How a "shoe lace" saved our @#$

[Norminn]

Probably didn't have a skirt on :o)

[Dave Hinz]

Well, she was cute, and I was single. But the "two screws" was limited, sadly, to the distributor's rotor ;)

You know, I would have truly been dissapointed had _someone_ not taken it there. I caught it on my pre-post read of the message, but decided to send it anyway.

[FACE]

You had day?

[Gene (Ya fooking idiot!)]

Reminds me of when I broke my gas pedal cable. I just thought for a moment and hauled out my tackle box and used the string tackle to allow me to manipulate the swing arm so I could accelerate.

Later at the shop, I paid $15.45 for the cable..Made me almost think about just getting another string :)

[Neon John]

That sounds like a Ford. I have a '70 Bronco and a 68 F-250 Camper Special. "Herding" is an apt description. We bought the Bronco new and it steered like that from the start. My dad bought a 68 Camper Special new and I recall it (or him :-) also being all over the road.

Ya get sorta used to it after awhile even though you look like yer sawing a log going down the road :-)

I will have to say that the F-250 is tough as a rock. I've had it so loaded down with river rock that the axle was smashing the bump stops and the front wheels touched down only occasionally. It still drove more or less normally and suffered no damage. I've also had the bed packed as tightly as possible with compressed gas cylinders. Probably at least as heavy as the rock. Used that old truck on a welding supply route for years. It was like using a stone axe to carve a statue but at least it always worked.

John

[Tightwad]

Very Resourceful. Glad you got out of th situation. We used to carry bailing wire in the Model T. Used it a few times never thought of using shoe laces.

[kr_gentner]

Actually that one was an International. I never could hit third gear in the thing so I'd wind it up about as tight as it would go in second and pop it over into 4th. You were lucky to keep the thing between the ditches.

Kathy

[Don Bruder]

Idunno about "a roll" worth, but I habitually tote at least a couple bales' worth of baling wire in the trunk, and have for years. So far, I've used it to retrieve 7 sets of keys locked in other people's vehicles, re-attached the heat-shield on the catalytic converter, put the muffler back on, re-attached the tailpipe to the rubber mounting doohickey after the rivet that originally held it on fell out, and with the aid of two feed bags and some careful positioning, jump-started a log skidder. And who knows what other stuff I've used it for and simply forgotten about over the years...

(But then, in all fairness, I hardly count as a "kid" anymore...)

[Don Bruder]

That would be a pretty reasonable definition :)

(But it kinda leaves my daily-driver in limbo. At least until the next rape at the gas pump.)

[Brock Ulfsen]

Especially tie-rod ends, when you bounce over rough ground, like at the edge of a track.

Now, if you could drop then out in the carpark of your local parts store and x-ray them inside for 50c, then I'm sure that they'd get replaced more often. (I hate steering gear.)

....Brock.

[sleepdog]

Surprised no one beat me to the punch!

[MasterBlaster]

"FACE" wrote

Monty Python's Flying Circus - "Four Yorkshiremen" [ from the album Live At Drury Lane, 1974 ]

The Players: Michael Palin - First Yorkshireman; Graham Chapman - Second Yorkshireman; Terry Jones - Third Yorkshireman; Eric Idle - Fourth Yorkshireman;

The Scene: Four well-dressed men are sitting together at a vacation resort. 'Farewell to Thee' is played in the background on Hawaiian guitar.

------------------------------------------------------------------

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: Aye, very passable, that, very passable bit of risotto.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN: Nothing like a good glass of Château de Chasselas, eh, Josiah?

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: You're right there, Obadiah.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN: Who'd have thought thirty year ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Château de Chasselas, eh?

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: In them days we was glad to have the price of a cup o' tea.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN: A cup o' cold tea.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN: Without milk or sugar.

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: Or tea.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: In a cracked cup, an' all.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN: Oh, we never had a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN: The best we could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: Because we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, "Money doesn't buy you happiness, son".

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN: Aye, 'e was right.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: Aye, 'e was.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN: I was happier then and I had nothin'. We used to live in this tiny old house with great big holes in the roof.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN: House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, 'alf the floor was missing, and we were all 'uddled together in one corner for fear of falling.

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: Eh, you were lucky to have a room! We used to have to live in t' corridor!

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: Oh, we used to dream of livin' in a corridor! Would ha' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woke up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House? Huh.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN: Well, when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN: We were evicted from our 'ole in the ground; we 'ad to go and live in a lake.

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: You were lucky to have a lake! There were a hundred and fifty of us living in t' shoebox in t' middle o' road.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: Cardboard box?

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: Aye.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t' mill, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep wi' his belt.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN: Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of 'ot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to 'ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick road clean wit' tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit' bread knife.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you.

ALL: They won't!

[Elmo]

A beater is a car that won't start unless you know "the trick".

[Don Bruder]

Hmmm... by that definition, I guess my ol' Mazda CAN'T be a beater after all... The "trick" for starting it is mash the clutch and/or put it in neutral (to keep it from leaving unexpectedly) then turn the key. No need to pump the gas (not even once), no need to fiddle with anything - the "magic" just happens. :) If the battery isn't dead, it generally takes less than a second of crank before it fires up, even after sitting overnight (or multiple overnights).

If the battery is dead enough that it won't crank, but isn't

*COMPLETELY* flat, getting it rolling backwards at about 2-3 MPH then popping the clutch with it in reverse will usually get it to fire up on the first or second try, with the rarely required third attempt never yet failing to result in a running engine.

And here I thought I'd finally achieved the pinnacle of success by owning a "beater"... Just goes to prove that you can't win the rat-race

- They just keep coming up with faster rats! :)

[Dave Hinz]

I thought the definition of a beater, is that it's a car you can't let someone else borrow unless you run down the list of "oh, by the way..."? Or, that you just plain can't let anyone else drive?

[kryppy]

Ain't that the truth!! My beater van has a trick as well as requiring water every thirty miles.

[kryppy]

I just tell them "good luck".

[jd]

for me a beater is a car 9truck. mocycle, vehicle) that is in a condition where yo ujust don't care what happens to it. You know the one.

uses for beaters: Its snowing, and they've closed all the local highways, so you decide its time to go "snowplowing" - sliding into the snowdrifts and snowbanks on the highway to see if you can make it through the other side......

checking to see if those guard rails really do make any difference if you drift into them.

bumper tag

random "I wonder what would happen if" tests I think the best was when some guy at a local dock bet me $500 i wouldn't drive my "dune buggy" (old VW floow and mechanicals I talked out of a local junk yard I hung out at) off the end of the pier. Got a nice by stander to hold the cash, cost me $75 to get a local fisherman to winch it back up. SPent a couple hours blowing out hte motor, and drove it away later that day....

In my younger days, I've done all of the above.......

Name changes to protect the well.... OK, so not innocent, but certainly wiser (or at least older and easier to break) now....