6/6/06

Ooh! Is the world going to end today? I’m so scared! Anyhoo, that’s all I'm going to say about the date. Ok, so I started yesterday saying I was sore. I wasn’t sore yesterday, not compared to today. Actually it was worse last night, I'm doing pretty well right now. Here’s what happened Sunday. I got up and waited for Gregg to call. He did around 0900. We decided to meet at the shop and go to the other side of “Not Texas” to get the Mustang. On the way we stopped at Cheddar’s in Duncanville but didn’t wait because we were burning daylight and the hot chick in a mini skirt was distracting us too bad. We had hamburgers at McDonald’s instead. We rolled on. We got to the “farm” around noon and backed the trailer down the drive. I couldn’t see the car until I was just about to trip over it, it was that buried. Well, not so much “buried” but so corroded and rusty that it was perfectly camouflaged in the underbrush. As we approached, the whiff of death was fairly strong. We looked the car over and decided it was worth rescuing. We had discussed bringing wheels and tires to try and put on it but weren’t sure if it would be a four or five lug wheel. It was a five so we didn’t have any wheels anyway. So, we were going to have to drag the whole thing on four flats. Joy. The car was “parallel parked” next to a drainage ditch. Well, see, there was a driveway going to the barn that crossed the culvert and the spot the car was on was off to the left of that. We were going to have to move it sideways before we could drag it onto the trailer. First we took the come-along and hooked up to a tree to pull the ass end out. Next we repositioned the come-along to another tree directly behind and pulled it back about half a car length. It was about this time we realized we hadn’t brought any water for ourselves. Gregg went to a convenience store and bought a gallon of cold water. After drinking that, we went back to the first tree and drug the nose out so the car was parallel with the trailer. Finally we began to drag it toward, and onto, the trailer. My come-along began to stretch and “Coke bottle” to the point where it seized up and wouldn’t work anymore. His come-along was so old and worn out that you had to physically hold the ratcheting mechanisms closed for it to work. It was no fun. We finally got it on the trailer and tied down around 1830 and headed back to Beenbroke. We decided to just drop the whole thing, trailer and all, for the time being and look at it later. So, if you don’t count drive time, I have six hours or so invested in this heap already, eight if you do count the driving. We looked at it a little bit before leaving and decided that it was too far-gone for us to restore but it would make a good starting place for a NASA American Iron Extreme racecar. I got a call from Gregg last night because he had spoken to someone about the “value” of ‘64½ Mustangs. They are currently valued at around $40,000.00 he said. So, Gregg has dollar signs in his eyes at the moment and wants, now, to restore it. I'm staying out of the thing and agreeing with whatever he has to say. I know this: I don’t want it. We’ll see. So, six hours of cranking on a come-along has me both sore and convinced that Mr. Wiggly will have a winch for rescuing cars! But enough of that, later in the evening I got another call. This was from Mr. John Ullom. He wanted to know if I still had Barbecue Bob and was still willing to sell it. Without thinking about it, because that would have caused me to make a more rash decision, I told him I did and I would. I think we are going to move shop night to tonight so the three of us (John U, John R, and I) can discuss the matter. I need to avoid looking at the car as much as possible and focus on the “negative” aspects of it so it can go away. It is, especially with the return of Maxine, totally superfluous in the fleet. It would be nice to get back to a totally 1200 focused collection. It may also come to pass that the small block Chevy will go in Maxine, but don’t hold your breath. We’ll see. Well, I just hit two pages of ranting and it is noonish. I think I'll go grab some lunch. Have a day.