Oil's Well That Ends Well

I had a moment of panic yesterday morning. As I went to check the fluids in my new old van, I discovered that the oil cap was gone. There was a one-inch hole in the valve cover where it should have been.

I have no idea what happened exactly. Within reason, I neglected to put it back on the last time I checked the oil. Luckily, I was only about a quart and a half down, and the local auto parts had a new cap for fifteen bucks. So I made sure all the other fluids were good, and you better believe I made certain that every cap was on tight. You know what I did next?

Drove 320 miles to Hessel, in Michigan's glorious Upper Peninsula.

But Marty, shouldn't you have driven around town for a few days to make sure everything was okay?

Aw hell, as me Grandpa Joe would have said. I was otherwise set to go, and it had been driving just fine. What's to wait for?

Indeed. 

Grandma Negotiates With Joe

I'm not sure exactly when it was, so I'll say 1970 because it fits the time frame. But me Grandma Cosgriff was in the market for a car. Her 1956 Dodge had conked out, and she needed wheels. 

Man, that old Dodge of hers was a car. It loomed huge in the parking spot in front of her and Joe's house. I remember many rides in that pale blue over white battleship, hard plastic coverings on the seats so as not to ruin the upholstery.

Anyway, all good things, and Grams was looking for a replacement. About that same time me Grandpa Joe, her husband if I haven't established that by now, had gotten a beautiful maroon 1967 Chevy Impala off his sister Ruth. It was a very nice car; I remember it well too. Joe bragged on that car constantly, how well it drove, how smooth the engine ran, how good it looked. He was really pleased with that vehicle.

Joe had went out one evening, and when he got back home he found Grandma sitting at their dining room table. "Sit down, Joe, we have to talk," she instructed her husband.

He took a chair. "What do we have to talk about?" he asked.

"Ruth's car."

"Ruth's car?" Joe demanded. "What about it?"

Grandma Cosgriff held out her right hand, palm up, and said simply, "Just give me the keys."

"I bragged on that car a bit too much," Joe ruefully lamented to me Pops the next day at the Shop. But that was how me Grams solved her car problem.

Something Borrowed

Me brother Phil would regularly chauffer me Grandma Cosgriff or me Grandpa Joe around, for whatever reason. One day for whatever reason he was taking Joe out, but they had to borrow Grandma's car. She gave them a list of cautions about how to drive her vehicle.

The roads were a little dirty that day, causing specks of dirt to form on the windshield. Phil wasn't paying much attention to them as they weren't really obstructing his vision.

Apparently, however, they were obstructing Joe's. Yet in his own quaint manner, rather than asking me brother to use the washer he instead barked, yea demanded, "Did your grandmother tell you you couldn't use the windshield washer?"

Phil cleared the window.

Of Packards and Purple Caddys

I really don't know where to begin. Me Grandpa Joe had a plethora of cars which ran the gamut from neat to bad, and on downhill to particularly, excruciatingly bad. Yet he was proud of every one of them, and I was somehow proud that he was proud. He often had so many that it qualified him for the fleet rate with his insurance company.

There's the 12 cylinder Packard I wish I had seen. Pops always seemed impressed, even wistful, talking about it. Perhaps Joe's biggest claim to celebrity was a big white Chrysler Imperial (which I did see, and even rode in) which supposedly had a governor of Florida as a former owner. Man, that thing was huge. And who could forget the 1961 Ford Fairlane which he bought for thirty five bucks? It went from zero to sixty in, in, well, I don't think it ever actually made it to sixty. Oh, and a 65 Chevy Bel Air which always smelled burnt because he had flicked a lit cigarette out the driver's window only to have it sucked into an open back window and burn out the rear seat. That one became (more or less) my brother Phil's. It lasted until 1983, when it was t-boned by a guy who ran a stop sign. But the one I remember the fondest was a 1967 Cadillac. It was purple.

Well, more like lilac really. He had bought the car while we, me Pops and Mom and the family, had been in North Carolina visiting her folks. Joe felt it needed painting and found a paint shop running a special obviously intended to get rid of unpopular colors. Since Joe always said "I ain't Hell on pretty," he didn't care about the color. He cared about the great price for the paint job. I can still hear me Pops, as we pulled up behind that beauty on the return home, asking incredulously "I wonder whose purple Cadillac that is?" He should have known.

Joe being Joe, he had a hitch installed on that thing because any vehicle could pull a welder. That's exactly what he had me doing when I was an older teen: delivering welders with it. I heard every purple Cadillac joke imaginable taking machines into factories and onto job sites.

Still, it was a neat car in its own way. It was the last style of Caddy, I believe of any American car, with tail fins, modest though they were. It was the car I drove through a small lake, on orders from Joe, when I was 17. You can read about that here: https://thesublimetotheridiculous.blogspot.com/2017/10/high-tide-in-milan.html if you care to.

Yep, me Grandpa Joe had some cars. There's more where this come from, and I'll get to it someday.

Don't know, don't care

A car, me old Grandpa Joe always said, is good for one thing and one thing only: to get you from point A to point B. That's all it's good for; there ain't no style points.

To be sure, as those of you who knew him will attest, he took the idea to an extreme. He drove vehicles which he probably should have not. Yet I think his basic idea is well and true. It taught me, rightly, I will assert, not to care too much for what I drive.

Consequently I tend to have cars with quirks. Take my current van, for example. If you hit the gas too hard when you pull away from the curb or a traffic light, it rumbles like hell before smoothing out and going on. But when I accelerate easily, it does just fine. Why? Don't know, don't care. It gets me from A to B and that's it's job.

The door ajar and check engine lights stay on constantly. Why? Don't know, don't care. The old girl starts every time and that's all I need her to do.

Sometimes when I roll the driver's window down it won't roll back up. But when I restart the engine it rolls back up. Why? Don't know, don't care. It rolls back up. That's good enough.

Joe's right. It's just a car. And it does what I need it to does. That's good enough for me. If it ain't good enough for you, I can live with that.

Joe's cars

I really don't know where to begin. Me Grandpa Joe had a plethora of cars which ran the gamut from neat to bad, and on downhill to particularly, excruciatingly bad. Yet he was proud of every one of them, and I was somehow proud that he was proud. He often had so many that it qualified him for the fleet rate with his insurance company.
There's the 12 cylinder Packard I wish I had seen. Pops always seemed impressed, even wistful, talking about it. Perhaps Joe's biggest claim to celebrity was a big white Chrysler Imperial (which I did see, and even rode in) which supposedly had a governor of Florida as a former owner. Man, that thing was huge. And who could forget the 1961 Ford Fairlane which he bought for thirty five bucks? It went from zero to sixty in, in, well, I don't think it ever actually made it to sixty. Oh, and a 65 Chevy Bel Air which always smelled burnt because he had flicked a lit cigarette out the driver's window only to have it sucked into an open back window and burn out the rear seat. That one became (more or less) my brother Phil's. It lasted until 1983, when it was t-boned by a guy who ran a stop sign. But the one I remember the fondest was a 1967 Cadillac. It was purple.
Well, more like lilac really. He had bought the car while we, me Pops and Mom and the family, had been in North Carolina visiting her folks. Joe felt it needed painting and found a paint shop running a special obviously intended to get rid of unpopular colors. Since Joe always said "I ain't Hell on pretty," he didn't care about the color. He cared about the great price for the paint job. I can still hear me Pops, as we pulled up behind that beauty on the return home, asking incredulously "I wonder whose purple Cadillac that is?" He should have known.
Joe being Joe, he had a hitch installed on that thing because any vehicle could pull a welder. That's exactly what he had me doing when I was an older teen: delivering welders with it. I heard every purple Cadillac joke imaginable taking machines into factories and onto job sites.
Still, it was a neat car in its own way. It was the last style of Caddy, I believe of any American car, with tail fins, modest though they were. It was the car I drove through a small lake, on orders from Joe, when I was 17. You can read about that here: https://thesublimetotheridiculous.blogspot.com/2017/10/high-tide-in-milan.html if you care to.
Yep, me Grandpa Joe had some cars. As I remember more I'll tell you about those too.

Out of the fog

Grandpa Joe done a lot of things. Some were understandable, and some were not. One of the things which was not understandable was that he liked, every now and then, to pour a quart of motor oil into the gas tanks of his cars and trucks. I believe he thought it would help keep the engine valves operating freely. But I have no idea why he thought that and it still doesn't makes sense to me. All I could see was that it made the vehicles belch out thick blue smoke for days afterwards.

Needless to say that produced fun memories.

For his welder rental business Joe had large flatbed trucks for deliveries and pickups. These trucks had manual transmissions, stick shifts. When my brother Phil was brought in to work, Grandpa saw that Phil needed to learn to drive those old beasts. Joe would teach him the only way he knew how: by tossing Phil the keys and have him back the truck up and down the alley outside his shop, to learn in a baptism of fire how to get the old flatbed in gear. Naturally this was right after Joe had tossed a quart of oil in the tank.

Like many first trying to learn to handle a stick, Phil tended to race the engine far more than necessary to engage the clutch. This put out copious amounts of smoke, until the alley was covered in a cloud of blue as though a very, very dense fog.

He had begun at the far end of the alley, either creeping or lurching towards the Shop as he tried to find first gear. The cloud developed and followed him, intensifying as he drew near the Shop. Soon enough you could not see to the end of the alley. When close enough to the old barn he would stop, and seek reverse gear to back up and start the process again. Slowly Phil would ease backwards and the cloud would gently swallow him and truck both until they could be seen but not heard.

A few minutes later there'd be grinding gears and a racing engine and that old Chevy flatbed would explode out of the cloud, sending wafts of smoke in all directions. This of course intensified the fog. It seemed that the entire block was becoming shrouded in blue; you couldn't see the garages which lined that alleyway.

This went on for about an hour, as me and one of Joe's other employees (I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name) stood by the large truck doors in the Shop and watched, laughing our heads off every time Phil exploded through the fog. To this day I don't know why someone didn't call the cops or the fire department. I've never seen so much smoke without a fire. But Phil learned to drive a stick, and Joe never thought twice about putting more oil in more gas tanks.

Old time theft protection

I don't believe this applies anymore; it likely hasn't applied in 30 years or more, with all the changes in engine technology. But we used it back then, and it worked 100% of the time.
Before clubs, before ultra sensitive car alarms, it was hard to keep the so-called professional thief from stealing your car if he really wanted it. And while I'm sure others may well have come up with the idea, me Pops or me Grandpa Joe one had come up with it around here.
Cars at one time had distributors and coils. A wire ran from the one to the other as the distributor (as I recall) 'distributed' the spark to the cylinders of an engine to cause the small explosions necessary to make it go. But without connection to the coil (which stored power, again as I recall) there was no spark to distribute. So take off the coil wire and your car would not start. No way no how.
So we would remove the coil wire, the cord between the distributor and coil, when we were home for the night. And not one of our cars were stolen after we put that practice into place.
Yeah, we knuckle dragging Cosgriffs weren't always so dumb. I bet if you have a car made before about 1985, you could still use this method today.

Don't know, don't care

A car, me old Grandpa Joe always said, is good for one thing and one thing only: to get you from point A to point B. That's all it's good for; there ain't no style points.

To be sure, as those of you who knew him will attest, he took the idea to an extreme. He drove vehicles which he probably should have not. Yet I think his basic idea is well and true. It taught me, rightly, I will assert, not to care too much for what I drive.

Consequently I tend to have cars with quirks. Take my current van, for example. If you hit the gas too hard when you pull away from the curb or a traffic light, it rumbles before smoothing out and going on. But when I accelerate easily, it does just fine. Why? Don't know, don't care. It gets me from A to B and that's it's job.

The door ajar and check engine lights stay on constantly. Why? Don't know, don't care. The old girl starts every time and that's all I need her to do.

Sometimes when I roll the driver's window down it won't roll back up. But when I restart the engine it rolls back up. Why? Don't know, don't care. It rolls back up. That's good enough.

Joe's right. It's just a car. And it does what I need it to does. That's good enough for me. If it ain't good enough for you, I can live with that.