Never the Same #75 Kirk Pressed on Irregardless

Kirk knew it wasn’t going to be easy—or quick.

 

Clue: “It’s My Life” https://youtu.be/VyZeqzWvR7w?si=tpFL5XqPCd9nrrhT

 

            The bad news got ruminated over and over after everyone at the drywall plant found out that everyone, that is, everyone who stayed local, got sacked. This of course included Kirk who really didn’t take the news too hard but felt the pain of those other workers who relied on a steady paycheck to survive. Kirk on the other hand, didn’t have a family to support, a mortgage or car payment that demanded a money outlay on a regular basis.  Yeah, he paid room and board to his father, but he really didn’t think his father would throw him out of the house if he couldn’t pay; but then again, thinking about it in depth, he was not 100 percent confident of that particular possibility not occurring knowing his father and his fixation on money. 

            In the meantime, Kirk pressed on with the most important thing in his life, that being the fabrication of his new and improved stock car. Or so he dreamed. Sarah Elizabeth remained a fixture in Kirk’s life, but she didn’t out weigh the importance of Kirk’s car to him. She knew better than to force herself between him and his automotive fixation so she remained happy enough to hold his attention when he came around or the scant times they went out. Once in a while, she’d come and sit awhile in the cool garage and lend Kirk some company and moral support. She didn’t mind getting dirty and greasy like cleaning engine parts or the like, but no one would want to do that messy, dirty job with the cooling autumn temperatures. On the other hand, Kirk wouldn’t ask her to assist him in finalizing the position of the critical arches which form the basis of the roll cage while at the same time being designed in a way to be hidden by the body’s roof and pillars. Critical considerations at their best. At least that’s what he striven for anyway and we know that Kirk wanted this car to look good while going fast, very fast. He held out for Jon to lend a hand in assisting in doing the important undertaking of placing, trimming and welding those two critical roll cage pieces.

            Seeing his central focus in his life remained building the stock car, his favorite downtime activity was perusing the Summit Racing Products catalog. If a guy wanted go fast there were speed, performance parts for whatever vehicle a guy might have Summit remained the place to go and spend. Along with the many pages of shiny, lightweight performance parts there in between were glossy pictures of cars. Beautiful cars that made gear heads’ mouths drool with desire. There were Hot Rods, custom cars, show cars, street cars, muscle cars, drag cars and of course, stock cars. The cars featured weren’t anything like Kirk’s small-time racetrack, built in a barn car, all these cars were immaculately built cars where money spent at Summit remained no obstacle. Kirk always opened the latest catalog, as he saved them all, cringing while wondering if the perfect so-called cash car from his circuits would be featured. Kirk imagined that the driver bought every single part that would fit his car from Summit.

            On that particular Friday, it so happened that they had received the bad news at the plant while Kirk had made arrangements with brother-in-law Jon to help him set those critical two arches in place for the stock car’s roll cage. Well, Kirk shook off the plant’s bad news and pressed on with his project. After dinner, Jon showed up who eyed up the situation. Kirk could tell by Jon’s lack of appreciation especially upon taking in the Pinto body which he hadn’t seen before, that Jon wasn’t overly thrilled what he saw. Nevertheless, he thought Kirk’s pipe bending appeared good to go, at least lying there on the floor. While Kirk had eyeballed the height and position of the body on the frame and marked it accordingly, twice in fact, Jon thought it would be a good idea to recheck everything before making permanent cuts and welds. Young, self-doubting Kirk wasn’t one to disavow Jon’s point of view and advice. With the tools available being a straightedge, level, and tape measure, Jon voiced a desire to start from scratch. On the other hand, Kirk excitedly wanted to get started with the roll cage install, nevertheless, he agreed.

            First off, Jon wondered aloud if the body could be shifted to rear just a little bit more. Kirk wasn’t sure because he had checked that position twice before but with a shrug, he undid the clamps holding the body to the frame. Jon pointed out that yes, normally, the rear axle would be positioned so its travel would be lined up with the hump of the frame, but in a stock car that span of travel was much less. Following that train of thought, the body pretty much covered the frame so if the body were to be slid to the rear no one would notice the imprecise positioning between frame and body. Kirk could see at that point what Jon’s thoughts led up to and that being the engine and transmission could also be moved back those couple more inches thereby improving the car’s weight distribution with a closer balance between the front and rear. Kirk was all in for that. So of course, Kirk thought Jon’s advice became a prodigious proposal.

            By now Kirk got all jazzed to get on to the fitting of those bent pipe arches, but Jon had other ideas. Apparently. Kirk took a deep breath to calmly listen. Jon pointed out the height of the five-gallon bucket turned upside down wondering if that represented Kirk’s proposed seat height. Kirk said yeah, it was level with the top of the frame voicing that like in his old car, the seat would sit on top of heavy sheet metal attached on top of the frame. Jon asked why the seat couldn’t be dropped down between the frame rails thereby lowering the seat and subsequently the roll cage and roof. Kirk experienced a rush of dread with the thought.

            Always carrying a bit of fear while racing that while the roll cage solidly protected him on three sides, the top and sides that is, he imagined that if the car flipped on its side, another car could ram in between the frame rails from underneath and squash him like a bug inside of the cage. Kirk carried that fear not knowing where he had dreamed that highly unlikely scenario. The only close correlation to that was a memory from Kirk’s attending the races as a young teen with Babe where a car ran over a rolling tire and wheel that lifted the car off the ground from front to back. It could’ve been the source of his fear because the weight of the car could have forced the tire up into the cockpit from underneath with potential injurious results for the driver if not properly reinforced.

            Kirk thought about Jon’s suggestion a few moments while eying the frame and body before deciding. Yeah, it could be reinforced just the same with the sheet metal between the frame instead of the top. He removed the couple wooden two by fours from under the bucket which gave him almost two inches more headroom. Jon’s suggested logical alterations irked Kirk a bit that Jon could come up with good, viable solutions and improvements to Kirk’s hard thought plans while not having any experience whatsoever in building a stock car. Kirk calmed himself by convincing himself that sometimes another person looking at a situation can apply different perspectives to a problem without any prior knowledge or experience with said subject matter.

            With those changes in mind, they reattached the body to the frame a couple inches to the rear of Kirk’s hard-pressed chalk marks and a little lower after Kirk sat on the bucket to check his headroom. He decided that the changes positively improved the height and stance of the car which is what he desired in his concept of the new build from the very start where they worked at that very moment. 

            Dragging the bent pipe arch under the frame rail, Kirk wrestled it up into approximate position along the frame and held it there up against the body’s roof. This was an approximation because holding it against the frame put the arch a good three inches away from its anticipated permanent position on the frame. Jon, on the other side of the car, had a better view of how it looked and so had Kirk twist the arch to and fro while it seemingly gained weight as Kirk held the heavy pipe up in an odd, half-crouched position. He charged Jon to hurry and mark where the long legs needed to be cut off before his arms gave out because his muscles already shook in protest. Jon came around, looked at the roof versus arch position, reached in and made slow, awfully slow lines on the pipe. Relieved Kirk set the arch down and let out a breath and worked his arms. Looking at the marks he experienced a little surprise that one leg only needed less than a couple inches cut off while the other end needed nearly six trimmed off, so he was relieved in another way that his hard work in bending the pipe panned out.

            Kirk unrolled the torch set hoses and placed them under the frame inside the body. He then crawled in. Like always, he forgot a necessary item. In this case he forgot the striker, the flint-loaded tool that sparks enough to ignite the torch. Jon retrieved it and handed it to our hapless hero, Kirk. Donning his goggles, Kirk carefully followed Jon’s lines except that he allowed about a half inch leeway from the line, not because he didn’t trust Jon’s marking but because he sure didn’t want to hack off too much and wreck the whole length and waste the work already incurred. After cutting, they hoisted the arch back into place or attempted to because it hit the roof for being too long. Kirk cut again closer to the lines. This time it fit, but Kirk saw that the cuts weren’t exactly parallel to the frame which wouldn’t allow for a secure weld. He marked thin pie cuts he needed to make. Not too much he warned himself. After that, fortunately, it fit and looked perfect. Now dragging the arc welder leads inside the car, and as Jon continued to hold the arch in the correct position, Kirk applied a couple good spot welds “tacking” it into place. He sure didn’t want to make permanent welds because he knew how those things usually went. They did the same on the other side’s arch which was plenty for a Friday night.

            On Saturday, they went back to work on the car. Seeing the arches were only tacked in, they decided the next logical step was to put in the roof’s cross pieces in front and rear. These were almost straight pieces of pipe with only a slight bend in the middle to tuck them up into the roof. With these, they cut them about an inch and a half too long on both ends after carefully measuring. The necessary longer length was because the ends had to be saddle cut to fit closely around the arch pipes as they met at a ninety-degree angle. The saddle cuts remained a trial-and-error empirical method of fitting, so it took a few tries. The guys moved along getting these fitted and tack welded to the arches. 

            Kirk had to take in all the work they’ve done little as it was. A small step beginning a long stretch of fitting and welding, but even tacked in the cage now became a sturdy box, the bones of the roll cage built to save his life in case of a catastrophic crash or rollover on the track. To fulfill the rule requirement of eight-point contacts, the guys worked on the two braces on the front that extended at angles from about halfway up the roll cage diagonally down to the frame alongside where the engine would reside. The consideration with these was that they had to clear the body because cutting holes in the body to put these in would only make the removal and replacement of the body much more difficult. Only using straight pieces of pipe these were still a bit difficult to fit because the saddle cut on the cage was at an angle and where it contacted the frame a long, shallow-angled cut had to be made. Trial and error pretty much reigned in this process as well. The two rear braces got done in the same way but had different lengths and different cuts. After tacking these into place, Kirk felt they had really accomplished something phenomenal in one day and an evening, but this work only reinforced what he already knew and that was the overarching fact that stock car building took a long, very long, time with many man hours of work. Almost like building a car from scratch which in a way it was!     

***

            After working on the car all day Saturday with Jon and mildly satisfied with what they accomplished, Kirk ate dinner, cleaned up, and motored over to Sarah Elizabeth’s. Sarah, of course, was happy to see him coming over to see her which remained a relatively rare occurrence. Always eager to please Kirk, she asked if he wanted anything to eat. Having dinner not that long prior, he said no, but maybe later? Kirk being bone tired from working on the car  didn’t even broach the subject of going out so being frugal, he plopped down on the couch and joined Sarah’s parents in watching TV mainly forgettable sitcoms like Mash.

             Kirk, being a die-hard science fiction fan, would have rather watched Star Trek, Lost in Space, Time Tunnel or his all-time favorite show, The Invaders (alien invaders are involved if you didn’t know), but with her parents there Kirk wouldn’t see any of those types of shows, so he endured. Digressing even further here, as a preteen, Kirk bought and read the entire book series of Tom Swift with his miraculous and wholly unbelievable scientific inventions with funky out-of-this-world technological designations. Back to the couple as the night endured, the parents retired and so the couple cushed out on the floor under a blanket. Later on, Sarah popped some popcorn served with Cokes while they watched late-night monster movies eventually falling asleep late in the night or more correctly early morning as they often ended up. After all, Kirk was worn out after a hard and emotional week.      

***

            A week later, Robert the plant manager, showed up at the warehouse and when the three guys spotted him, they were sure that some more bad news had headed down the pike. He approached Stan the senior member of Kirk’s team and asked if he could pull Kirk from his position for a few minutes. Stan, with a shrug and a questioning expression, told him sure, telling Robert that they were caught up at the moment.

            Robert spoke to Kirk with gesture, “Walk with me for a couple minutes.”

            Kirk glanced to Stan who nodded and went back to his work, but Kirk didn’t know what the heck to expect at this point in the plant’s iffy wind-up affairs.

            “Okay. Sure,” Kirk said rather sheepishly.

            Robert with Kirk in tow just wandered over to the hallway that led to the drywall production line. The drywall pieces just kept slowly easing by, already cut and doubled up. Kirk noticed the pieces at moment were ten footers. It was a relatively quiet place right there with only the whirring sounds of the many, many rollers rapidly spinning as the drywall slid by.

            “Nothing to worry about here, Mister Biscuit,” Robert said, in his way as he always did when politely addressing the workers at this uncertain time. “Nothing is going to change for you unless you take up my offer.”

            Kirk’s head suddenly spun out of control; his stomach fell to his knees with the first thought came to mind could be an offer to move somewhere else which Kirk had no inclination. He wondered if this conversation might possibly be a life-changing opportunity, could it be his fate, his destiny to his future that he couldn’t ignore? The many possibilities cascaded through his conscious thoughts in milliseconds.

            “I can see by your expression that you’re expecting the worse,” Robert put a calming hand on Kirk’s shoulder. “I know you’re not up to moving, so I have another offer for one of our plant’s top workers, that being you.” Robert gave Kirk a little smile. “You’ve come a long way from being a laborer taking on what�"three different positions along the way. You could have risen to high position here at the plant, but as a poor substitute, I have only a minor consolation. Would you consider working for another two weeks at the plant after we shut down? Mind you, it’ll only be at a laborer’s wage for laborer tasks while buttoning up the plant, but I personally feel that we can always expect good, hard work from you,” Robert glanced about and shook his head. “While on the other hand we might expect others would not put forth as good an honest effort at this particular juncture...” He paused watching Kirk’s reaction that was not forthcoming. “So, what do you think?”

            Kirk immediately thought it was a good deal to work a little longer for almost full pay. “Yeah, yes. I’ll be glad to work for those two more weeks.” He thought a moment with a dry mouth. “Thanks for thinking of me with this offer.”

            “Well, good. I was hoping you’d accept. Now, Mister Biscuit please keep this under your hat, you know, to yourself because we’re only going to offer this to a small crew you’ll be working with, so I need to contact those people I can trust to do a good job.”

            “Sure, I won’t mention it to anybody. When would we get together to start? I mean, so we know what jobs we’ll be doing?”

            “Not until that Monday after shut down. Okay?”

            “Okay.”

            “Thanks Mister Biscuit, I knew I could rely on you. You can return to your work now.”

            Kirk thought he should say something else, so he paused, looked aside but silently, slowly walked back to the warehouse.

            The guys stacked sheets onto the forklift.

            “What was all that about?” Jeff asked.

            Kirk didn’t know what to say, so he shrugged but then felt self-conscious that the action might ben revealing that it was something Kirk wasn’t supposed to talk about. He stepped up and took over stacking for Stan, feeling good for not being pressed on what transpired. As he worked, he had to wonder what family man Stan had in store in his life after the layoff seeing he didn’t take the offer (at least to Kirk’s knowledge) to relocate, or be a temporary laborer, or unable to take a job locally similar to the jobs they filled at the plant.

            Kirk pressed on for the time being just being the same old, young Kirk.