Years ago I had a friend, Mike, who was a mechanic for Al’s Mobil at the corner of Westheimer and Commonwealth here in Houston. Mike also repaired radios and tape players and things on the side. Mike had an interesting sense of humor; charging me for “insults” rather than for a tune up on my old pick up truck; said he didn’t want word to get around that he was responsible for keeping it on the road.
I used to sit under the awning of the Mobil station in the heat of the day and wait for someone to run the red light. I could visit with Al or Mike while passing the time in the shade and then; after observing a “good one”, exit the station safely on either street depending on which way I needed to pursue the violator.
One day Mike had his head up under the hood of a car when I pulled in for a visit and to set up on the light. I flipped the switch for the siren and laughed as he clunked his head on the hood. I know, that wasn’t very professional; but it was fun all the same. Mike swore that he’d get even and so each time I visited I was on the look out for the other end of “what goes around”.
Several months went by and I forgot all about having gotten the better of Mike. One afternoon I felt myself glazing over while I waited for somebody to run the light. Mike snuck up behind me with one of those air ratchet tools, the kind used to tighten lug nuts on a tire. He placed it under my elbow that was leaning out the open window of my police car and turned it on. VVvzzzzzziiiiitttttt! ( Sound effects from cheap.com) I nearly came out of my uniform as he let go a huge belly laugh; backing away and standing inside the corner of the garage just in case I was crazy enough to pull my pistol and finish him off on the spot.
“Now we’re even!” I had a moment to gather myself and had to admit he’d won; the patience he had shown, waiting all those months and seizing the opportunity once it was presented.
I over heard him talking to a potential customer who had a car radio he wanted repaired. Mike pointed down the street and explained that he didn’t work on that particular brand; however, there was a local company who might be able to do something with it.
“You just take it to one of their collection boxes, you can’t miss them, big blue metal units with the letters “BFI” emblazoned on the side”.
I started to laugh, realizing that Mike had recognized a piece of garbage, a car radio that wasn’t worth fixing, and had instructed the fellow to toss it in the dumpster. The fellow must not have had a sense of humor, once he figured out what was going on.
Many years ago I made keys for a real POS at one of my regular lots. It was the kind of car that would’ve look better on a wrecker headed for the scrap metal yard than headed for the auction; but they needed a key to see if it would start so I got to make some money off of it. When filling in the tag, that fancy doodad with the year, make and model blanks and has a piece of gummy plastic that wraps around it; under color I wrote, “BFI Blue”. It needed no further explanation as the manager signed off on my work order and shook his head, not sure why the money had been wasted on such a POS.
Today I was working on the back lot of a collision center, programming, of all things, keys for a police car that had been wrecked. I’d have finished the job yesterday except there wasn’t any power from the battery and the hood was crunched so badly as to make opening it difficult. I told them to give me a call once they got it pried open and that it would only take ten minutes to finish the job.
The young mechanic who followed me to the back of the lot had a long pry bar and grinned when I explained that this might be his only chance to take a whack at a police car without getting into trouble; that might have put the smile on his face as he shoved the bar home and ripped the edge loose from the mangled front end.
I was about three minutes into the ten minute program when a BFI truck made a dumpster pick up a few spaces down from where I was working. The smell oozing from the back of the garbage truck was somewhere between three week old spoiled cat fish or a wino who’d soiled himself two days earlier and was sleeping it off near by. I had seven minutes to endure, watching a steady stream of putrid liquid spill from the back of the BFI truck as it slowly left, headed to brighten up someone else’s day.
I wonder if the EPA has a classification for that stuff. Knowing the way most bureaucracies work, they’d send out an investigator with a clip board. He’d put his finger in it, bring it to his nose for a few whiffs, stick his tongue out and take a sample taste and exclaim, “Glad I didn’t step in it!”
When I drove off I made sure that my tires avoided the trail of liquid death left on the pavement. My guess is that the foreman at the body shop will have somebody, maybe the same guy who ripped open the hood of that police car, yup; he’ll be out there with the hose washing down the driveway for an hour or so. Where’s a thunder shower when you really need one?
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