AEROBUS CHAPTER 8 - Homecoming, and a parts car! I returned to the United States in August. I flew all the way from Saudi Arabia to Offutt AFB, Nebraska non-stop on an Air Force RC-135. An 18 hour flight with two mid-air refuelings. Not that I noticed much since I spent virtually all of the 18 hours zipped into an extreme cold weather, mummy sleeping bag that the government forced us all to take to Saudi Arabia with us. We never could figure out why we took them to desert conditions. Supposedly it was to lay on top of our cots as sort of a mattress but most of the cots had been replaced by real beds from the rooms in Daharan that survived the terrorist bombing attack a year earlier. Military aircraft can be extremely cold at 30,000 feet when the heaters on board are not working well. This flight was no exception and I was thrilled to have my sleeping bag. I found I could zip it to the point where I just had a saucer sized breathing hole. I had a comfortable flight stretched out on the floor of the aircraft. A significant life memory for me will always be stepping off that airplane in Omaha, Nebraska and spending a day in the greenest spot on earth. I know my perspective was skewed from 4 months of virtually nothing but light tan color. Tan tents, tan uniforms, tan as far as the eye could see. No green things growing. To leave that and see nothing until stepping off that plane and then seeing only green vegetation was stirring. I sat outside under some trees for several hours until darkness overcame the base. I had a flight out to Sacramento in the morning where more green awaited me. That and a Checker Aerobus. Oh yeah, and a family. One of my first bits of Checker business after an appropriate period of decompression and quality time with my family was to visit the DMV and report that the second set of personalized CHECKER plates had not arrived. The lady at DMV queried her computer and it told her the plates were mailed the week before. I should have them in a few days she told me. No explanation on what happened to the first two shipments but I was relieved that I still had them coming. While I was in Saudi Arabia my son, Charlie had earned his driver's license. He was eager to get on the road and our Pontiac Fiero was an attractive vehicle for him. It was a Fiero GT Fastback, a sporty little two-seater that drove like a go-cart. That is, it did when it was running at all. It had been down for a long time with a spark plug broken off inside the engine. The job required tearing the engine down quite far. I had been putting it off for two years. Now I was feeling the pressure from Charlie and, consequently my wife, Vilma to get it fixed so they could use it. I knew there was no way I could get back to the Checker until the Fiero was running again. It took me three months of weekend time, catching an hour here and there, to get it fixed. It would take another two years to get it fixed right but at least it was running and Charlie loved it. Now I could get back to the Checker. McClellan Air Force Base holds a "Trunk-or-Treat" to provide a safe alternative to trick-or-treating in Sacramento. The objective is for organizations to decorate a vehicle and bring it, equipped with candy to give out, to a central point on the base. There are prizes for the best decorated vehicle. How could I lose if I brought an 8-door station wagon? Kids often referred to it as a hearse or a "Ghostbuster" vehicle though it bears little resemblance to either. I figured I'd capitalize on that perception. I advertised in my military unit for anyone to bring in old Halloween decorations that I could borrow for the event. I got all kinds of stuff from crepe paper streamers to bloody mannequin torsos; fake spider-webs to plastic laughing jack-o-lanterns. I parked the car out in front of the unit and let people watch the progress for the week preceding Halloween. Each item that was added to the car contributed to the look and convinced others to bring items in for it. By the time "Trunk-or-Treat" rolled around we were ready with what we considered the first-prize winner. My assistant in decorating the car was a guy named Ron. Ron was out there every day helping me tape junk to all eight doors and across the vast expanse of roof. We had fake bodies and body parts strewn throughout the car. We used a lot of newspaper, stuffing clothing to simulate bodies and attaching rubber hands, heads and feet. Each of the four seats was a grotesque diorama. October 31st came and the car was a hit with the children and the adults. I got a lot of questions about the car with most people saying they had never seen one before. I went through the ritual of explaining what a Checker was and who made it and how it looks like a 1958 but it's really a 1970. No one ever seemed to understand how it could look so old but only be a 1970. They never asked any further but always seemed confused. Trunk-or-Treat was a success even though we only took second prize to a small moving van that had Frankenstein's laboratory inside it complete with a live Frankestein. Ron stayed out there all day with me, both of us dressed up as hideously as we could. The Checker's first outing was a hit and I was anxious to get the car in better shape. The exhaust pipe patch that I had done for the smog check had given up and the car was now loud. It was also running very lousy all of a sudden. I would come to a stop sign and the car would stall. It was giving me trouble restarting under those conditions. I didn't need to be out in public with a car that did not run well or sounded loud. I could take ugly but not junky. Two of the wheel cylinders that operate the brakes were leaking their fluid down the inside of the tire. This told me that I had to replace them too. That was something that I should have done when I did the brake job. I took a shortcut then that I suspected wouldn't work. Now I would have to replace all four since, if two were leaking, the other two wouldn't be far behind. As many brake jobs as I had done I should have known better. I was surprised that the master cylinder wasn't leaking too. It would. I pulled all the decorations out of the car and gave them back to the owners. I found that when I pulled the taped decorations off the exterior that both layers of paint on the car peeled off with the tape. Right down to bare metal. I did some checking with some folks on the internet Checker bulletin board and found out that Checker did not use primer on their cars to protect them before they put the paint on. No one seemed to know why Checker did that. Some guessed that it was just a shortcut. However, Checker was known for doing things right. Others thought it might have been a holdover from the taxi-cabs who were repainted so often during their life expectancy that they didn't need the primer. Nevertheless, I now had even more blemishes all over my car. Still, ugly was okay as long as I got the mechanical things right. The car limped home and I parked out on the street in front of my house. I turned my attentions to the foul fuel tank that was out of the car. I was still operating with a 6-gallon boat tank in the cargo compartment. I was trying solvents and a water hose to clean out the original tank. I had made a lot of phone calls trying to find a place that could clean it out, repair the bad metal, and seal the whole thing. I found one place that would do all that and seal it inside and out with an impervious coating of plastic. The problem was that they wanted $250 for the average fuel tank. I might as well buy one of Joe Pollard's used original tanks for the same price than to have something repaired and not original in the car. My attempts today were to see if I could at least clean it myself and think of a repair I could perform on it. The stench of that bad fuel, even after having sat in my back yard for almost a year now, was as strong as ever. While I was hosing it out walnut-size chunks of crystallized gas came out of it. This was a mess. I heard the racket of the ice cream truck coming down our street playing its music. I heard the truck stop in front of our house but I didn't encourage the driver by looking up. His music kept running. "No, I don't want any of your over-priced ice cream," I muttered to myself. Just then the music stopped. "God Bless You," the driver said to me. "Oh great," I thought. "A salesman and a religious nut. What a combination." "Is that your Checker?" God-Bless-You asked me. "Well maybe he wasn't a nut," I thought. "He knows what a Checker is." "Yes it's mine." "That's really nice." "Well, it will be some day." "I know where there's one just like it." Now he had my undivided attention. Pretending to be a little interested I asked him where. "It's right across the street from the Arden Mall, behind the sporting goods store," he began. I burned his instructions into my mind. God-Bless-You sold some ice cream to two boys and ended the sale by extolling them to say their prayers at night. "So where did you say this Checker is?" I asked. "Straight across from the mall and behind the sporting goods store." "Is it like mine?" "Exactly, except that all the windows are broken. It's been there for a long time. Maybe five years." "Well thanks for telling me about it. If it's still there I could use some parts off of it." "Sure, good luck and God Bless You." He said as he drove off to the strains of Little Brown Jug. I was in the house in a flash, grabbing the keys to my pick-up truck and dashing out the door headed for the sporting goods store across from the mall. I was not optimistic about the car still being there. And even if it was, who was to say I could buy it? I got to the back parking lot, which was really a bunch of loading docks and doors covered with graffiti. No Checker. Yeah, too good to be true. Suddenly, there it was! I could see the back end if it. It was a Checker station wagon for sure. As I pulled up closer I could see that it was abnormally long too. It had eight doors. Good-Bless-You was right! The whole car had been spray painted. I thought it was just more graffiti but then I realized that it had been professionally airbrushed. Down the side of it was the name, Yucatan Liquor Stand. There was no establishment in the area with that name. It was hard to tell which business in this strip had claim to the property that the car was on. It was set as far back as it could be from the back doors. It sat most directly behind a country and western club called In-Cahoots. It was a mess with all fourteen windows smashed out. There were rocks, bricks and other projectiles scattered in and around the car. Obviously the implements of its destruction. The dash was in remarkably good shape despite the shattered windshield. I popped open the hood and the engine looked complete except for the missing carburetor and air cleaner. Something told me that they had been stolen while the vehicle sat out there. The car didn't have any bumpers on it. All the body panels were in pretty good shape, no rust or major dents despite the abuse that had been heaped on the glass. It had eight doors that would certainly come in handy over the time I would be restoring mine. The seats were all there but not in as good condition as mine. There were a few arm rests that were in better shape than mine and a lot of interior parts. All eight dome light lenses were missing from this one as they were on mine. The plastic used in their construction did not hold up well over the years, tending to get crumbly and fall apart at the touch. I was looking the car over wondering how I was going to find out who owned it. I really wanted to get this car for all the parts it had. I hoped that by staying out there someone would come by. I remembered the most important item and went to the back to check the fuel tank. The car was backed up to a curb and all the tires were flat so it was hard to see the tank back there. I lay down and crawled under the same corner of the tank that was bad on mine. This tank looked perfect! "Can I help you?" a woman's voice hollered. I almost knocked my head on the tank trying to wriggle out from under the car. "Yeah I was looking at this car. I've got one just like it. Is this yours?" "Yeah, it belongs to the club." I walked toward the Chevy Blazer that she was the passenger in. "Hi, my name is Ed," I offered my hand up to her window. "Is it for sale?" "My name is Beth," she answered, returning a handshake that conveyed business. "I'm the general manager of In-Cahoots and I think the owners were wanting to sell the car." "How much?" I asked, trying to appear as indifferent as I was when talking to Jaime about buying his. "I don't know, make me an offer and I'll put it up to the owners. They're in LA." "What year is it?" "I think it's a 1970," I thought for a while, not wanting to offer too much considering the condition it was in. I desperately wanted this car for all of it's parts. I needed a fuel tank as soon as possible. After a lot of thinking, and not wanting to make Beth and her driver sit and look at me much longer I finally spoke. "I'll give you $200, as is." "Well, I'll tell the owners and let you know," Beth answered quickly. "Here's my card, call me next Wednesday evening and I'll give you an answer." "Do you have the title for it?" I asked "I think I've got all the paperwork inside the club. I may even have the bumpers from it." "The title would be important to me because I only intend to keep a few parts and get rid of the rest. A junkyard won't even take it without a title." I said all of that to emphasize that I did not intend to fix it up and that it probably wasn't worth much more than I was offering. "I've already got one of these at home and there's no way my wife would tolerate me brining home another one even uglier than the one I have." Beth laughed at that and repeated her instruction to call her on Wednesday. It felt like Wednesday would never come. I called on Wednesday and got an answering machine. I hung up without leaving a message. I didn't want to appear too anxious by leaving a message. An hour later I called again. Answering machine again. Then I remembered Beth's instructions to call in the evening. Of course, it was a night-club, there wouldn't be anyone there in the morning. I survived the difficult eight-hour wait and called at 6 o'clock in the evening. "In-Cahoots, Beth speaking." "Beth!" I almost shouted. "This is Ed calling about the Checker." "Oh yeah, hey, I talked to the owners and they said they wanted $500 for it." "Well okay, let's see, can I think about that and call you back?" "Sure but there's someone else who's been asking about the car." Oh she was shrewd, I thought to myself. The old salesman's line, 'you must act now!' "Tell you what, can you hold it exclusively for me until Saturday?" I offered. "I guess I could do that." "Did you find the title?" "Yes but it's in LA. The owners are going to fill it out and mail it to me. I should have it by Saturday." "Can you be sure and not have them date it because if I buy it I don't intend to keep the car more than a month or so and it would be easier if the person who ultimately ends up with it has the title." "I'll tell them that." Beth agreed. "Okay I'll let you know Saturday, one way or the other." |
