9-25-2002

It just started raining.

It’s a typical fall Denver-area rainstorm; it starts off with sporadic drops – but not the little wimpy drops they have in places like Oregon and Baffin Island – but drops that have the monstrous dimensions, ripe firmness, and nearly spherical shape of Anna Nicole Smith’s Brussels sprouts. Or any of the Brussels sprouts you find at your local grocers, for that matter…

About 30 seconds after the first drop hits the pavement, the screaming starts. Several of the guys in our office are “car guys”, and if that doesn’t explain the screaming, then you must not be one of them yourself.

A “car guy” always keeps his vehicle clean. He washes it after each venture outside the sanitary confines of his garage/clean room. He has special towels hanging in there for the express purpose of drying the last moisture off after the loving application of suds/rinse/repeat. The towels say “Rocky” on them, because that’s the car’s name. (Actually, “Rocky” is short for “The Ripping Red Rocket” or some such alliteration, but you’ll never get the guy to tell you that. It’s private – just between him and his vehicle.) Sometimes the towels also have that picture of the Roth dragster – you know, the one where the headlights are eyeballs and the rear tires are 72 times the size of the car and you can tell they’re spinning madly because there are not one, not two, but THREE “spin lines” drawn above and below each tire. If there’s smoke coming from the tires in this towel artwork, you know you’ve found a guy who is serious about his vehicle.)

They don’t do anything about the rain. They just scream once, then stand by the window for a few minutes, watching the splotches appear on the pristine shiny paint and on the windshield they’d just Windexed the hell out of only a few hours before. The head will shake slowly side to side a few times, then they’ll go back to what they were doing, muttering under their breath.

I wish I was a car guy, because they know lots of macho stuff, and the chicks seem to dig them. But I’m not. I couldn’t describe the difference between an intake manifold and a cheese sandwich. And I have no idea what a PCV valve does, or why having the word “Turbo” painted on your hood makes your car cost a couple thousand dollars extra.

For years, the only “clutch” I knew about was the crappy animated guy whose pals were Spinner and Paddlefoot. Watching his mouth move in a human-like motion, while the rest of the 2-dimensional frame stayed absolutely motionless – well, it totally creeped me out. And I never did figure out exactly what the guy was doing for a living. (And while we’re on that subject, how the hell does Shaggy earn enough money to buy Milk Bones for his big-ass Scooby dog? I’m assuming there must be such a thing as cartoon character’s welfare, maybe? Or maybe they just live in the same bizarro universe where the normal laws of physics don’t apply, and Gilligan isn’t killed and eaten by his shipmates after the first 5 minutes on the island.)

Car guys own one of two types of vehicles: “Classic” and “Big”. They seem to gravitate toward ’64 Mustangs and the kinds of trucks that Manute Bol would have to stand on a stepstool to see inside.

Guys like me actually think that the racing stripe on the side of their 1978 Pinto make it look cool. And there’s something rather musical about the way those little economy cars sound when you slam the door; it’s almost the same sound you hear when you pop the top off a can of Pringles.

Despite what you may have heard about Pintos exploding 3 or 4 times a day, mine was actually a pretty good car. The only time I really got stressed out driving it was in one very cold January. The temperature was about 20 below. Apparently the Pinto loved the weather, because it decided that it wanted to go REALLY FAST. Some widget or gizmo or something inside the engine box (er, I mean “under the hood”) got stuck in a position that made the engine race at 170 billion RPM. (Of course, Pintos don’t have tachometers, so I’m making an educated guess here.) I tried doing Mambo Number 5 on the accelerator, trying to unstuck it – no dice. I tried cursing and swearing at it, but that had no result, either.

I ended up driving home in second gear with my foot stomping the brake pedal as hard as I could. At stop lights, I’d just turn the car off, praying that when I re-started it, the problem will have vanished. Nope. The engine’s whine made me start talking Scottish to myself – “She’s goin’ ta blow, Cap’n!”

You may wonder why I didn’t just park it and walk somewhere to call for help. Well… IT WAS TWENTY FREAKING DEGREES BELOW ZERO, that’s why. If I’d have walked for help, even Ted Williams’ daughter wouldn’t be able to thaw me out. I’d rather be vaporized by and explosion of rogue dilithium crystals than be a corpsicle on the corner of Quincy and Simms.

I’ll confess I did try the solution my friend Tom had used in college when his U-joint started going bad. “If it makes noise, turn up the radio,” he said. “Problem solved.” Didn’t help this time.

Now, a car guy probably would’ve known just what to do. He’d pop the hood, tap his pinkie gently on the bilateral framulator or something, and the car would hum like hillbilly high on sorghum. But if he couldn’t fix it, he’d be in a lot more trouble than I would be.

You see, the real advantage a guy like me would have over a “car guy” is that even if my car totally breaks down in a blizzard in Colorado in January – I’ll survive. After all, I’ve got those 27 McDonalds sacks in the back seat. There’s gotta be enough fries in there to live until spring.