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Show RIVER My father offered to help me get back east, so we went back to our home town, Oceanside, to get some wheels. My old man had taken the problem to a wheeler-dealer friend named Charlie. Charlie came up with a 1955 white Chevy panel truck that was one of the true marvels of the mechanical age. Vince, Julia, Rosie and I droye over to Charlie's place, a great colonial barn of a house surrounded by ^ scraggly Eucalyptus forest and ^ L i v a b l e variety of junk. On the ridge above all the other wrecks stood the white Chevy. "She's been here two years," said Charlie, "but I'll bet she still runs." He climbed in and turned over the engine, or rather, tried to turn it over: the mighty six cylinders remained silent. "That," said Charlie, "can be fixed." We got some gas and primed the carburetor. Charlie got into the driver's seat and the rest of us pushed the Chevy toward the road with hopes of push-starting it. We'd not gone far when I looked down and noticed a long steel shaft lying where the van used to be. I didn't know much about auto mechanics, but the piece of steel looked remarkably like a drive shaft. We stopped pushing and Charlie got out and looked under the van. "My God!" he said. "Somebody bagged the transmission!" Dad and Charlie went off to see about finding a new transmission and we stood in stoned amazement gazing at the van. It could have been designed by R. Crumb himself. It had an enormous balloon shaped body and a pig-nose front end, but glistening there in the hot summer sun the panel truck looked mythically beautiful. Charlie rounded up a transmission that had only one flaw, no reverse gear. "We really need a reverse gear," said Vince. - 5 1 - |