Back Yard Mechanics

Spring 1973:
Ed Colley gave me a 1964 Chevy Biscayne staton wagon for free - called it a graduation gift. It wouldn't pass inspection because the body was too rotted out, but the engine was pretty solid. Laurie owned a 1965 Impalla who's body was fine, but the motor was on it's way out. Jay was a friend and a sophmore in high school who's father had set him up with his own garage on the family compound known as Woodman Terrace (Jay's family, and various uncles & grandparents all owned adjacent houses on this dirt dead end road). Jay volunteered that swapping the motors would be a piece of cake and he could do it in our back yard. Not having all his shop tools at hand, we had to improvise a bit. The swings came off the swing set, replaced with a "chain-fall" pully. My car was rolled under it, hoses & wires & cables all dis-assembled, and the motor lifted up and out. We pushed my motorless car out from under and placed the engine on a wooden palet, which in turn was dragged out of the way. Then Lauries car went through the same process. Then the good motor dragged back, lifted, and Lauries car rolled back. Rather miraculously, after all of this manual shoving and hoisting and dragging and repeating - the Biscayne motor and the Impalla car drove away under it's own power (and continued to drive for 4 or 5 years further).

I was left without a car now. Somewhere I ended up with an old VW Bug that of course - needed work. Sadly, Jay had backpacked with Laurie & I during the summer - and it was not pretty. He had hitchhiked home from Pennsyvania after one week on the AT (Appalachian Trail) and we were not on good terms any more (another story for another time). But cousin Dave Gurney was a fairly handy amature mechanic and because I pumped gas at Lloyds Garage, we had a place where we could work on it some - after hours. Of course I couldn't get it there legally as it was unregistered, so I had to drive it through the woods trail behind Nenna's, past Casoli's house, across Phillips St, across what used to be the Hall's Farm (since plowed bare into a large dirt pit) across the railroad tracks (where there was no actual crossing) to get into the lot behind the garage. NO PROBLEM - except when I tried to approach the tracks. There was a low muddy trench where run-off water gathered, then a sharp incline to get up over the tracks. The VW didn't make it through the mud and got stuck - 5 ft off of the tracks. Dave had to drive his car around to the other side, tie a rope from his bumper, over the tracks, and onto the VW - and pull like crazy. Well, the bug made it over, we put in new brake lines and drove it back. It made it over the tracks OK, but there was the darned mud again. At least that time we didn't have to worry about trains coming while we towed it out.