
In reality, it took me much longer than that to assess the situation in which I found myself, and only after being pointlessly pissed off at the situation for a good 15 minutes, did I realize that my ass was walking those 4 miles back to the farm, where I could call Grandma for a ride and get on with my day.
Eventually, once Dad got back into town we towed Moby back to the farm, where he could try to bring her back to life. He was only on the ground underneath her for 2 or 3 minutes before he solved that mystery.
“Let me just inspect the oil pan here…wait! What the he–?!? *glug, glug, sputter, sputter.”
Dad rolled out from underneath the car, looking like he had just made the poor life choice of going to a Halloween party in black-face.
“Who the ----- put 8 gallons of oil in this thing?!?”
“Don’t look at me!” 1SJ was way too quick to rush to his own defense. “I only put 2 gallons in her before I left for the field that morning.”
“Well sh*t, now you tell me!” That information would have been good to have had.
“Dammit, son, so you’re telling that you put another 5 gallons in it after it was already full? Sheesh, sometimes, I swear, kid…”
“Hey, at least it didn’t burn up, right? Now that it’s drained (all over you, mfffph!) to a normal level, it should be good to go, right?” I was optimistic yet that Moby D*ck had many voyages left in her.
“I dunno, maybe. 1SJ, you want to test drive her over to Hugoton5A nearby town about 15 minutes away. and see what your pothead friends are up to?”
“Sure thang, Dad!”
Sadly, that was to be her final voyage, ultimately finding herself forever beached in the church parking lot across the street from Druggie Drew’s house, never to see the black waters of the highway-ocean again…
The point of the story is, believe it or not, there is actually such a thing as too much of a good thing–and specifically in this case, that good thing was “too much lube.”
Remember this, kids, when one day you might find yourself falling head-over-heels in love with a sweet Supreme Ass–er, I mean “a sweet Cutlass Supreme”–of your very own. If you treat her to just the right amount of lube, you might get to sail the seven seas in her for years to come…
And no, if you’re wondering, this is not some kind of sexual metaphor. Just a whale of a tragic tale of a boy and his first car…
Content created on: 15/16 April 2022 (Fri/Sat)
Footnotes & References:
Leave a Reply