From Veeduber@aol.com  Mon Oct  2 02:10:03 1995
msgnum: msg16815
Date: Mon, 2 Oct 1995 03:09:59 -0400
From: Veeduber_at_aol_dot_com
Subject: Grendel, Sunday

Grendel, Sunday

It was two Sundays ago that I wheeled away from Shelton in my 'good
condition' bus,  the one with brakes on one wheel, no brake lights, one tail
light, one head light, a front spindle that canted inward at the top and
rattled when shook and a left rear wheel that moved freely about as if
mounted in soft rubber.  No cabin heat.  One windshiled wiper.  Throttle
patched with bailing wire and bungee cords, ignition hot-wired.  Mismatched
wheels and rims.  Good condition.

Today I motored Grendel gently to the junkyard where I'd arranged to
remove a stub axle, parked where I'd been told.  There was no one there
except an insane dog, gnashing his jaws on the wire.  I worried that the
fellow wouldn't show, I needed that stub axle.   The fellow finally arrived,
a
little nervous but wanting the fifty bucks.  He went inside, corralled the
dog and unlocked the gate, wanted the money right then.  I didn't want to
play it that way.  He helped me hump my tools inside, closed the gate,
demanded the money again.  I coaxed him out to the pile of trannys, not
wanting to pay up until I at least had the thing in sight.  We spotted one
that looked like a keeper, moved a few trannys so I could get at it.  He kept
looking at his watch, whining about being late.  The place was remote, no
houses near.  I paid him his money, accepted the key, was told where to hide
it.  He took off and I went to work clearing the tranny away from the pile,
blocking the outboard gearboxes up.  Scrubbed off the crud  Didn't look too
bad.  Pulled the drain plugs.  No oil.  Rotated the boxes with difficulty,
got a
gush of rusty water.  Pulled the filler plug, peered inside with my mini
Mag-light.  Junkers.

The pile of trannys was about head-high, maybe twenty feet long by half
that wide.  Part of the pile was obscured with rear body tin including a
cherry early bus rear panel, the one with the hole for a starter crank.  I
unstacked them, created a new pile, sorted them unconsciously by type,
finally got down to the main part of the stack of trannys.

I found a good late model tranny about three layers down but getting to it
was a chore, requiring me to move about a dozen transaxles before I could
pull it to the edge of the stack.  The pile of trannys was on the lip of a
steep gully maybe fifty feet deep.  The gully was filled with berry vines,
shrouded by pines at least 200 feet tall.  To get at the tranny I had to
circle the pile, make a trail along the side of the gully, come at the tranny
from the back.  I was standing on leaf mold, a spongy black mass several
feet deep.  I got the tranny almost free, went to move one last obstructing
axle from another tranny and something gave way, sending three trannys
and me shooting down the side the gully.

It was steeper than the roof of a house and for the first twenty feet I was
running in place, keeping upright, thinking I was doing pretty good for a guy
who never learned to dance.  I dodged the  first tranny but that threw my
timing off and I got
clipped by the second.  Then it was ass over teakettle, through the berry
vines, sliding downhill on my back, head down with a tranny across my chest. 


I hit something hard enough to knock off my watch cap and leave my glasses
hanging from one ear, hard enough to spin me to the left where I came up
against a tree stump, hard.  The first tranny and an avalanche of leaf mold
cascaded into the depths of the gully, arrived somewhere with a noisy
splash.

I had rotten leave mold all over me, in my ears, up my sleeves.  My left arm
had taken a good whack but still worked.  My glasses were bent.  Bent them
back, found my watch cap.  Got myself cleaned up.  The tranny I wanted was a
few feet away, one axle uphill, the other down, balanced on something under
the leaf mold.  I was in a moldering pile of branches, probably lopped off a
tree that had been chopped down.  There were several trunks in sight more
than three foot across, I was about half-way down into the gully.  I used
branches and punky chunks of wood to block the tranny in position, began
searching for a trail up the side of the gully to fetch my tools, found my
Mag-light and pencil laying where they'd come out of my shirt pocket.
 Checked myself again, made sure I still had my pipe and it was unbroken.

By the time I got my tool box down to the tranny it was nearly eleven.  The
bright morning had turned cloudy and was now threatening to rain.  There
was nothing to put between me and the damp leaf mold, the nearest green
limbs were fifty feet overhead.  I set to work, kneeling in the wet debris.

My slide down the side of the gully had disturbed the local residents, a
surprising variety of pot bellied spiders and colorful millipedes.  One
especially pretty one, black with yellow dots, gave me polite lesson in
forest-floor etiquette when I gently touched it, sending a razor-like shock
up my arm.  There were fine hairs sprouting from the yellow spots, invisible
until I lifted the thing with a pair of needle-nosed pliers and took a closer
look.  He had lots of friends.  A tiny spider discovered a scratch on the
back of my hand, had his first taste of human blood, liked it.  I shook him
off
but he had friends too.  Ižve had nicer places to work.  And worse ones, too.

At least no one was shooting at me.

It began to sprinkle but the canopy of trees kept me fairly dry.  I used a
wire brush to clear the bolt heads, gave them a dose of Liquid Wrench,
tapped it in, constantly bothered by the tranny trying to take off downhill. 
The branches were rotten, kept breaking.  A vehicle arrived at the junkyard,
voices, a loud radio, the frenzied barking of the dog, muffled, then loud. 
Then louder.  I waited, sweating in the damp cool of the forest floor, a ball
peen hammer my weapon of choice.  My tool kit includes a thing that makes
holes and loud noises but I'd left it with my duffle.

The vehicle started up and drove off.  I waited for the dog but heard only
birds and a distant ultralight, struggling against the wind shoving the
clouds north above the trees.  I went back to work.

The stub axles were exposed, the bearing carriers gone.  They had been
buried in leaf mold which is acidic and were badly corroded but I thought at
least one of them would clean up into a usable part.  Several of the bolts
were so rusted they rounded at the touch of the wrench.  I drove on a
six-point 1/2" socket, fractionally smaller than a 13mm.  Only one required
the use of vise-grips and chisel, all came away clean.  

To free the stub axle I would have to pierce the sealing plate on the back of
the gear box.  I used my Makita to make a string of holes, slit them with a
cold chisel, pried the slit apart, wedged in one jaw of an open-end wrench,
soaked the sealing line with Liquid Wrench and worked at it, rocking the
thing back and forth, slowly winning it free.  I might have to reuse the
part,
tried to keep the distortion to a minimum.  Sat back, sweating, flexing my
tired hands.  And saw the dog watching me.  He was on his belly, partially
hidden behind a tree stump about fifty feet away along the trail I'd made,
angling up the wall of the gully.  He made no move.  I had a fit of coughing,
not wanting to take my eyes off him, scrabbling blindly for the hammer as I
hacked and wheezed until even the birds were silent.  He was just laying
there, watching me, his head concealed save for his eyes but his ass in
plain view, immobile.  I started to laugh and that brought on more coughing,
finally just sat, my pulse somewhere up around two hundred.  He was a big
dog.

I went back to work, keeping half an eye on the dog, talking to it, telling
it
why I needed this rusty piece of crap,  explaining in exquisite detail the
hundreds of things that combined to put me there on the side of a gully in a
dripping rain forest a thousand miles from home.

I never saw the dog move but he did, plowing a
path in the leaf mold, advancing to another stump then to a clump of what
looked like spinach, behind which he hid in the same idiotic way, face
concealed, body in plain view.  I talked to him while my hands made a
killer's
noose of safety wire, using a bolt for a toggle on the free end, something
to give me a good grip.  Join the Navy, Learn a Trade.   I put my thinnest,
longest screwdriver handle-up near my left side, the hammer on my right.  
The dog watched me while I worked.  I kept talking to it.  My pulse was okay
now, I had it figured out.  We were going to end up at the bottom of the
ravine, one of us wearing a safety-wire necklace that once pulled tight,
would stay that way.  I was wearing a lot of clothes, I could withstand a
couple of bites.  I went back to work on the tranny.

When the lock nuts were removed I used the hammer and a brass drift to
drive the stub axles free of the gear box, first the left, then the right. 
The dog was perhaps twenty feet away.  I thought he would go for me when I
stood up but his haunches weren't quivering, he didn't look ready to
spring.  I started gnawing at the snap rings.  I didn't have a pair of
snap-ring pliers but I did the screwdriver trick and got the left one off
without bending it.  The right one vanished into the gully with a musical
ping!
that brought the dog's head up as his eyes followed the invisible
snap-ring.  Good reflexes.  

I couldn't do any any more work on the tranny on my knees.  I stood up, armed
with screwdriver and hammer, shouted at the dog.  He pressed his head down
into his paws, kept looking at me.  He didn't want to eat me, he just wanted
to talk.  I felt like crying, I was so relieved.

So we talked.  He was a farm dog, or maybe a farmer; I speak better Cat than
Dog.  All he could talk about was the weather and when he was going to get
fed and what a rotten job he had.  He was afraid of hammers and red wiping
rags.  I don't know why, he just was.  I had two red wiping rags, one blue.
 I put away the red ones, lay the hammer down.  He belly crawled to within
five feet of
me but refused to come closer, lay watching with doleful brown eyes as the
rain misted his coat with pearls of moisture.  I finished dismantling the
gear boxes.  When I drove the gear boxes and axle tubes off the axles, the
dog winced with
each blow.

It took three trips to get my booty and tools to the top of the gully.  I
positioned everything near the gate while the dog sat and watched.  I
opened the gate, moved everything outside, snapped the lock as the dog
flung himself against the wire, snarling insanely, flinging slobber in all
directions.  He refused to calm down until I'd moved away from the gate,
then sat, watching as I loaded the bus and drove off, forgetting to hide the
key as I'd promised.  When I returned, the dog went through his act again.  I
put the key in the agreed place and left the gulley and the junkyard and the
crazy junkyard dog.  I was tired, it was after three, a misty rain coming
down.

Back at my host's house I worked four hours cleaning the rust from the
stub axles,  winning the threads free of rust  until the nut spun on with
oily smoothness.  I don't know how I'll pull the corroded bearing but bearing
pullers are common things and I can always jury-rig something.  

Among the spares I brought from San Diego is a rear wheel seal kit, complete
from cotter key to gaskets.  If I can get the old drum off, and if the
replacement drum consents to fit on the still sorta-rusty stub axles...
assuming I can get the bearings off of them, I'll be able to rebuild
Grendel's wobbly rear wheel.  A friend already has fresh bearings on their
way to me.

Tomorrow I'll return to the welding shop where they will cut ten curiously
shaped pieces of metal which I will use to create a pentacle powerful
enough to make a stuck brake drum come flying free.  Welding is a kind of
white magic and I'm a warlock of note.

I got off lucky today.  Before writing this I showered, trimmed my beard. 
I've a purple bruse the size of a fist high up under my left arm, a dull red
lump on my chest.  But I also have two stub axles and no bite marks.

-Bob