Never the Same #60 A Green Phoenix Rising

Kirk underwent a huge change in his personal perspective about stock car racing

 

            To say the least, the ride back home remained very quiet. Kirk’s broken, smashed stock car rode the trailer quietly with no protest despite being backwards on the trailer. That fact Kirk felt glad of so he didn’t have to stare at the crushed front end in his rear-view mirrors. For most of the trip from the track no one said a word.

            Sarah Elizabeth took a deep breath and mildly said, “so what happened?”

            Kirk stared straight ahead for moments before shrugging. “I dunno.”

            Kirk in fact knew what had happened, but he didn’t want to talk about his major screw up and the embarrassment it caused him by smashing into the retaining wall for all to see. At least there weren’t that many spectators there on practice day. After loading, he had to glimpse under the hood when no one was looking to see what had caused the throttle to stick wide open. Indeed, when he looked, the carburetor still sat there wide open with the car on the trailer. What he perceived made him sick with its simple cause of his disaster. Yes, his hastily fabricated throttle linkage that he cobbled together at the last minute when he was tired, distracted and excited had failed, but that wouldn’t have caused the carburetor to stick wide-open. Simply, he had put the return spring in the wrong place in the linkage. He had installed the spring on the linkage itself so when it failed the spring became inert, limp with no tension on the carburetor whatsoever. Kirk could have kicked himself because if he had installed the spring correctly on the carburetor, when the linkage failed the spring would have returned the carburetor to idle. Then, on practice day the failure of the linkage would have been a non-event. Sickening Kirk, he recalled his short-sightedness and the fact that he really knew better.

            Anyway, after dropping Sarah off at her home, Jon and Kirk still had little to say. At home, Kirk bid Jon goodnight and parked the rig off the side of the garage. He wasn’t looking at it. He didn’t want to think about it. He wasn’t saying anything to anyone about the incident that is until the next morning at breakfast. His father only gave him the evil eye and the “I told you so” looks which his father hadn’t.

            Kirk’s mother gave him a hug as he sat at the table, but Kirk didn’t respond.

            “Are you all right honey?’ She asked. “Did you get hurt at all.”

            Kirk, mad at the world as much as himself, said, “Well, I still have two arms and two legs and I’m not bleeding on the floor so I guess I’m fine. I don’t want to talk about it.”

            No one said anything else until Kirk headed out to work. His mother said, “have a good day at work, honey.”

            Kirk gestured silently as he went out the door. He went to his van retrieved his helmet that looked dusty from landing and laying in the weeds but remained otherwise undamaged. He donned it, straddled his motorcycle, and buzzed off to work. The air felt cool and refreshing on his face as Kirk tried to forget his screw up, but that wouldn’t happen any time soon. He punched in and pushed his bike to his rock handler digs, so to speak. Despite his miserable mental preoccupation with his stock car failure, it didn’t affect him in doing his job, not that it was all that complicated. With Kirk’s gloomy frame of mind, he sure wouldn’t see Sarah Elizabeth this week and allow her to lift his sagging spirits. And so it went the entire week.

            Friday approached and rain was forecasted by morning. As much as he didn’t want to look or touch his broken car, Kirk decided he had to take his van to work because the rain expected. He thought about unloading the car from the trailer, but he knew he couldn’t do it by himself, so he dragged his floor jack out and jacked up the trailer off the van’s hitch. Yeah, he’ll just leave the wreck on the trailer. Surprising him, the weather forecast called for rain all weekend. He had hated rain occurring on weekends last season because you’d never know if you’ll race or not until the last minute before hauling or not hauling to the track. Showing up at a potentially rainy day, it could rain a little so the track officials would send all the cars out on the track to dry it only to have more rain. A couple times it ended up that way: hauling the car to the track to run it a little, but not racing and so just ending up loading up and hauling home again. What a waste, eh?

            So Friday rained down and the gypsum rocks had plenty of mud on them along with the muddy water running down the conveyor and puddling up down at the hopper that Kirk had towade through between truckloads of rocks. He dealt with it like he did with everything. Friday at work came and went. Later that evening after dinner, Jon stopped by. He wondered why the car just sat there on the trailer and not being worked on. Kirk could only shrug. Jon suggested they unload the car and see how bad it really looked. Unhappily, Kirk agreed so he reattached the trailer to the van and backed it up to the garage. With much pushing and wrestling, they got the crippled car into the garage. Kirk couldn’t bear to look, but he did.

            The green (unlucky) stock car sat there looking dejected, broke and mangled. The body was crunched on the left front and the right side had a shallow dent with a big black tire mark on it seeing his expensive, new tire had been pushed right up into the body. To the say the least, the car would never be as pristine as when he took it to the track, on practice day. Obviously, that’s why they take pictures of the cars on practice day before competition. Kirk’s car picture had been taken literally two hours before the wreck that would leave Kirk never the same. Perhaps Kirk made himself known on the circuit as the only guy to wreck his car on practice day, how humiliating. With Jon, he perused the details of the wreckage.

            Right off, the right front tire and wheel were literally destroyed. He should have bought a spare when he purchased the four, but who could imagine this turn of events? Certainly not Kirk. The front bumper was mangled beyond repair so that would have to be completely rebuilt. The front suspension on the right side was also broken beyond repair. The radiator was bent over with a big gouge in it from hitting the cooling fan. Kirk pulled the crumpled hood off to see underneath a little better. The frame rails were bent in front of the engine. Jon said that it was lucky that the engine block remained intact with the frame being bent. With no rubber motor mounts, the engine mounted solidly to the frame, the impact could have cracked the engine block. That would’ve absolutely left Kirk dead in the water because he didn’t have the time nor the money to have another engine built and he wasn’t about to go out there on the track with a stone stock engine like last year. He had gotten tired of coming in last or close to last place and wasn’t about to go through that humiliation again.

               Kirk stood there examining the carnage while not really wanting to evaluate everything that either needed fixing or replacing. “Think we can save it?” He asked Jon.

            “It’s worth a try. Of course, you’ve got to buy, what, a tire, wheel and a radiator at the very least,” Jon said, looking around. He leaned over the suspension. “Broken spring here. That’ll be hard to replace, hmm.”

            Friday evening waned, but before calling it for the night, the two guys jacked the stock car up and put jack stands under it, just like a month ago when Kirk frantically got the car ready for the track. After another look at the damage, Jon went home and Kirk closed up the garage. The single most issue bothering him was the constant recall of the green car bad luck myth. Was the curse true? No one at the track said it, but Kirk wondered if some or all observing racers thought it. He had body work, though minor that needed fixing with some spot painting�"ooorrrrrr should he paint the entire car a different color? It would be easy to return to his “go to” color of Panther Pink to match his van. He didn’t think anyone in his class had a pink car, but one car in the Late Models was painted the odd Dodge color used on their muscle cars. Even though the pink was loosely associated with muscle cars, back in those days, there was that ever-present allusion of a guy with pink anything was something other than a macho guy. You know because Kirk had that implication which he fought because of his pink VW and van. In high school, Kirk wasn’t exactly a macho guy so he latched onto and dearly loved Dee for the rest of their lives. Well, that’s whole another story that’s been hammered here over and over.

            Saturday. After taking a leisurely breakfast and having a second cup of coffee, Kirk wandered out to the garage and threw open the ad hoc plywood doors he had built the previous autumn. He stood there taking in his crunched car. He pulled in a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. He knew where to start so he donned his goggles and leather gloves, opened the oxygen and acetylene valves and lit off the cutting torch with a POOF! He went to work putting the blue flame to the crumpled front bumper. He hit the burst of high-pressure lever to burn through the bumper mounts with the smell of burning paint and metal assaulting his nose and filling the garage with smoke. Sparks flew and molten slag dropped on the floor with a plop, plop, plop with resultant sparks spreading out across the concrete floor like Fourth of July fireworks. How he didn’t burn the barn down was the real miracle.

            After one side of the frame, he went to the other side and burnt through that one until the bumper fell to the floor with a resounding bang!  He shut the torch off with a pop! He dragged the still red-hot bumper out the door and dropped it off to the side. From there, he undid the radiator hoses and of course when taking the bottom one off there still was plenty of bright green antifreeze in the radiator that dumped on the floor. Talk about a bad recall remembering those rivulets of antifreeze running down the bank of the track after the crash. He shook the visualization off.  He unbolted the radiator and after casting an eye on its damage threw that out the door as well. One small wonder, he saw that the cooling fan was nearly undamaged with only a couple minor shiny gouges.

            By then, Jon arrived to take part in the fun work. It wasn’t raining out yet, but Kirk hoped the races were canceled seeing he couldn’t partake. He still wasn’t 100 percent sure if he’d ever partake again, but deep down he hoped he would sometime in the future. They went to work in unbolting the wheels and removing the crumpled front suspension from the car. As Saturday afternoon moved along, Kirk couldn’t help himself. The skies turned more gray and somewhat threatening rain, though it wasn’t raining. Maybe as a force of habit he called the racing telephone number to listen to the recording. After the usual NASCAR introduction, the recording announced that racing had been canceled for Saturday night. At least Kirk wouldn’t miss that night of racing. He didn’t know about Sunday at Perry Raceway yet which seemed to be his favorite of the two tracks.

            Going back to work on the car, indeed what Jon had said earlier revealed itself as absolutely true. The front frame rails, in front of the engine were both bent with the right side bent more because it took the brunt of the collision. As Jon had pointed out, if the frame had bent further back, closer to the engine, there was  a higher probability that the engine block would have cracked or broken. It would’ve been all over then, baby blue. The two guys took a good long look at the frame: Top, sides, and underneath. Jon being more of a metalsmith than Kirk, suggested cutting sections out of the side frame rails to make it easier to straighten and then after reweld metal, probably angle iron, to restrengthen the frame. Kirk had to agree that it sounded like a sound and feasible plan, so they went to work. After cutting the sections out, they strategically located a floor jack sideways between the rails and applied pressure. Utilizing some hot wrench (torch) and hammering where the frame had crinkled the frame went back nearly as straight as originally. As Kirk would often say at times like that, “good enough for government work and stock car racing!”

            The next morning, Kirk wandered out to his broken car. Eying the sky, heavy gray Altocumulus blotted out the sun. The forecasters said there was a chance of showers, but Kirk knew how THEY were with the weather forecasts. He hoped just the same. Flinging open the doors of the garage, he perused what they had done and what remained to do. He began seeing the possibility that the car may rise again from his solitary car smashup. The whole front end at this point lay in disarray. Looking at it, he surely was not 100 percent of the car rising to the occasion again because Kirk remained a realist. Well, he knew that the first thing he needed to do was to restructure the now straight front frame rails. Finding the proper flat and angle iron, Kirk commenced to fitting, cutting, and welding. As he worked, he wondered why Jon hadn’t shown up that Sunday morning. He knew Jon and Kirk’s sister weren’t regular church goers, but Kirk just assumed Jon had something going on that kept him away. Kirk had plenty of welding to do so he pressed on. After being satisfied with the way the repair ended up, Kirk thought he’d have a look around.

                The steering arm had been mangled so he removed that and set it aside. He decided to have a closer look at the reason for the crash, and that was the accursed carburetor linkage. Of course, misplacing the spring caused the throttle to remain wide open when the linkage broke; but holding the broken linkage in place, Kirk found that he had miscalculated the leverage the bell crank underwent when Kirk floored it causing it to fail with over pressuring. Kirk couldn’t recall if he sensed the higher-than-normal pressure on the pedal during the practice laps, but there he was just the same, after the fact.

            Did he experience a green car curse? No, Kirk felt that it was only him not paying attention to details, very important details when he worked on the linkage.  He pressed on. Before lunch, Kirk called the racing hotline to see if racing was scheduled for that Sunday afternoon. He held his breath hoping it had been canceled like the night before. After the usual BS on the line, he heard what he had called for: It had been cancelled. Kirk let out his breath knowing that he had a week until the first races took place that he really deep down wanted to be part of.

            Shortly after lunch time, Jon showed up. Kirk had already returned to work on the garage and welcomed his “pit crew” back to the garage. Jon showed Kirk what he had brought with him: Three sticks of stainless-steel welding rod. Very expensive stuff and the strongest welding rod you can find. Jon didn’t say if he bought the rods or “borrowed” them from his work. Kirk, to himself, guessed it was the latter of the two so he wasn’t about to ask. Anyway, Jon said that with the stainless rod, he could weld the broken spring. That became a bit of good news to Kirk seeing he didn’t have to buy one, but on the other hand if the weld broke on the track the result would be a crippled car or worse. Not a dangerous situation, but a non-competitive car would be the result. Not one to interfere during a crucial weld, he let Jon weld the spring seeing Jon was more skillful than Kirk so he just pondered the other jobs to attend to in the meantime.

            Jon used the grinder to clean up the surfaces before starting and then went to welding. Of course you can’t look at the bright, eye destroying welding arc, so Kirk turned his back. Jon buzzed and crackled at the welding off and on for some time. He then shut the welder off so Kirk knew it was safe to look. He experienced utter amazement at Jon’s welding job. The stainless rod, Kirk knew was shiny, but the welds Jon put down were perfection appearing like a stack of shiny dimes tipped over and spread out. Kirk had to tell Jon how great it looked and he said that the weld would never break adding that the spring would fail somewhere else before the weld would break. Yeah, nice to get that out of the way. Kirk saw Jon had used all three rods right down to stubs using every last gram of that precious stuff.    

            Well, the axle had nasty bend in it that wasn’t supposed to be there. Making a yoke of log chain attached to the axle on each side of the offending bend, they got out the hydraulic floor jack. With four hands involved, they held the jack sideways while holding the chain on the top of the jack while resting the bottom on axle at the bend. Little by little they pumped the jack putting pressure on the chains and the axle. The two guys didn’t know if they’d have to apply heat from the torch to help the jack bend the axle back into shape. The jack, being five-ton capacity they thought was up to the task. Or they hoped. They eyed the bend and added more pressure.

            Suddenly, Bang!

            They jumped in response expecting the worse but found that the chain had just slipped a link settling in under the pressure. With more pressure, they thought that the bend was straightening out but at that point they couldn’t be sure. More and more they applied pressure. Kirk began to worry that they could in theory break the chain at worse or almost as bad they could start bypassing the pressure on the jack meaning that it would just refuse to apply any more pressure. The lever on the jack got harder to pump moving only half its stroke. Standing away to eye the axle, they knew that the bend in the axle was straightening. With a few more minutes, the bend which they had set up to straighten had in fact was straight, but they saw that the axle had been bent in another angle. So, they let the pressure off making sure the axle stayed straight in that direction and repositioned the chain and jack about ninety degrees off from the first time. With an easier time than the first round of work, they got the axle almost as straight as new, pretty much good enough for stock car racing.

            After that work and sensing relief that the car may in fact rise from the debris, Kirk turned his sights on the offending throttle linkage. He didn’t want to face it because it just reminded him constantly on how he screwed up. Well, the best way to stop being reminded is to fix the damn thing and fix it right. First, he did the logical thing: He hooked up the spring return directly to the carburetor like it should have been in the first place.  He formed a strip of substantial metal to bolt to the intake manifold with a small hole in it for the spring. Whatever happens with the linkage now while racing the throttle had to return to idle. Taping the bell crank to the firewall with a substantial piece of duct tape, Kirk eyed up the situation to see what should be done.

                 Trotting to the house, he robbed a couple coat hangars from the closet. He trotted back and cut the hooks off. Forming little hooks on the straight lengths of hangar he assembled the cobbled linkage. Working the linkage, it was as he suspected: the leverage was all wrong. Seeing it work, Kirk thought that he probably just over stressed the linkage to breakage which it did when he floored it. He figured in his glee of witnessing a feel of new power in his car he might have pushed quite hard on the accelerator and it was just over powered and it broke.  Well, by moving his trial linkages (coat hangars) he experimented with different positions on the bell crank levers. Yeah, he found it was waaayyy over leveraged for the distance the carburetor throttle had to actually move. To make this trial-and-error process story short that took him hours, he finally got it reconfigured the way it should have the first time around. After working it for the twentieth or thirtieth time from the accelerator pedal, Kirk found it worked perfectly with only the slightest bit more of pedal movement after the throttle was wide open. Kirk felt quite sure it would never fail and if it did it wouldn’t cause the throttle to stick wide open the way the spring was attached NOW. A tough, a terrible lesson to endure. Almost like a critical bolt in an airplane that someone forgot! 

            Kirk went to work, on rebuilding the front crash bar/bumper. He thought that he had plenty of pipe, but it surprised him to find out/remember how much metal goes into the bumpers. He knew he’d have to take a couple trips during the week to pick up  the metal and other things with the cost of it enough to make him sick. He thought he still had sufficient funds for it all, but he’d have to see because there are always other things…

            Well, he decided to do a little body work to fix the crunch on the left side, so with a bunch of prying and pounding he got the majority of  the crunch pushed out. Then, with a liberal application of Bondo he slathered over the wrinkles and ripples. In a few minutes after inhaling the sweet chemical aroma of the Bondo, he knocked the high spots off with his handy cheese grater.  The made nice gray cheese-like nurdles of semi-pliable Bondo. Using the cheese grater takes a lot of unnecessary sanding away but you after to use the grater during a narrow window of Bondo hardening. Too soft, the grater rips goopy chucks of Bondo off, and if too hard, the grater just doesn’t cut it and the sanding job just got harder. Anyway, Kirk wasn’t too worried about what the body work looked like from day one on refurbishing the car.

            So, his work week went along normally with no major problems or high points either. Early that week, he made a visit to see Scotty the skunk and his owner Tom to buy a replacement wheel and tire seeing he destroyed that right front combo. When Kirk pulled in with his pink van, Kirk scanned about for Scotty but he was nowhere in sight. Before Kirk made it to house’s side door, Tom popped open the door and Scotty preceded Tom on his own agenda.

            “Hey Kirk, putting your green car back together?”

            “You heard about that, eh?”

            “Oh, I was there. I stopped by your rig to survey the damage, but you looked like you weren’t in a talking mood. Especially that nice helmet toss.”

            “C’mon in the shop.”

            Kirk followed along. Tom opened the door. Kirk spied a tire and wheel in the size he ran laying on its side.

            “You put one together for me?”

            “Why sure. I put you as a determined sort, a guy who’d get the car back together no matter what.”

            “Why thanks. Thanks a lot for saying that.” Kirk said strolling over to the tire. Reaching down to pick the wheel/tire combo he felt something fuzzy. “Yikes!” Kirk let out a shriek and backed up a step. Out crawled Scotty. He dropped down to the floor and wandered, more like sash-swayed away.

            “Oh, sorry about Scotty. He can pop out anywhere, but he likes the cool floor and the darkness of the wheel.”

            “It’s okay. I just wasn’t really looking in the wheel and just wrapped my fingers around the rim. I hope I didn’t hurt him or nothing.”

            “Naaah, he’s pretty easy going and if you hurt him he’d let a shriek out louder than yours,” Tom said with a chuckle.

            Well I wondered where he was when I pulled up. He was no where in sight. Anyway, what do I owe you?”

            “Same as the others seeing you didn’t pick up a spare te first time. I figured you’d be back driving that green car.”

            Kirk took it as another dig about the unlucky green stock car but he didn’t say anything as he dug out his cash.  Kir paid Tom, and gave his regards casting an eye out for scotty but he was nowhere in sight. He threw the tire in the back of the van  and he was off to another stop.

            On that same outing, he stopped by Crazy Ed’s Junkyard. Kirk had no idea what car his original radiator came from, but he thought ahead for a change and measured length and width and took note of where the outlets needed to be located. He pulled in and rather unusually Ed wasn’t around the shop. How usual, Kirk thought. He decided to wander out in the graveyard of automobiles that had seen their better days. Cars were stacked three high along the muddy, greasy, oily two-track lane. He heard an engine running fast some distance away. As he strolled along, he perused the smashed and trashed vehicles. Always hopeful to see a junked muscle car that everyone overlooked, but being realistic that would never happen. Nevertheless, it was always interesting, entertaining to look at the American Iron that may hold parts that someone might need.

            Soon, Kirk saw a roaring, decrepit though heavy-duty forklift heading his way with a demolished Chevy Nova in its forks. Kirk thought the sight might be ironic seeing Nova means “no go” in Spanish and seeing this one being moved by forklift. The machine moved along at a pretty good clip. He stood off to the side and let the forklift with Ed at the helm pull alongside the forklift engine still revved up apparently its normal roaring mode. Kirk noticed a young guy, probably younger than Kirk himself, brought up the rear. Ed went through help like changes of underwear.  The kid followed the look of Ed’s previous helpers, that is, filthy, covered in grease and oil and dirt from head to toe like he had been wallowing in a grease pit. Kirk couldn’t stand his hands being a little greasy, hence perhaps, he was never a good mechanic.

            “What can I do for you racer boy?” Ed shouted over the engine din.

            “I need a radiator.” Kirk said in a raised volume.

            “WHHHHAAAT?” Ed yelled.

            Kirk stepped up on the forklift’s running board and repeated himself.

            “Up at the garage,” Ed shouted at Kirk while pointing.

            “Okay,” Kirk shouted back. He stepped down and gestured for Ed to go first. The machine roared off.

            The young guy stepped up along Kirk as they followed the roaring forklift. The fumes were bad enough to knock a person out, so Kirk slowed his pace. He noticed the greasy kid had curly sandy blond hair, at least it used to be, sticking out from around his greasy hat.

            “Ed called you racer boy, drags or roundy round?”

            Kirk’s hackles raised. “Stock car,” he said bluntly. He instantly knew where this guy’s interest lay.

            “I’m gonna’ race drags. Ed’s gonna’ sponsor me with my Nova. Not that Nova,” he pointed to the one being carried by the forklift. “That one’s got a 327 in it that I’m gonna’ build.”

            “Nice,” Kirk said, rather shortly.  He smirked to himself with the mention of “Nova.”

            “What’cha need from Ed? Season already started, you should’ta been ready already.”

            “Yeah, I was ready.” Kirk mumbled, not liking this mouthy kid.

            “Say, are you the guy with the green car that smashed into the wall?”

            “Were you there too?” Kirk asked, rather incredulously.

            “Nah, I don’t go to roundy rounds. Word of that kinda’ stuff gets around fast in this place. Guy said the car was bad.”

            Ed on the forklift turned up into the open yard.

            “Yeah, I s’pose.”

            “So you getting it, your car, back togetha’?”

            “Hmm, hmm.” Kirk said, wanting to get away from the kid. He picked up his pace to circle past the roaring forklift that Ed killed off. The abrupt quiet seemed deafening.

            “You need a radiator,” stated Ed. “What for?”

            “My stock car so it doesn’t have to be any type in particular.”

            “He’s the guy that smashed up his GREEN car,” the kid interjected. Kirk felt tetchy about being reminded about his green car and felt like blurting out something he’d regret, but he bit his tongue.

            “Oh, sorry to hear about that,” said Ed, like he meant it. “Go ahead in the shop to see if you find one to match up.”

            “Okay, thanks. Oh, I need some pipe too. One and a half inch.”

            “Sure, sure,” said Ed. “Pick out what you need and we’ll settle up.”

            “Great.” Kirk saw that the kid had already towed the acetylene/oxygen torches over to the Nova creating a spark flying display

            Kirk perused the radiators Ed had amassed in triple leaning stacks against the wall. Easily enough he found one close enough to fit his car. He set it down next to van and strolled to the metal rack. Instead of handling one long length of pipe, Kirk settled on three various sized lengths that equaled more than he needed he determined by measuring toe to heel with his feet that measured exactly one foot in length. It seemed fitting to have feet that were each a foot long, ha! He showed Ed what he got and again got off pretty cheap. Maybe the suppliers of parts felt sorry for him, or maybe it was good for business because they knew racers would be return customers, proven for example, this trip. Kirk motored on home as the sun settled down in its usual resting place in the west.

            He unloaded his wheel/tire, radiator and pipe. He stuck the radiator between the rails where it should and saw that it would indeed fit well with a little finagling as usual. He called it a night with only two nights to go before Saturday night high-bank racing under the lights. The thought gave Kirk a bit of a rush of excitement.

            The next couple of days he focused on installing the radiator that only needed drilling a couple holes, then he went on to constructing a new bumper. He had to fabricate then weld it onto the frame stubs. He overinflated the tire again and left it outside to oversize. The car began looking like a complete stock car again. On Friday, he focused on the remining body work with little clean up with the grinder to hit the high spots and then used the orbital surface sander to smooth it out. He wasn’t too worried what it looked like so he just shot the area with gray primer. He got out the black and paint brush to hit the frame and axle where they had heated them with the torch to bend it into shape burning off the old pint in the process. While down there, he noticed the tie rod was bent. His enthusiasm dropped degree or two.  It looked like he was spending Friday night of working in the garage. Kirk had not so long ago wondered how his brother-in-law Mike could work all week during the day and then work all his waking hours in the garage. Of course, Kirk wasn’t doing mechanic work any longer all day and Mike worked on resale car renovations, so Kirk couldn’t understand it back then, though now he could kind of relate.

               Well, he pulled off the bent tie rod which he reminded himself that he knew about but kind of blew it off for more higher priority things that needed fixing or straightened. Now it became the number one priority. He still hadn’t painted his new wheel either. Working with the chain and hydraulic jack, Kirk wrestled the tie rod into a more or less straight rod. Late in the evening, Kirk decided to slap paint on the newly fabricated crash bar along with the new wheel both in yellow. The car, more or less, would roll again. Any loose ends he could take care of tomorrow before heading to the track because the forecast was for partly cloudy skies.

             One last look at his risen phoenix of a stock car with its area of primer on the left side and a tire skid on the right side. He could take care of them tomorrow, but he decided to leave them seeing EVERYONE seemed to know about his green car crash, so he’ll let them remember with the damages as badge of honor.

            No doubt Kirk would never forget nor never be the same after his wall crashing incident, though he wondered what his return to the track would be like. Would it be an event to leave him never the same and never forgettable?