FreeThinker
Member
- Joined
- Dec 30, 2005
- Messages
- 4,462
Okay, the set-up is a bit long, but the payoff is worth it.
I have a friend, whom I will refer to as Allen.
He used to live in the upstairs apartment of a house. The downstairs apartment was occupied by a loud, hard-drinking, constantly-bickering couple.
'Allen' is a mechanic.
At the time of this story, his vehicle was a flat-black Chevy mini-pickup, which had been fitted with a diesel engine by another mechanic friend of his. The gentleman who installed this engine liked to be able to see the exhaust, for purposes of diagnosing the status of the engine, so there was a smokestack-style exhaust pipe (like on a big rig) coming up through the box, behind the cab. The truck also had chrome rims on it...really big ones on the back, in fact, with seriously wide tires. 'Allen' wouldn't have chosen to outfit a truck this way, but that was how he got it.
As he was working on a project in his garage one day, the time came to reinstall an engine into a vehicle.
He thought it would be best to clean the engine first, and I accompanied him on a trip to the nearby coin-operated car wash.
Returning from the car wash, he noticed his erstwhile downstairs neighbours, drinking beer in some lawn chairs in front of their new place.
Still feeling animosity toward them (they had only moved out a week prior), with Merle Haggard playing on the tape-deck of his smokestack-equipped, wide-tired, diesel-belching pickup with a freshly-pressure-washed engine block in the bed, he shouted at them indignantly:
I looked at him after he did this, and he immediately cracked up, struck by the absurdity of the situation.
I have a friend, whom I will refer to as Allen.
He used to live in the upstairs apartment of a house. The downstairs apartment was occupied by a loud, hard-drinking, constantly-bickering couple.
'Allen' is a mechanic.
At the time of this story, his vehicle was a flat-black Chevy mini-pickup, which had been fitted with a diesel engine by another mechanic friend of his. The gentleman who installed this engine liked to be able to see the exhaust, for purposes of diagnosing the status of the engine, so there was a smokestack-style exhaust pipe (like on a big rig) coming up through the box, behind the cab. The truck also had chrome rims on it...really big ones on the back, in fact, with seriously wide tires. 'Allen' wouldn't have chosen to outfit a truck this way, but that was how he got it.
As he was working on a project in his garage one day, the time came to reinstall an engine into a vehicle.
He thought it would be best to clean the engine first, and I accompanied him on a trip to the nearby coin-operated car wash.
Returning from the car wash, he noticed his erstwhile downstairs neighbours, drinking beer in some lawn chairs in front of their new place.
Still feeling animosity toward them (they had only moved out a week prior), with Merle Haggard playing on the tape-deck of his smokestack-equipped, wide-tired, diesel-belching pickup with a freshly-pressure-washed engine block in the bed, he shouted at them indignantly:
"Fuckin' hillbillies!"
I looked at him after he did this, and he immediately cracked up, struck by the absurdity of the situation.
