Never the Same IC#17 Part 2 Winter of Discontent

The winter dragged on with work and stock car building, but what of Kirk’s future?

 

Cue: Funk #49 https://youtu.be/U_qHU_6Ofc0

Same winter, same situations, and the same problems for downhearted young man Kirk. The season and the conditions it brought wore on Kirk at work and at home. He had a lengthy commute to work and from day one driving the wallowing, underpowered Chevrolet, winter White Rat proved to be no relief from his depression. Probably anyone else with a like depression and weaker self-control would have ended up a drug addict, an alcoholic, or worse, but Kirk had gotten over Dee, almost, so he wasn’t suicidal any longer.

Needing some outlet, Kirk occasionally rode along with one of his old friends to the night club, “Uncle Sam’s.”  Keep in mind that Kirk’s buddies still called Kirk “Uncle Kirk” in a friendly way. He didn’t really mind and kind of liked having a nickname even though it was a bit weird. Anyway, heading to the nightclub, they’d usually ride in the buddy’s muscle car because they wouldn’t be seen driving the White Rat to a place like Uncle Sam’s. Despite that, Kirk couldn’t believe that his buddy continued to drive his nice car all winter. Of course, later on, the buddy would pay for the scourges of winter placed on the car in way of rust and corrosion.

Anyway, Kirk should have found a couple beers might provide some sort of temporary relief from the doldrums, but the dangers of over indulging had been hammered into his psyche at an early age throughout his teens. The one time, during college after an imaginary tiff with Bonnie, he drank too much with beer and hard stuff together. He paid dearly with massive upchucks and a severe headache that left him in bed for a day. Sometimes he learned from his mistakes. He found that if he drank anymore beyond just feeling a little good would affect him dearly. Anyway, if asked, he only went to Uncle Sam’s for the music. Their mainstream choice of music at the time was what Kirk liked, especially by the band that he’d go see at a concert with Sarah later on. Uncle Sam’s had a nice, big lit psychedelic dance floor and two live drummers to play along with recorded music that blasted out of multiple concert-sized SOUS (speakers of unusual size.) 

If Kirk got brave enough, usually at the second beer point, he’d ask a girl to dance, but because of his eternal downcast funk and the blatant fact that he was quiet, timid, and no conversationalist, he would never keep an unacquainted girl interested. The buddy didn’t have that problem with his good looks and bubbly personality, he’d dance one dance with a girl and she’d be willing to have his baby. Trouble with that was the fact that the buddy had a long-term steady girlfriend throughout high school and beyond. Kirk didn’t have that “problem” because Kirk required a long run up time to get romantically involved with a member of the tremendously frightening female human species. Well, to say the least that type of night club outing was a rare event in Kirk’s usually boring life.

So, getting on with Kirk’s day to days, during one of his usual commutes with the White Rat, Kirk had a close call. Besides going twice the posted speed limits with his Firebird on dry summer roads, Kirk eventually began to disregard road signs such as stop, yield, curve signs. He’d scan out ahead and just blast through without a stop at an intersection. Yeah, you’d probably say it was a suicidal practice and that Kirk would certainly pay for his failure to stop sometime, somehow or another.

One morning heading to work, the roads tended to be a bit icy because it had thawed the day before and froze overnight. Remember Kirk lived and drove in the days where the county road commission didn’t pile the sand and salt on the snow-covered roads. Kirk always tested road conditions with a little slide right off the bat when pulling out of his parent’s driveway. No stopping, just crank the wheel and stomp on the accelerator. The old underpowered White Rat would at least slide sideways on slick, icy roads such as this particular day.

Heading down the road, he had a straight shot for about six miles to the first tee intersection. Sizable snow berms lined the edges of the road. He cruised along too fast for conditions, but he didn’t have a care. After those few minutes, he came up closer to the intersection. Yeah, no stopping for him, he’d make another perfect slide around the corner. Well, Kirk was probably imprudent, but he wasn’t foolhardy�"well, not too foolhardy.

He slowed a bit and pulled over to the center of the road to line up for another impressive turn. Just as he cranked the steering wheel, he caught sight of the tops of two cars heading from the direction he wanted to go. Whoa! He didn’t want to be sideways in front of those cars. With a quick overview of the situation, he hit the brakes which seemed to have no noticeable effect on his speedy forward velocity. Kirk decided, no, he didn’t have time to even think, he just cranked the wheel hard toward the snow berm. With a terrified chill, the Rat didn’t respond to the turned wheels�"at first. Then, without realizing it, the front wheels hit a thawed spot where the road department had put sand and salt on the road just for the intersection. Abruptly, the wheels caught and White Rat spun around hard and fast. Kirk just hung on. Moving too fast to know what was happening, the back end of the car headed for the bank Kirk had turned toward, BOOSH! The back end hit the bank with an explosion of hard-packed snow. The Rat just halted giving Kirk a case of whiplash that he wouldn’t feel until later. BANG! Something heavy and solid hit or fell on the car.

Kirk, despite his bewilderment, just calmly watched the two cars keep on motoring down the road either disregarding Kirk or never seeing what had happened. Kirk, shaken not stirred, tried to open the door, but it wouldn’t open. He rolled down his window and peering out, saw the snow piled up against the door. He climbed out the window and stood on the bank surveying his sorry situation. The back end of the Rat sat on top of the snowbank, and the broken stop sign laid crookedly across the trunk lid. He knew not to bother trying to drive out because there was no traction to be had with a couple feet of snow underneath the car. He grabbed his keys, lifted the sign off the trunk and heaved it away. He recalled the night he and Mack backed the Blue Bomb into a stop sign just to see if it would shear off as advertised. It did and this one did as well. The pair stuck the sign inside and drove away to deliver the sign where it almost decapitated Mack. Kirk chose not to commandeer the sign from the snow bank. 

Getting into the Rat’s trunk, Kirk pulled out the grain scoop shovel he had borrowed from his father’s barn after the snow incident with his sister. Kirk took a few scoops of the heavy compacted snow from the driver’s side so he could at least get in and out of the car, for what reason, Kirk didn’t know because there’d be no reason to do so.

It was a relatively warm winter day probably in the high twenties with no wind or precipitation, and so Kirk was down to his flannel shirt relatively quickly. After nearly an hour of digging Kirk faced the unambiguous reality that he had realized right after the spin out. There’d be no way of his getting the snow out from under the center of the car. He stopped and leaned on the shovel. Contemplating the direction he should walk seeing he knew not to head home because he was miles away to grab a tractor from the family farm. He wasn’t too far from Babe’s house though Kirk felt sure she and her husband were living somewhere else with a kid or two already. He wondered why there wasn’t any traffic�"any other time�"like when he had approached the corner. He decided to head down the other way and bang on someone’s door to use their phone. Who to call? Kirk didn’t know who’d be around at that early hour.

Kirk threw in the towel so to speak by throwing the shovel in the back seat of the Rat. He skidded down the snow bank to the road bed and headed out to the intersection. Looking both ways like a good pedestrian, he thought he had heard something coming from the same direction as the two cars came from.  Deep rumbling rattled low in his ear drums.  He skidded to a stop and turned his head to maybe get better reception on what he heard, but it was unnecessary because down the road out around a curve past Babe’s house, he spotted flashing lights. Well, how about that? He thought.  

After a few more moments he confirmed what he had thought it was, a snowplow trying to clean off the road some more with the morning rush gone and a bit of thawing. He had to give those road department guys credit. They helped him when he was busting huge drifts with the Pink Bug and gave his buddy and him a ride in the back of the snowplow to Farrah’s house (during the first go-round with her) when they couldn’t go any farther during a storm. As the plow approached, Kirk just held an arm up to catch the driver’s attention who gave him a HONK! on the horn. Kirk pointed to the precariously perched Rat on the snowbank. The driver lifted the blade and turned down Kirk’s way.

“Have a little accident?” the driver asked out the window.

“No thanks, I just had one!” Kirk said with a grin.  “You think you could yank me out of there?”

“You betcha! Piece of cake,” the driver said. “Got a chain in the storage box ride here behind the cab. Grab it out.”

Kirk drew out the heavy chain that was big enough to yank down a building. He dragged it across the street and then laying on his back in the soggy snowbank he put the massive hook through a hole in the frame. The plow truck driver had in the meantime pulled over on the far side of the road to let traffic through. Of course, there’s traffic now, Kirk grumbled. After that the driver maneuvered the back end of the big truck toward the Rat’s direction. He got out and walked back. He took the chain and looped it around the rear frame crossmember that was caked with a combination of ice, snow, slush, sand and salt. The driver just banged it off with the hook end of the chain and looped it around. Kirk noticed the driver’s gloves and sleeves were caked with that slushy mess but didn’t care.

“Okay, let’s go!” the driver said heading to the truck. Kirk gave him a wave as he got in the Rat. He started the car even though he knew it was unnecessary. Apparently, the plow driver pulled people out all the time because he seemed well practiced. He moved out relatively quickly and then slowed to a creep as the chain tightened with a clunk. Without changing speed, the plow just kept creeping forward without a growl or tire spin or anything like it wasn’t hooked to anything. Kirk thought that of course it was nothing for the big truck. With a scraping and swishing from underneath the Rat just followed along up over the bank, tipping down and then flattening out on the road. The driver stopped and backed up. Kirk unhooked the chain from the car and dragged it to the truck and unhooked the other end from the truck. Kirk stowed the chain.

“Well, thank you�"much!” Kirk said. “You came just as I started to walk. Pulling me out, your truck didn’t even know I was back there.”

“Yeah, she’s a beast. I pulled a lot bigger vehicles out of worse messes than yours there. Have a good one!”

“You too! Thanks again.”

Kirk got in to the White Rat as the snow plow pulled away. He decided that he was already late for work, so why not stop off at a fast-food place and ponder his superb driving skills and wonderful fate?

Kirk drove a bit more conservatively after that incident and paid more heed to traffic signs. Maybe Kirk did learn from his mistakes, but as a side effect his life got a little bit more boring without taking the street-wise risks. We return to Kirk’s after hours on-going stock car building.

We saw that the roll cage had been welded together, the motor and transmission mounts installed, and the cockpit set up. Basically, at this point, the car sat on jack stands with the roll cage on it. The body still hung from the hoist. Mike’s stock car looked pretty much bare because there was still so much more to do as it sat in the garage, while Kirk’s sorry a*s hand-me-down stock car sat out in the snowbank.

The announcement that the two guys got a sponsorship deal from the big salesman Chuck Westchild sounded like such a surprisingly great break �"an unbelievable opportunity for untried racer Kirk, he had to wonder how far the sponsorship covered them. He had always heard that the great stock car racers of his time had sponsorships that covered literally everything but the driver’s fire suit but then again was that always the case? Mike hadn’t told Kirk anything specific about Westchild’s sponsorship and honestly, Kirk hadn’t thought to ask. Kirk emotions on the prospect of racing remained mixed. He persisted in being unsure of his capabilities on a track. He had dreamed of racing, but after watching races which included a fair number of chilling crashes, Kirk really had to profoundly wonder. At those times his stomach would sour. 

Anyway, Mike’s car sat there and progressed as the winter progressed. The pair worked on the car on most nights and they had begun to build the suspensions beginning with the rear. Again, with a mock up rear axle placed correctly in relation to the frame, Mike began building mounts on the frame and the axle for coil springs. Part of this installation included large metal cups that went over the top of the springs to which huge bolts were welded. The purpose of the bolts allowed for adjustable suspension to change the weight distribution from side to side. Way back when in the early stock car racing days, they called the shifting of weight “wedging” because back then they actually accomplished the shift in weight with metal wedges doing the same as the much easier to use big bolts. They still use the term “wedge” when shifting weight to affect a car’s handling even though wedges are no longer used.

After the spring mounts and adjusters were done, they moved on to stabilizer bars and sway bars. Stabilizer bars keep the rear axle vertical while allowing it to continue to move up and down. At the same time, sway bars keep the axle solidly tracking with the frame while also allowing up and down movement. More modern technology uses anti-sway bars. These bars used on modern sport cars doesn’t allow one wheel’s suspension compression without forcing the other wheel’s compression at the same time.

Anyway, during all of this, Mike didn’t really thoroughly 0xplain any of what he was doing, so Kirk either figured it out on his own while watching. It boiled down to leaning by osmosis which we talked about earlier on. Later on, Kirk would find out that it is important to get the relationship between the springs and multiple bars right or you might end up with severe binding which would stop the suspension from moving. Not a good thing! Kirk especially thought the adjustable, swivel ends for the bars were cool, the shiny pieces of hardware called Heim Ends. More of a descriptive name for these parts was spherical rod ends.

Of course, heavy duty shock absorbers had to be correctly installed between the axle and frame which couldn’t bind with movement either. An interesting feature of racing shocks is a sliding rubber bushing on the exposed shock shaft You might think this is a minor feature hardly worth mentioning, but they are critical in analyzing the car’s suspension. So, before a race, or testing on the track for that matter, you slide the bushing all the way down against the shock itself. Then, after being on the track at speed, the driver can see how far each corner of the car traveled indicating exactly how much the car leaned in the corners. This is where the big adjusting bolts come into play. If necessary, the driver can crank more or less pressure on the springs on each corner to fine-tune the suspension and affect handling. Neat!    

On a personal front, Kirk couldn’t say how he felt about the upcoming racing season. He still didn’t know what he wanted to be or to do with his life. He always had trouble with establishing priorities�"to know what he really wanted. Though for some reason, as those of you reading for a long time had found out, he had decided early in school that he wanted to be in sports and he had stuck with it for four years. He didn’t seem to find neither that drive nor direction anymore. Working all this time on a job he really didn’t care about, he started to accumulate money with nice paychecks and cash bulging his wallet, but without knowing his own goals and anything about the so-called racing sponsorship Mike promised, he didn’t know how much of his own cash he’d have to put forward. Besides, that collided with his enduring doubts about his potential racing abilities and his personal level of courage. Is that why Kirk never succeeded in those high school sports not enough courage to press beyond his comfort zone?

As the winter almost broke into spring, Kirk grew a wild hair and became interested in motorcycles. None of his friends nor his associates were big bikers, but Kirk thought the new models that came out during the winter looked pretty cool. With cash in hand, which we all know is a dangerous move, Kirk went to the Yamaha dealership. There on the showroom floor sat a red and white beauty of a bike, a RD-350, a two-stroke street bike. The salesman lit into how fast the bike was for a 350 causing Kirk’s eyes to light up with visions of high-speed biking with wind through his hair and bugs in his teeth. The salesman gave the bike a little kick on the kick starter and the bike sprang to life. With a ring-ding exhaust note, and the smell of two-stroke motor oil fumes that wafted through the showroom, Kirk was hooked! He paid the shop for his heart-throb motorcycle though he couldn’t take it home quite yet because the shop had to prep it and besides the roads still had wet spots from melting snow and the dredges of winter like salt and sand. Meanwhile, he placed into motion his rider’s permit that amounted to a twenty-question test which he studied intently for and aced! Such were the outcomes of things Kirk really set his mind to, but did he really lose that ability since school? It seemed all too nebulous to examine, though he could blame losing Dee for his continuing lackadaisical attitude, but really Kirk�"really?

This winter, Kirk’s father began working at the local gypsum plant. Kirk had no idea what his father did there at the plant, and didn’t care. He had always promised to do something different than his father when he was a full-time farmer because of the undercurrent of animosity he had towards his parents. Then again, Kirk didn’t know if the family needed the money because they never talked about money. I mention this only because the fact becomes important for Kirk later on in his story. 

Well, winter was waning and spring approached just around the corner. Mike’s all newly built stock car looked like a coupe-bodied stock car that just needed body work, a paint job, besides an engine and transmission, wheels and brakes. Mike still hadn’t said anything about those very important components (ha). Kirk’s hand-me-down car still sat outside amid the melting snow, but his mind remained focused on his motorcycle purchase which he’d ride home as soon as the weather and road conditions allowed.

Overall, though Kirk remained the same�"all mixed up, directionless and troubled.