It was raining the day I picked them up. Grey clouds scudded overhead as I reluctantly made my way to the Post Office. Registered mail. I had a sense of foreboding but maybe the sudden change of weather was getting on my nerves. ....
They came in a sack. I remember thinking that nothing good comes in a sack. Good things come in parcels wrapped with cheery wrapping paper and with a card. Or from Creative Engineering. Nothing good comes in a sack sent from up north....
It all began two weeks or so ago. A phone call from one of the Buggy Boyz up north. Hard men who build strange vehicles and break them. A lot. It gives them pleasure. The buggy boyz are singing the siren's song to my children who are attracted to their outlaw lifestyle.......
Brad had some spindles he wanted me to look at. Buggy spindles. An ungodly mix of parts with splitbus kingpins. He wondered if I could handle them. I'm not young anymore and buggy stuff is tough. Real tough. My hands aren't what they used to be. But I had no choice. I owed the buggy boyz some favours. It was pay back time.....
I opened the sack. Hard spindles. Dry spindles. Rusty spindles. Unforgiving spindles. They looked like trouble. Big trouble. Like a cheap strat copy. Like a Mickey Spillane novel. The smell of trouble filled the air......
I reached for old faithful. We'd been partners for ten years now and cracked open many spindles together.
Like me, old faithful was getting past his prime. But we'd never failed. Together we'd take these tough looking critters from up north.
We didn't touch them. The country buggy spindles from up north took old faithful down before either of us knew what had happened. He shrieked as they tore the life out of him. Ten years together. The spindles that came from up north in a sack glinted at me manevolently. I slowly put old faithful in the metal recycling bin and said a quiet prayer.
No bad boy spindle from up north was going to take me. I needed more firepower.
I went to see Costa. Costa's a 2nd hand metal dealer. We've been friends for a long time. Costa's connected. I told Costa I wanted something special. He opened the safe. I bought some 15mm plate and some solid 25mm round stock. And a shoulder holster. I went home and cut the whole thing down. When finished I had a new partner. Godzilla would make those spindles from up north pay.
I used the overhead hoist to move godzilla to the press. The bad boy spindles from up north looked nervous for the first time. Godzilla wanted them bad and kept leaping against the chains. I put one of the spindles from up north in the press. The metal was sweating. Godzilla pinned him and we pumped up the pressure to about 15 tons. I reached for the heater.....
The bad boy spindle from up north broke like a 6 footer on the reef at Rincon. We left it in a sobbing heap on the bench..
The spindles from up north are better now. The years of hard life have left their scars on them. But I'll machine them next week and fit them up with some nice new oversize brass bushes.
I threw the sack away.
[Edited on 3-6-2004 by splitbusaustralia]
splitbusaustralia Wolfsburg Wizard
487 posts · joined Aug 2002 ·
