posted
It is somewhat long, but worth the 5 minutes it will take you to read.
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EXIT
It was the pain deep inside his chest that forced him to see a doctor. Oh sure, he knew something was wrong, but, like most people, he put it off. And put it off. How long had that pain been gnawing away? Two years? Three? At least three. It had been there so long, it was almost taken for granted.
But lately, it had worsened. It was affecting his driving, walking, eating, sleeping and his work. Gearheads don’t like to go to doctors, even though they are forced to seek their services now and then. The occasional flu bug going around, or the deep cuts from working at the machine shop. Frank had been there before. Not too often though.
Frank sat in the doctor’s office, idly flipping through a tattered copy of National Geographic, wishing he’d had the foresight to bring a copy of GMHTP with him to help pass the time. He’d been in this cold, white office too many times in the last month, what with all the check-ups, X-rays, blood tests and other mysterious things they did to his body. The pain was still there. Always the pain. The white-haired doctor called him into his private office and closed the door quietly behind him. Frank knew at that moment that something was desperately wrong. The doctor told him very quietly, patiently and calmly what was up.
He did it so professionally that Frank listened in an almost detached manner, as the white-haired physician told him he had only a few months to live. . . perhaps five or six at the most.
What Frank got upset about was that he’d never heard of the disease. A lot of Latin words strung together. Why didn’t they just call it a ball of pain in the chest?
With more calm in his voice than he could believe, Frank asked the good doctor about operations and alternatives. With an obvious tremble in his hands, the doctor explained the why-nots and the where-fores of the situation. He took a long time and ignored the blinking light on the phone.
When he stopped talking, Frank fairly well understood the mechanics behind his doom. The doctor wrote out a prescription “for the pain” and told him to use it as needed and to call any time the pain got too intense. There were stronger things available for stronger pain. They shook hands and parted.
Frank drove his pick-up truck home, head whirling with thoughts. He stopped off at In-N-Out Burger and grabbed a Double-Double and fries, and ate as he put the 36 miles that separated his home from the medical center.
By the time he got home, Frank knew exactly what he wanted to do. He grabbed a couple Heinekens from the fridge and sat down at his wobbly old desk. A yellow lined pad and a felt tipped pen were extracted from the center drawer, along with his savings account and checkbooks.
Very slowly and with much thought, Frank made a list on that clean yellow pad. After each item, he put a price. Frank had a pretty good idea of what things cost. Ten grand for the SLP 382 CID LS1 530 HP stroker motor, eight fifty for the SLP long tube tuned headers, thirteen hundred for the Wilwood Superlite 6 piston brake kit with slotted and cross drilled rotors, thirty large for the car. Then there were the other trick goodies….SLP CAI and airlid, BMR lower control arms, panhard rod, strut-tower brace, and sub-frame connectors, Koni double adjustable shocks, Hypercoil one and a quarter drop springs, Moser 12 bolt rear-end, custom burned ECM program, Energy Suspension poly sway bushings and endlinks, a GMMG chmbered exhaust system, the best tires money could buy. . . in fact, the best of everything.
When he completed the list and added it up, he gave a low whistle. The total came to over fifty thousand dollars. A check of his bank and checkbooks showed that he had more than enough to cover the cost. He slowly savored three more Heinekens that evening. Sleep came easy, in spite of that ever-present pain in his chest.
The next morning was spent cleaning out his garage. He shaped it up to perfection, then made a trip to the bank and withdrew a tidy sum of cash. Frank then stopped off at his favorite place and spent a considerable amount of that cash on new tools. The good stuff; Snap-On, S-K, top-of-the-line sockets and wrenches. And then he bought a shiny new red Craftsmen two piece roll-around toolbox.
It gave him an odd pleasure to peel off the fifty dollar bills to pay for the tools. The salesman helped him load everything in the back of the pickup and Frank then headed home to drop off his new toys and switch vehicles.
Frank grabbed his keys to his 97 Camaro Z28 and headed down to the Chevrolet dealer. The sales manager knew him by his first name and they exchanged the usual pleasantries. Casually, with a slight smile of glee, Frank told the man to write up the paperwork on that car – that one right over there – he would purchase it and pulled out his checkbook to drive the message home. Frank didn’t squabble at the trade-in amount offered for his Z28 and much to the surprise and expectations of the sales manager, did not haggle one cent on the new car.
Frank just stood there and looked at that gorgeous red car with the silver stripes, the last of them, the 2002 35th Edition LE Camaro SS. Frank found it sadly ironic that his beloved f-body, born in 1967 as he himself was, would also cease to exist in the year 2002. Over the years he had owned so many of these fantastic vehicles. He loved them from the time when he was a small child, too young to drive, but not too young to dream.
He spent that night online placing the orders for the parts that he could not get locally. His only request from each vendor was that everything be delivered to his home before the end of the week. He checked off items on that yellow legal pad. Sleep came hard.
Early the next morning, Frank pulled the new SS into the center of the garage and put it up on jack stands. Parts were carefully removed with the shiny new tools and placed in various cardboard boxes that were marked with a thick felt tip pen. Then he placed them on shelves.
By the end of the week, the stock powerplant was out. The new, bad-boy, SLP stroker motor was dropped off by the freight transport-company. The man in the big brown truck was coming just about every day. Frank so enjoyed hearing that UPS truck rumble up the street and stop in front of his house. It was like Christmas every day.
The days went by slowly and pleasantly. Frank did not answer the telephone and did not open any mail. He only left the garage to make trips to the machine shop, or to the speed shop for needed odds and ends.
With the arrival of all the main components, the gutted SS started to take shape again. Parts started to fall into place. Some things required drilling, bending, shaping and fitting. Frank carefully fitted each and every piece with patience until he was satisfied that it was perfect.
By the time three weeks rolled by, Frank was forced to stop by the pharmacy and get that prescription filled. The pharmacist looked a bit startled when he read the doctors scrawl and placed a call to check it out. Frank took a double-dose of pain killers to sleep that night, but he woke up so fuzzy headed the next morning that he flushed the remaining pills down the toilet.
It took one more week before the car was completed. Naturally, enough the last two bolts were snubbed in place well into the wee hours of the morning. Frank poured some 76 competition 110-octane race fuel into the tank, got in the SS, inserted the key and turned it.
It took a few seconds for the big 382 to light off, but when it did, the sound from the chmbered exhaust was pure music. The motor responded cleanly and instantly with a rapping snarl. Frank ran the SS for five minutes, ignoring the blue haze filling up the garage, then shut off the lights and went to bed.
Early the next morning, he rose and went out to the garage. A couple hours were spent checking all of the nuts and bolts with a torque wrench. Frank then pulled the beast out of the garage and nudged the factory Hurst into first and eased away. She pulled strongly, satisfyingly, through the gears. Not a hint of a flat spot, or even a burble, as the revs rose. Once on the highway the SS responded like an F16 when the pedal was depressed. The lonely, sparsely used highway was gobbled up in blinding triple digit speeds. Chomping at the bit to be fully released, the SS appeared to have no end to its power.
He stopped off at his favorite restaurant and had steak and eggs and several cups of scalding hot black coffee. The waitress smiled from ear to ear when he left a whole crisp fifty dollar bill with the check.
Thirty minutes later, Frank arrived at his favorite mountain road “testing” area. He got out and stretched his legs and breathed in the fresh morning air, listening to the sweet rumble of that gorgeous red chariot. The sun was just coming up to the east. Good.
Frank got back in the car and followed the leisurely winding two-lane road through the valley and caught the old fire access road heading up the mountain side. The smoothly paved road had just the perfect surface for letting it all hang out.
Once he got the feel of the SS, Frank started to stuff it into the turns letting the rear end hang out. Using the point and shoot method from turn to turn, the car would devour the straight-aways only to be begrudgingly hauled down from speed by those big 6 piston Wilwoods. The cycle repeated itself without a trace of brake fade. The exhaust note wailing off the steep canyon walls. As the road climbed, Frank was forced to use a lower gear and rev the engine harder to maintain his speed. A thin sheet of perspiration covered his forehead and face. . . he breathed harder and worked the car deeper into turns.
As Frank neared the summit, he saw the last wide sweeping corner before the road ended at a scenic viewpoint. It was clearly marked with white barriers to keep wayward vehicles from plummeting off the vertical drop.
Frank smiled, took a deep breath, let the revs rise and aimed the nose directly at the flimsy barriers. The white wood snapped cleanly and the car sailed out into the clear blue air. Frank held tightly onto the leather wrapped wheel and sailed and sailed and sailed. He had always wondered what it might be like.
And now he knew.
[ 06. September 2002, 04:58 PM: Message edited by: MMMM_ERT ]
Posts: 700 | From: Fighting the Nazis of the world..... | Registered: Jul 2002
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