The Battlecruiser coughed, sputtered, then roared to life and limped out of the shop with a flat right-rear tire and questionable brakes. Fresh October air was pumped into the leaky tire, and the oil and transmission fluid was checked. A patch of rubber and a screaming pass down the highway verified its tenacious claim to life, 170 thousand miles since rolling off the assembly line in late 1974. Somehow a pile of parts in Lansing, Michigan became a living thing with a bad attitude.
After wasting seventy dollars on a new brake rotor and caliper, I discovered the real source of my braking woes - rusty, leaky, twenty-year-old rear brake lines. Brakes - who needs 'em? I didn't have the time or patience to correct the problem so I called Hansen over to help me bleed the front calipers, then gave into the irresistable urge to go hunting.
The Battlecruiser was loaded up for the 1000 mile trip back to Virginia. I put my faith and future in the Navy behind a decrepit, cancerous old refugee from the age of platform shoes and disco. The right-rear tire was still leaky and now completely bald (thanks to a couple of smokey brake stands which will remain preserved in black top forever). To make matters worse, the spare had gone flat and popped off its bead and the car made a weird clunking noise that I just couldn't pinpoint. However, I knew the Battlecruiser wouldn't let me down and I would be in Norfolk, Virginia by midnight on Sunday.
I was so sure of a smooth trip that I spent most of my extra time bullshitting with the Hansens. I finally pulled out at eight o'clock on Saturday night, having already been awake since five-thirty that morning.
Everything went great until I got just outside of Chicago and the weird clunking noise got worse. I pulled into an oasis on the interstate to investigate. The right-front tire was worn down to the wire along the outside of the tread. I figured how to use the rusty old jack, which luckily had not disappeared over the years, and got the thing up off the ground. I soon realized what my problem was: stupid Josh hadn't tightened the wheel bearings enough when he replaced the brake rotor. I corrected this mistake and decided to switch this tire with the left-front, hoping to coax a few more miles out of it.
It lasted about another hundred miles.
I heard a really nasty, loud, tire-ripping-apart noise, luckily only two miles from an exit. Pretty blue lights brought me to a halt before I made it there. A friendly Ohio state trooper offered his assistance by threatening to write me a ticket for driving too slow on the interstate. I tried to explain that my tire had just exploded, but he replied that it looked fine to him. I couldn't believe it! I had to jump out and show him the tire, which had not really exploded, but had become completely de-treaded. It still held some air which was hissing out loudly. The cop wanted to know why I didn't stop to look at it right away. Obviously he thought I'd be much safer screwing around with it in the dark beside the highway rather than parked at the oasis two miles down the road. Finally the cop came up with his most brilliant statement. He told me that he was going to let me go, but he would give me a ticket if I left the oasis without first fixing my tire. Oh gee, officer, I thought I could make it to Virginia on the damn rim! Actually, I probably would have tried it had it come down to that.
The service place along the interstate didn't open until 6 AM, so I grabbed a couple of tasteless cinnamon biscuits at Hard-on's and caught Z's for an hour and a half. Five bucks to a wrench-jockey got my spare tire and me back on the road.
About five miles past the oasis, the Battlecruiser began to vibrate like hell. I started slowing down, then found myself steering a three-wheeled car with the left-front rotor providing the braking in a way that the boys at GM had never intended. Stupid Josh had forgotten to tighten the lug nuts. Great driving skills prevailed, and I guided my ailing hulk to the shoulder and retrieved the culprit wheel from the ditch. The tire had a huge gash in it, so I threw it in the trunk. An inspection of the rotor revealed that it was probably salvageable, but the wheel studs looked like Grandma's teeth. I could do nothing but kick the newly-mangled fender a few times, then sit down and try to think up excuses for the skipper at my Captain's Mast.
I soon got the pleasure of meeting another one of Ohio's friendly state troopers. This guy was actually pretty nice, however. He called a tow truck and asked me a bunch of questions: How fast was I going? What lane was I in? Was my car damaged? Was I damaged? Etc, etc. He then informed me that the town I was stranded in was Swanton, Ohio. "Oh boy, this is my lucky day," I dryly remarked. After lying about my insurance (or rather, lack of it), he left me alone to the amusement of the Sunday traffic until the tow truck finally arrived.
Fortunately for me, the tow truck dude was pretty cool. The huge shop he towed me to had an ample supple of parts, and he let me use their tools for free. I guess since his boss wasn't around he didn't give a shit. He really saved my ass, though, because Swanton didn't have any service stations open on Sundays, and I couldn't afford any of their outrageous prices anyway. The tow, tire, studs, and lug nuts cost me $105 and a few precious hours. I pulled out of Swanton with about a hundred bucks left in my pocket and less than twelve hours to get back to Norfolk. If anything else broke I was screwed.
That long afternoon the strange clunking noise persisted, but got no worse. The Battlecruiser ate up miles and gas. A weekend with almost no food or sleep began to take its toll on me. For the last two hours, I found it nearly impossible to keep my eyes open. I would doze off, then jerk awake and find myself in the other lane or on the shoulder.
At approximately 11:30 PM on October ninth, one half-hour before my leave expired and twenty-eight hours after leaving the Hansen's house, a huge, rustbucket Cutlass with no hub caps and a freshly dented and rubber-streaked left-front fender rumbled and clunked its way onto Norfolk Naval Air Station. It proudly sported a pair of dirty white plates from the glorious State of Wisconsin, and it was eager to spew filthy pollutants and tire smoke into the skies above Virginia.
Author's note: I drove that wonderful automobile for five years and regretfully had to sell it for $250
