The End

It's hours after noon on the 30th of August, 2010, and I am bringing this blog to a close. No more will I write my once a week entry of anecdotes. With A Smidgen of Religion is kaput. It's been a good run, and one that makes me think that there is another blog in my future. But for now there is only silence and inactivity. I hope instead to sink myself into the work of completing a second novel. I am fifty pages into the story, and I like the way it is unfolding.

Bye for now.

Wheels

I was never much of a gear head. Cars did little to impress me, although I did admire the shape of some. I used to draw approximations of my favorites with colored pencils, lone images on an expanse of white background. They looked as sleek and powerful as I could render them, spewing exhausts of billowing smoke and flames. I imagined myself in the driver seat peeling out and laying rubber. I never got far in those imaginings before cops were in hot pursuit. But boy you should have seen me allude my pursuers as I gave them the slip worthy of James Bond.

The first car I actually got to drive was a tug-boat of a white family-size Ford station-wagon. I used to drive that machine one handed while stretched out and wedged into the driver's seat as if I were burrowing for comfort in a living room recliner. In doing so within weeks I broke the back of the seat. It was cocked in a screwy angle from then on for the duration of our ownership of the car.

Afterwards my father bought a gray 1976, Pontiac LeMans with black bucket seats and a shift on the floor. She was a vehicle worthy of a race track and I had a teenage reverence for that car that to this day still has a place in my heart. My sister who turned sixteen in the course of events also got to drive that car. One night shortly thereafter while drunk and emotionally volatile she drove that car up over the curb, across the length of a front lawn, through the street facing wall and into the living room of a sleeping geriatric couple. The embedded car was totaled.

When my brother turned sixteen he bought a Dodge Dart equipped with an 8 track player. He let me drive it off and on. One day I drove that car a hundred plus miles up and back from Cape Cod, at a steady 95 miles an hour. Even though we parked the Dart in the street the next morning after the trip you could smell the worn, exhausted engine the moment you stepped out the back door of our house. Some time later my brother tried to kill that car as a prelude to buying another. He drove that Dart around an oval dirt track at a reckless speed that threatened to flip the car over. Hours later he called it a draw. The car was too well built to fall prey to a rutted dirt road track.

A short while later my brother and I pooled our money together and bought a sporty little two seater from a slick talking fix 'em and sell 'em used car sales man. The first night we drove it the car protested in smoke and squeals. We had been had. The engine and drive shaft were shot. When we went back to the sales man for our money back he pointed to the dotted line and our signatures and just below that the clearly worded clause, Sold as is.

Next we got a cargo van and our father paneled and outfitted it with a bed that had underneath storage. We also installed a high end radio and tape deck and four kick ass speakers. It was party central. And no more than a couple days after my father finished with the paneling two of our soused and wrestling cohorts put several holes through the walls. The next day we patched the holes with scraps of wood, and shortly after that four of us loaded up the van and headed west. For the next several months that van was our oasis and home. When we returned thousands of miles later we promptly sold the van for less than it was worth.

Our following car leaked copious amounts of oil. Every morning we looked there was a new puddle beneath the car. We brought it to our mechanic and it did not leaked while at his garage. This happened three times, back and forth, with no resolution. On one hand you could call our mechanic methodical, on the other, slow. Our car was often tied up for over a week while he went through the motions of sussing out the elusive leak. The third time we asked him to find the leak he had our car for ten days. When he told us once again that there was no leak we wanted to brain him with a heavy pipe. Ten days he had our car. For nothing. Except of course his bill. We picked the car up late that afternoon. We hadn't had the car back more than two hours when we were driving down one of the main roads through our town. Without any warning someone in a car driving in the opposite direction hurled a rock at us. It shattered our windshield. And we were once again without a car and at the mercy of our mechanic.

That was our last car purchased together. Afterwards we each got our own vehicle and moved out of our parents home. I bought a yellow little Japanese import. This was at a time when I was among the Ranks of Cargo Of Despair and we were invited to exhibit our creative works at the art gallery of Springfield Technical Community College. As part of that show I provided spray paint and an open invitation to use my car as a canvas. A good dozen people took me up on my offer. The results was a varying riot of color, style, and technique. Shortly thereafter I paid my parents a visit. A couple of days later my mother told me that after I'd driven off following my visit one of her next door neighbors had come over and asked, "How old is your son?"

Years later there are still some autos of my youth whose shape and design I covet. They are for the most part high dollar cars with get up and go reputations. Had I only saved the color pencils of my youth I might sketch a couple autos, each one belching smoke and flame. You would think them slick and sleek and able to out run any cruiser driven by crook or Johnny Law. 'Cause that's the way I draw them.

Drop And Drill

Around the time I fell through the sky with a parachute on I took a job as a machinist. I suppose besides their timing the two were also linked in my mind because both were endeavors out of my comfort zone. Great heights made me queasy and working in a realm with thousands of an inch tolerances made me feel like I had the dexterity of a Paleolithic man.

The jump school was a no frills organization. Its runway was a length of tamped down and hardened dry mud that was situated at the end of a rutted dirt road abutting cornfields in every direction. In a small clearing nearby there was a shack for a school that was solidly built. Just off to the side of it was a three foot high platform. The learned consensus had it that landing with a parachute on was comparable to jumping down from three foot height. Thus when the time came we practiced landing by jumping off the platform. The trick was to roll naturally with your momentum when you hit the ground.

I suppose if I'd taken an aptitude test beforehand the guy who hired me as a machinist in training would have seen trouble coming. But there was no test to take and my employer remained blind to my shortcomings. All he had to go on was my fake enthusiasm and assurance that I picked up skills quickly and was rearing to learn a skill and trade that would keep me in the money for many years to come.

First thing they had us do at jump school was to sign a waiver freeing the school of all liability. After the paperwork and some thoughts of what might go wrong we were arrayed before a blackboard and introduced to the mechanics and nomenclature of parachuting. The words "velocity," "ratio" and "wind speed" came up several times in that chalk and blackboard overview.

My initial trouble as a would be machinist was the nature of oil. It was not that I was overly neat or fastidious. I wasn't. But I didn't like feeling all oily. However lesson number one in machinist 101 was that oil was your ever-present friend. It was a coolant; it was a lubricant; it was, in short, a film all over me.

After the parachuting overview we were strapped into jumper's harnesses that were suspended from the ceiling of the shack. (There was a step stool to get up and into the rigs.) Our instructors yanked the various belts tightly and then let us dangle. But not for long. Soon they were barking commands and peppering us with problems from every direction. "Your main shoot isn't opening what do you do?" Time, like us, was suspended as we grappled with what to do. Then we climbed up on to the platform and jump off in mock parachute landings.

In a matter of a couple hours my employer had me run a job. There were eight steps to it and all eight steps had been programed into the machine which was in fact a drill press. All I had to do was make sure I used the right drill bit for each step of the job. Piece of cake, right? Wrong. I was forgetful and sometimes I put the wrong drill bit on at the wrong step. When I did so the machine screeched hideously in protest and it sounded to me like the amorous cries of two dragons fucking. Each time it happened my employer came running, incredulous and demanding. "What are you doing?" In turn I meekly told him I'd made a mistake and it wouldn't happen again. And sometimes I made it through all eight steps with no mistakes. However when I used the micrometer like he'd shown me to check my work and make sure it was within two thousandths of an inch tolerance I'd often find my work to be upwards of a quarter inch off. It was either that or I was reading the instrument wrong. But I wasn't about to ask my boss if I was. Instead I tossed the piece into the finished box and went at it again.

We were ready to jump. We were each outfitted with a parachute and a one way walky talky which our instructors on the ground would use to guide us down. On our instructor's command we piled into the plane and it zipped down the runway and we were aloft. Soon we were cruising at 3,000 feet. The ground below was a vibrant quilt work of green, yellow and gold. When it was my turn to jump I stepped over to the door and the pilot cut the engine. I stepped out onto the wheel of the plane and held on steady as I could until my instructor said go. When he did I let go. I was on a static line so as soon as I did so my parachute opened. However when I released my grips of the plane I rolled to the left and something smacked me between my lower lip and chin. I looked down and a drop of blood plopped on to my right foot. But it was one drop and one drop only. My instructor told me "Looking good," and I fell to the earth in a state of wonder.

Whether I quit or was fired I don't rightly remember. But the end of my days as a machinist came quickly which was cool with me. I was glad to be free of all that oil. As to my output as a machinist I've grave doubts that I produced in the course of my labors one salvageable finished piece of work. Oh well. I walked away with no regrets and in doing so I chalked off one more would be viable path to prosperity.

Hitting the ground was a mild jolt and I rolled with my momentum. I had to do it again. I paid for another jump and was soon aloft and looking down at the wondrous earth below me. Then I jumped and began my slow descent. After that second fall through space, as glorious as it was, I never jumped again.