Never the Same #41 Kirk’s Transferal Decision

Kirk quit his job then purposely blew up the engine in his stock car. Now what is he going to do, retire at 21?

Cue: “Yes, I’m Changing” https://youtu.be/D_cMCvudZBs?si=COeE6-iR9dI_OmdY

 

Kirk didn’t want to tell anyone that he had quit his job on Friday and then destroyed the engine in his stock car on Sunday. Considering his menial mechanic’s job, he just got tired of getting tasks at work with no end to the BS work in sight with no raise in sight. Well, they did say maybe in a year after he asked, but he wasn’t confident of the fact. Kirk wasn’t one to wait for anything. He wasn’t sure if he deserved a raise anyway, and he wasn’t sure if he had the know-how, the aptitude, or the eye/hand coordination to ever be a top-rated mechanic. Then, after his brother-in-law’s run in with the race track official over the leaky engine, Kirk had been on edge wondering when the track officials would come down on him for the same problem. There was no conflict with the officials for Kirk for he was never up for confrontations just a big, brazen black flag directed at him that he had expected all along but had tried to forget about and he forcibly willed the possibility away.  Well, that didn’t work, obviously so he accepted the black flag without complaint.

Monday morning came fast enough, too fast for Kirk’s nonconfrontational taste. With no reason to get up, he lingered in bed, staring at the ceiling, and wondered what he would do now. Suddenly, he nearly bounced right up to the ceiling when a BAM! BAM! BAM! sounded on the floor. Kirk’s mother using a broom handle to hammer on the ceiling, his floor just like she did when he went to school. School seemed so long ago and the sweet, sweet time when he was in love with Dee. Where was she now? What does she look like after couple years apart? How many boys had she been with? He had no idea to all his queries and was afraid to ask his younger sister if she knew anything about Dee. He really didn’t want to hear the answers because his heart would just ache some more. He knew that he had to get out of bed despite the fact that he didn’t have a specific place he had be at specific time because his mother would persist on banging the floor. He swung out of bed and hammered his heel on the floor letting her know he had risen for the pathetic day.

Not hurrying by any means, Kirk moseyed downstairs. He felt relieved that his father was outside because he knew the truth would have to be given soon enough to his mother.

“Morning honey,” his mother said in her low-key contented way.

“Mornin’.”

“You’re going to be late for work. Did you see what time it is?”

He turned to look over his shoulder at the black cat clock over the refrigerator.

“It is later than usual, but I’m not going to work.”

“Are you not feeling all right?” she asked looking concerned.

“Yeah, I’m okay, I guess.” He let it hang there.

“Something I should know?” She did have that sixth sense of knowing things about him, though he never respected her. He busied himself getting a bowl out, dumping in some cereal and milk. He took a bite.

“I s’pose I’d have to tell you guys eventually-I quit my job,” He revealed right out.

“At the dealership?” Of course, where else Kirk snidely thought. “Did something, ah, happen?”

“No, nothing changed. I asked for a raise, but they wouldn’t give me one.”

“Oh, poor you. Did they give you a reason?”

“Well. Hmmmm,” Kirk stalled for a superior answer to emerge, but then decided on the truth. “I don’t have enough experience,” he shrugged, “I guess.”

“Now what are you going to do?”

“Ahhh, no plans. Right now.”

“Your father probably won’t like your news.”

“I KNOW he won’t like the news.” Kirk said with an irritated edge.

Kirk went about finishing his cereal. He really didn’t know what he was going to do. Look for another job. That didn’t turn him on by any means. Call Sarah Elizabeth and hang out with her some more? Well, he didn’t feel up to it in his present mental state. He couldn’t work on his stock car. Just couldn’t face it. What would he do with it now that it had a blown engine? Maybe he could just unload his car at Mike’s and give it back. After all it was basically Mike’s car with Kirk driving and doing maintenance for the season with no mention between them about the ownership of the car or its fate after the season. Did that make it his or should he return it? What did he feel about his future in racing? Did he have any future in racing? He did like the feel and the rush of driving…

*
            Kirk’s father worked outside on some barn repairs hammering away on a replacement board. Kirk strolled out there and his father looked his way.

 “Not going to work today?”

“No, and not going back.”

His father dropped the hammer on the ground with a thud. “Why is that? Did they fire you for some reason?”

“No, I quit because they wouldn’t give me a raise.”

‘Huh, did you want one that bad? I thought you liked the mechanic work.”

“I suppose it was all right, but it seemed I wasn’t going anywhere with it, so I quit.”

His father stood there eyeing up his repair. “So what’ya going to do now? How are you going pay your rent?” Kirk knew that would be the number one most important thing to his father.

“I have some money saved up.”

“Well, you need to get a job.” He paused for a moment apparently pondering. “Nate needs a hand. His hired man moved on to another farm. You could help him out with the cows, and I know he has hay to get in right now.”

Kirk considered the option immediately realizing that working for Nate is a job for a teenager not a college educated, experienced twenty some old, but it would be better than working for and fulfilling his father’s whims without a dime to show for it.

“I might go down and see what I can do for him.”

Nate lived close by and had been one of Kirk’s father’s seed corn customers for many years. Kirk knew from experience with a couple ride-alongs with his father as “his boy” that his father liked to talk and talk and talk to the farmers. Kirk didn’t know how he ever got around to very many farmers with so much time spent talking. Nonetheless, Nate ran his family farm with a small dairy herd of twenty something cows. (This contrasts the current industrial farms that have on an average of over a thousand cows. Some “big” farms today have tens of thousands of dairy cows.)  

Kirk didn’t really mind working on farms, though the smell of cow manure could overwhelm him at times. It was brainless labor most of the time. His biggest concern remained his ongoing fear of being stuck working on a farm for the rest of his life. Kirk’s mother always told him that he would inherit the farm though his father never corroborated that fact, nevertheless he didn’t know what he would do with the farm if he did end up inheriting it.

 IT’S A TRAP! So, it would seem trapping Kirk into a lifetime of farmwork whether he wanted to or not remained a possible plan for his parents. Having the son take over the running of the family farm was a cycle repeated on family farms over a century or more. On the other hand, his father never had that inherit word coming out of his mouth. Perhaps he had other plans for the farm. Give it to his sisters? Sell it to the highest bidder? The latter seemed Kirk’s father’s modus operandi and his eternal fixation on money, but for that we’ll have to wait and see what transpires on that front.

Anyway, going over to work on Nate’s farm, Nate had no idea what Kirk’s name was. Kirk had to tell him his name blaming that situation on the fact that his father never told anyone his name just calling Kirk “his boy.” Talk about an insignificant figure in his father’s life! Working for Nate was relatively easy work at times back breaking but brainless work. Older than Kirk’s father, Nate was easy going and laid back compared to his father so Kirk didn’t mind the working conditions at all. Nate handled all the actual cow milking chores, while Kirk saw to feeding the cows their grain and hay. He did some manure shoveling and hauling, but Kirk didn’t really mind the harder work, he just didn’t enjoy the stink. Most farmers say that you get used to the smell, but Kirk couldn’t vouch for that. They did bale some hay which seemed to be Kirk’s forte growing up making hay with his father. It amounted to lot of heavy lifting brainless labor.

As traditional family farms go, Missus Nate would bring out some cold Queen-O to drink if they were laboring out in the fields or have cookies inside if they took a break from the barn chores. Kirk was all about cookies and sweets. Missus and Mister Nate lived in an old family farm house. Kirk never saw much of the inside except for the kitchen which he categorized as an old-time farm kitchen. There was a combination oven/stove that had a firebox for a wood fire, yet had gas burners. The kitchen table had a worn “Oil Cloth” table cloth with some of the design worn off, and the floor was covered with good old linoleum in a classic vintage flowery design.

During one of their breaks Nate asked being honestly interested about Kirk’s racing cars because apparently Kirk’s father had told Nate about “his boy’s” stock car racing. Kirk was more than happy to relate the whole experience of racing on the two tracks and of course his very short stint leading the one, solitary but memorable (at least to Kirk) race. Anyhow, the employment with Nate paid pretty good for the farm work Kirk helped with and Kirk appreciated having a little money coming his way especially being paid in cash at the end of each day of work.  

But after a few days, especially with him relating his racing experiences, the racing bug began seeping back into Kirk’s forebrain. After blowing his engine on purpose, he thought, at that very impulsive moment that he could just give up racing, but now the track and all the racing sensory input called to him.

So as the week progressed, Kirk thought more and more about racing especially that one exhilarating instance leading the race for two laps. Yeah, that was Kirk’s big moment, I suppose. Well, the stock car had been sitting in his back yard ever since bringing it home after blowing up the engine. He decided to haul it over to his brother-in-law Mike’s garage. Kirk felt a bit sheepish about taking it over there and debated with himself off and on if he should take it with a necessary explanation for how the engine block got the big hole in the side. Kirk wondered over the situation because in all rights the car still did belong to Mike who let Kirk race it and maintain it. After almost a season of racing make it Kirk’s? Possession is nine-tenths of the law so they say. They also say honesty is the best policy, but is it really? In absolutely all cases?

After a few more moments of indecision, he started the van and hauled it over there to the garage. As usual, Mike worked hard on the body of a car he readied for sale. At first, Kirk just hung out looking at his car and then Mike’s race car without a clue to what he was going to do. Finally, he hopped in the van, maneuvered the rig around to unload the car in the lawn. He unlatched the binders and realized that he always started the car and backed it off the trailer under power because the front of the trailer tilted down so it had all of the car’s weight to the forward of the trailer.  Hmmmm, the car wasn’t going to move with its overwhelming lack of power considering the engine had that obvious gaping hole in it. He tried pushing on it to get it to roll. It budged but not far. He braced his back against the stock car’s front bumper and stuck his legs down to plant his feet firmly on the trailer’s crossbar. He got the car to move and he could hold it off the front trailer stops maybe a foot, but he couldn’t move it any farther.

“What’ja doin,’” Mike loudly said which scared Kirk out of his wits because he wasn’t paying attention and besides, he didn’t want Mike involved or see the damage which was on the other side of the engine from Mike. At least not before he had his story straight.

Kirk let the car roll back forward giving his back a rest from the painful crush against the bumper. He stumbled trying to piece words together. “Ah, oh, pushing the car off the trailer.” 

“How come? Won’t run? Out of gas?” Mike guessed.

“Well…” Kirk stalled. He stepped down and pointed at the other side of the engine.

Mike stepped over the trailer hitch and bent over to gaze at the engine. “How’d that ever happen? During a race? Geez, I thought these engines were indestructible.”

Kirk thought, well I proved that wrong didn’t I, but he didn’t come out and say it.

“No,” he paused, “No, I don’t mean it didn’t blow during the race. Ah, ah…”

He stood there a few moments lost for words then he blurted it out, “I blew it sitting on the trailer.”

“Really?” Mike seemed amused examining the damage closer. “How’d you manage that? There’s a rod stuck in the hole!”

“Yeah.” Kirk said succinctly.  “I set the little tool box on the gas pedal, let it go wide open--overrevved.”

“That’ll do it for sure. So. How long did it take?”

Kirk shrugged. “Thirty seconds,” he shrugged again. “Maybe. I got black flagged and got mad at it all. Just couldn’t deal with it anymore.”

“Hmmm, I can understand that being through that same thing with the officials. Now what you going do with a blown engine?”

Kirk didn’t let on that his black flagging wasn’t the same as Mike’s seeing he didn’t confront the officials like Mike had done.

“I dunno,” Kirk said, with a shrug. “After quitting at the dealership and all… well…” He said aloud knowing full well that he didn’t know what he was going to do, but he had an inkling, a morsel of an idea of what he might do. Kirk lived daily with his chronic indecision as you know.

“I heard from Marty,” said Mike, “after you had left, that you asked for a raise and they decided against it.”

“That’s about it.”

“Well, sometimes you have to ask, but maybe it was too early for you, you know? You’re young, needing some more experience.”
            “Yeah, I know. That’s what I was told.” Kirk got behind a tire poised to push. “Give me a hand?”

Mike didn’t answer, he just got behind the other tire and together they pushed until the back tires rolled onto the ramps. Gravity did the rest with the car rapidly picking up speed, unloading itself and rolling another fifteen feet on the lawn before coming to a soundless stop. Kirk thought the slivery car looked sad and small sitting there: inert, lifeless, and flaccid.

Well, the weekend had arrived after a week of farming at Nate’s and Kirk felt a ceaseless urgent urge to race. He wanted to race. He yearned to race. He craved to race. With his final paycheck in hand, he cashed it, and headed to Crazy Ed’s and his junk yard empire with Kirk behind the wheel of his trusty pink van. Pulling through the chain-link gate, Kirk drove into the oil-soaked gravel entry. Ed, as always, busied himself tearing a transmission from a car. The engine sat there next to the wrecked Oldsmobile.

“Hey, racer boy!”

“Hey there Ed, keeping busy, eh?” Surprisingly impressed and uncharacteristically proud to be identified as a ‘Racer,’ Kirk soaked up the warm feeling.

 “Yep! What brings you back during the racing season? Usually you racing guys show after the season ends to ready for next year.” Ed paused. “Unless something happened.”

“Yeah, you might say that!” Kirk gave his signature grim grin. “Well, I am looking for a replacement engine and transmission for my car.”

“Your stock car? You ran the Dodge, if I remember correctly. Need both an engine and tranny, you say?”

“You remember correctly, but I’m switching to a Chevy. Had a load of problems with the Dodge. Ah, I’m not really all that loaded with cash right now. Got any deals on Chevy set ups?”

“Chevy’s? Can’t give ‘em away. I got so many.” He chuckled. “No, I’m not giving them away. Got your Dodge engine and tranny with ‘ya?”

“No, damn it. I didn’t pull them yet. Ah, the engine block has a hole in the side of it.”

Ed paused. “Huh! I never heard of that happening with them before.”

“Well…” Kirk paused. “I blew it on purpose.”

“Really? Well, it won’t be worth as much to me with a hole in it, but if you promise to bring them by I’ll give you a good deal on a Chevy set up. I got a couple cleaned up inside here.”

He gave Kirk a dollar figure and gestured into the open door of the shop.

“Sounds good!” Kirk said all re-enthused, feeling like he set out on a fresh path, a brand-new course though his circumstances can’t change all that much with his dire financial situation. In other words, more specifically, he used his last paycheck for the engine, so he wouldn’t be able to afford many if any add-on performance parts.

So there he was with a different engine, not that much different in size and performance of his blown up engine, but Kirk thought the change would move him farther from the non-beneficial sponsoring of Chuck Westchild and his former job at the Dodge dealer. Sometimes it’s the little things that foster a significant shift in a susceptible person’s mindset.  A transferal. He set to work over the weekend with the fact square on his mind that he was missing out on the racing action. With Mike’s assistance, they rolled the car into the garage, situating it under the chain hoist.

Easy enough to dissemble his stock car, Kirk quickly removed the offending hood and drained the radiator. While the radiator had been draining, Kirk unhooked the minimal wiring with of course disconnecting the battery. You know safety first! No electrical shorts or fires are allowed on his mission. With those things out of the way, he unbolted the transmission mounts and while underneath he removed the shifter. Kirk realized he’d have to get another shifter, one expenditure that he hadn’t foreseen though logically should have.  He dropped the driveshaft silently hoping that it was too long so he’d only have to shorten it and not find (or gasp! buy) another one. With his luck on those sorts of things, Kirk didn’t hold his breath.

For a scant moment, Kirk thought about quitting work on the stock car and go watch the races. No, he couldn’t handle seeing those guys he usually spared with and all those others who outrun him during every race. Yeah, he couldn’t bear up to it, so he quit his day dreaming and went back to work.

Working into the evening, Kirk got to the point where he could bolt a short piece of chain onto the top of the engine so he could hook it to the chain hoist.  He reeled the hoist up by pulling the loop of chain down until he achieved some tension on the engine. He went ahead with socket and ratchet to undo the motor mount bolts. The engine dropped and shifted a little with the last bolt, but not that much. Lifting the engine with transmission attached about two inches he realized that he didn’t unhook the accelerator linkage or the gas line. Yikes!

The linkage removal was easy enough with only a small bolt to release it. Fussing with the gas line clamp, Kirk finally slipped it off the pulled on the hose. And pulled on it until it gave way with his jerk. Ouch! He smashed his knuckle on the fuel pump breaking his flesh. The blood started to drip. Adding a little drizzle of gasoline on the open wound, Kirk said a few choice words. But the gas began pouring out the open line!  He crammed one of the motor mount bolts in the end of the rubber gas line to stem the flow.  

Kirk realized that he must have been getting brain fuzzy or thought the engine removal would be so easy he didn’t really have to pay attention. Wrong, because he then spotted the slender clear nylon hose that ran to the oil pressure gauge which led him to think of the copper wire that was for the temperature gauge as well. Talk about getting ahead of yourself, Kirk! Pay attention! Is this the kind of mechanic you are after all? After all those various things he should have disconnected earlier, Kirk slowly hoisted the engine up now being observant of anything he might have forgotten, but by now he thought he was safe to pull the engine all the way up and out. Lifting the engine up and forward, the transmission dumped some of its’ heavy grease out the tail shaft which usually happens and always smells like dead fish. Nice.

Now during the dark of night, he lifted the engine clear of the frame. Backwards, Kirk leaned hard on the front bumper to get the car rolling out of the garage digging his feet in for traction. He only needed a couple of feet of space to clear, so he could let the engine back down. The car moved easier than he anticipated or on the other hand he was more powerful than he thought!

As the car kept rolling father than he needed, the rear wheels dropped off the concrete lip and the car picked up speed going backward down the sloping driveway. It picked up speed going faster right towards his pink van! Before the front wheels dropped off the lip, Kirk ran around, grabbed the roof pillar and with a hop, skip and a jump he got his feet on the side nerf bar. Bump went the front wheels! The car went faster yet as he reached in and grabbed the steering wheel to give it a couple quick pulls to change the direction of the errant engineless car. It veered a little but it wasn’t going to miss the van. Ducking head down, he dove into the window to smash the brake down with his hand.  With a slight crunch of gravel, the car abruptly halted. He hung there a few moments, half in and half out of his car hand pushing hard on the pedal. Kirk pondered the situation. Remember there are no unnecessary things in a stock car such as a parking brake. So. If he let go of the brake the car would start moving again, albeit slowly but the car was just few feet from the corner of the van. Could he crank the wheel enough to miss the van? He doubted it. He wished someone was around to help, but Mike on that particular evening had gone somewhere. Hanging there, hand on the brake, he spied his helmet.

Hmmmm. Shuffling around so he could reach the helmet with one hand while still jamming down on the brake with the other he grabbed the helmet from the bucket seat. He let go of the brake, jumped off the bar, and caught the front wheel with one hand and the side his leg. Ouch! He jammed the helmet between the tire and the driveway. It slid a couple crunchy inches and stopped with the gravel piling up along the edge of the helmet.

Well, that was stupid, Kirk! Not a very good use of your helmet.

With his stock car sitting askew halfway down the darkened driveway, Kirk limped back into the bright oasis of the garage. He let the engine down on a wheeled engine dolly designed for that purpose. Pushing that broken engine out of the way, he scooped a bunch of Speedy Dri and sprinkled it over the fishy smelling greasy mess he had made. He sat down on one of Mike’s real racing tires to ponder the situation. It didn’t take him long to figure out that he needed to get his van out of the path of the car. He limped down there, started the van and maneuvered the trailer out of the way. He unhooked the trailer and parked the van out of the way. Sitting there, he knew he couldn’t move the car on his own, he couldn’t unload his new used engine, and so he gave up for the night. He was hurt in a couple different places, he was tired, and he had exhausted his enthusiasm for the night.

 Getting out of the van, he limped up to garage and switched off the lights. He limped back to his van when he heard a familiar engine growl coming down the road. He waited a few moments and sure enough, it was Mike with the tow truck. Mike pulled in the driveway and Kirk gestured to him with two upright palms for a push on his car. Mike pulled up to the rear bumper and with a slight bump made contact. Kirk stepped on the nerf bar, kicked the helmet out of the way and grabbed the steering wheel. Mike commenced to push the car with Kirk riding along steering frantically right back into the garage space, right in place.

After Mike parked the tow truck behind Kirk’s stock car, he strolled up to the wounded Kirk sitting on his car’s back bumper. Mike scanned the garage focusing on the engine lying there.

“Now what?” Mike asked succinctly.

“Well, I went over to Ed’s and picked up another engine.”

Mike seemed a bit taken aback. “Really? Another Dodge engine?”

“No, a Chevy. I got fed up with the oil leaks, so I thought I’d try something else.”

“Chuck probably won’t like that change.”

“Probably. But. I broke the connection with the dealership and thought, why not go this way.”

“I s’pose.” Mike said low.

Kirk could tell Mike wasn’t pleased, but Kirk was already more than halfway through the change and besides, he had never spoken to Chuck and never saw him in the pits, so he figured Chuck wouldn’t ever know or care.  He went home and went to bed. Felling dead-dog tired, he dreamed of having a fast stock car that could win a feature race.

Kirk’s dreamself knew better and he didn’t delude himself int thinking that the cheap engine from the wrecking yard would even be better than his old engine.

So in the end of this episode, Kirk remained just about the same as before though he has shown that he could make a decision to make changes and to not just continue on with the same old…