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I had already gotten us lost down the road with the super top-secret installation on it, and we made a U-turn before the guys who brandish automatic weapons could tell us to turn around.
We pulled over, and I hopped out, looked underneath to find the muffler pipe cracked and threatening to break off completely up front near the manifold.
I had come home to Lake LA, put on my Victor Valley British Car Club polo shirt, and we headed to Victorville for my car club meeting. I thought it would be cool for Dad to meet my new friends.
He was driving, because he wanted to, and hey, not only is he the lien holder, but he washed the thing while I was at work. How do you say “no” to that?
Now we were in the middle of nowhere —well, actually, it was Sheep Creek Road, just past the cows—with a muffler that wanted to fall off. Dad gets us off the road onto the dirt shoulder, scans the field next to us, and then starts backing up.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I saw a piece of wire fencing back there.”
My dad has an eagle eye and can find nuts, bolts, and tools in the middle of nowhere. Once, when I was a kid, he suddenly stopped the car and backed up 200 yards. When we kids asked, he told us he had seen a 7/16 socket in the middle of the road and he was going to retrieve it.
He opened his door, leaned out of his seat, picked it up and I’ll be damned if it wasn’t a 7/16 socket. I’m lucky I can see my offramp or pedestrians, let alone tools.
Luckily, I had a pair of dykes in my tool bag from when I had to cut off the cookie sheet- cum-drip pan in the Wal-Mart parking lot. And I found a bungee cord for luggage, a gift from the previous owners.
So my dad, the original MacGyver, has waded in the chaparral and come back with an old length of fencing, which we trim to make a long piece of wire. He wires up the muffler, and we use the bungee cord to help support the weight, bringing it through the driver’s door and hooking it under the passenger seat.
The muffler isn’t going anywhere now, and we’re still up for the trip. The car club assembles at 6 p.m. at Lilly’s Place Restaurant for dinner and the actual meeting starts at 7 p.m. We’ll be a little late, but can still catch the meeting.
He’s still driving, and I’m still complaining that he’s going too fast, because every time the road even looks like it has a bump in it, we hear a banging noise.
We know it’s not the muffler now, and he thinks it might be the shackle plates holding the springs in, or the springs themselves.
The farther we go, the more freaked out I am by the noise. I desperately want to go to the meeting, and if we don’t go, we have to eat leftovers, because I’m not cooking now.
Finally, I can’t stand it anymore, and we reluctantly abort the mission. We enquire in Phelan and they tell us about a Mexican place on Highway 138.
Unfortunately, we blow right past it, and the idea of Mr. Toad making a U-turn on the Highway of Death is too much for me, so I say, “Let’s go home.”
The leftovers were actually good, thanks to my brother’s barbecue on Monday.
Dad looks at me and grins, “You’re really a lousy date, you know that?”
I could say the same about him, but don’t.
The next day I come home and he’s got the MG up on jack stands in the driveway. “Come ‘ere, ya gotta look at this,” he says.
The shock absorber links on both sides of the car had come unwelded and the banging noise we heard was 13 millimeter metal rods slamming into the undercarriage. We’re lucky they didn’t come right through the floorboards.
Well, there’s always next month’s meeting.
