Being young and inexperienced sucks. Recently, I scored myself a no-brainer job at a local custom shop because I had a lack of knowledge when it came to building vehicles. I went on a quest to find a job that would allow me to better my fabricating skills. What ended up happening is that I landed a sweeping job at this place called So Cool Speed Shop.
You might not think of it as being a hard job to keep, but it is, especially when I don't know much about some of the tools that I find in the shop. It's hard to keep them tidy and in order when I don't even know what they are used for. When it came time to clean the layers of dust and debris, I almost burned the joint down with my cleaning methods.
Believe it or not, that's just the beginning of this story. After that incident, my boss Queso sent me on a mission to the local parts store to fetch him some needed supplies for the shop. That was a task in itself because I had no idea what he wanted me to get, so how was I to look for something I've never seen before?
So, I took my sorry butt to my laid-out '74 C10, aired it up, and launched out of the parking lot. I had two ways to get to the parts store that Queso was sending me to. I could take the freeway where there might be major traffic, or I could cruise through the side streets because it would take my mind off of the disaster I created at work.
I breezed on by and made a quick pass through this traffic circle in the old part of town. I took my turn out and then waited for a crossing train. As I sat idling on the street, I looked in my rearview mirror and spotted a brand-new Ferrari 430 Modena behind me. I was tempted to drop my pile and drag on this snooty fool once the train had gone by. I stopped myself though because I also spotted a motorcycle cop off in the distance. So, I sat there and ignored him so that I wouldn't appear to be suspicious or anything.
When the railroad crossing arms raised up, I gently rolled down the street, and then all of a sudden those flashing lights were behind me. I eased over and waited for him to hassle me. Once he reached my door, I turned to him and saw that he was a huge cop that still had donut crumbs in the corners of his lips. Once he had my I.D., he went back to his bike, while I tried to figure out how he stayed in shape enough to still pass his annual physical, or even shoe-horn himself into his uniform, for that matter.
The cop came back to my window and handed me a bomb of a ticket. Even though it didn't have any moving violations, the stuff that was required to be fixed meant that I had a lot of work to make my truck legal. I desperately tried to sweet-talk him out of the ticket. But, no, he just stood there with a smile on his pudgy face and told me that he was chasing that Ferrari, but then he saw me and had the guts to say out loud, "What a perfect way to end my day."
I still had to make my way to the parts store. A few blocks later, I arrived at Jerry's Auto supplies. It was this old store that was dark and dingy, like nobody had walked through the doors for a few decades. The place smelled like an old cigar, and sure enough, the owner was sitting in his little ol' office puffing on a stogy. The older-than-funk owner told me that Queso and he were old friends who met back in the hot rod days. He then handed me the supplies I needed and wished me good luck with old "white lightning"-whatever that meant.
I scrambled to make my way back to the shop in a hurry. I knew that my little escapade took a while, and my boss was going to rip into me when I got there. After one block of driving my pile, it decided to crap out, and I was left with no air in the suspension system. So, I had a choice: either sit there and call for a tow, which will damage the truck, or just suck it up and drag my way back. Since the truck would get wounded no matter what, I decided to drag that sled for six miles to the shop.
This was no easy task, as I went slowly to minimize the damage. In doing so, the other idiots on the road just about ran into me because I was going so slow. I finally made it to the shop driveway. That was the fun part because even though I just avoided getting ran over I still had to make it up this steep driveway to get to my work where I could hopefully fix the truck. I just drove over that hump of concrete and heard my truck hit rock bottom. As the hump reached the middle of the frame, the back wheels couldn't get any traction while the truck teeter-tottered. I gunned it and made it past, ran into the shop, and panted while calling for Queso's help.
My boss came out to see the damage and looked at me in shame. He asked if I called this POS a custom truck, while he gazed over at the mangled steel. Then, he said that he had to teach me a lesson or two about fabricating...