The Dreggs

The past two days at work have been AB'solute garbage. What's funny is it hasn't been the crazy people walking in and making unreasonable demands that has made it so undesirable; though some of them have not made it any better. (I am not meant to be in retail service.) No! It's the fact that the past two days the hours I have spent at work have drug on like it was twelve hours long instead of the eight I was actually there. It probably hasn't helped either that after work I was utterly exhausted and wanted to do absolutely nothing; not even the the passive vegging of watching television. Howevahh, Even with all that as an obstacle to overcome, I still wrote two short stories off the cuff. So, go Fuck yourself. AMC Eagle Update: For those of you that don't know, I bought another car. Yeah, that makes three, what am I gonna do with three cars, what do you think? No, I'm not gonna sell any of them.

 

Anyway, ever since seeing and sitting in an AMC Eagle in High School Autoshop, I've always had a keen interest in the cars of the American Motor Company. While they weren't the best cars in the world, they owned and did some cool shit with Jeeps and a few of their own conceived cars. That said, I've always hence wanted an Eagle, They aren't at all beautiful, they are an enthusiast's car; a station wagon with a Jeep engine, Four wheel drive and independent front suspension. The problem in owning one of these vehicles has been that they aren't popular in Oregon and they weren't plentiful, even in the 80's. Whenever I've seen one for sale on the internet, they have been treated like shit and are in crap condition. They are also generally listed around 4 grand, even in crap condition and in locations like, Wisconsin or Michigan. That makes it Non-accessible to me. Que One day out of the ether I went on to craigslist; which I don't do, and searched/found this car in Salem. Short story: after getting denied by all the powers that be, my co worker went down with me and I bought the thing from a guy with four gun safes in his bedroom; hundreds of guns, acres of offroad land and a dog Mike almost ran over while we were test driving it:

"The dog is smart, he'll move... (Dog begins walking towards car) Maybe not." - Mike ( Below driving the Eag' home.)

By any stretch of a coin:
$1500 dollars later
in addition to
a $40 tune up: Plug/Wires/Distributer Cap/Ignition Rotor
$20 oil change
$600 dollars in alignment/front tires and front suspension parts:
Upper Ball Joints/ Idler Arm
$140 Valvecover and gasket set:

     

 

coupled with a new mattress...

March turned into the month of overindulgence. But since I never spend any money on myself, it doesn't really matter.

"Fuck the nay sayers 'cause they don't mean a thing." - 311

 Fast forward to a few days ago I took the Cahh'[sic] over to a friend's house and worked on not only tearing off some of the ancient plastic trim with its 'antiquated' rusted ass chrome accents 

(you can see a strip of it in the picture with Mike) 

that wasn't even chrome anymore and only held on by some rusted out screws and '1981 3M tape'

(AMC Doucher: "So... Yeah, it will look high speed for like... Ehhh, 15 years... maybe? But who cares, its not our problem at that point. It's John Q. American Douche Bag's. We probably won't even be a car company anymore at that point. We might even be sold off to saaaaaaay 'Chryst'ler[sic] (Laugh, Laugh, Laugh)." 

I also went and bought; at the behest of and seeing the result of how this friend made a rear carpet out of the stuff in his Jeep Cherokee, and cut out some rubber diamond plated matting for the back. I rounded the edges with some door trim and that made it look like it was something professionally sold and designed for the back of the car.

   

So onto tonight. I was going to buy and replace the gear oil in not only my transmission but also the front and rear differentials, which requires you to unbolt and pop off the covers and gaskets, clean the gears put on a new gasket or RTV the cover back on and then fill; all this on your back, under the car. But I relented when I heard I could get a better discount in a few days. So, I ended up going home and crashing for a few hours before deciding to get my begrudged, unmotivated ass up and do something. So... Uhhhh.. Now I'm pulling small compressed pieces of fiberglass out of the skin on my arms, hands and neck. Because I decided to tear apart/gut the back end. TONIGHT! I went through and spent about two hours unscrewing and removing everything and anything in the way of me getting to removing the headliner. This required pulling all the trim out; which I assumed I would have to do walking into it, but in order to remove the trim holding up, I needed to also; maybe you guessed it, remove everything else also, which included this sheet metal table behind the back seat that covered the spare tire and both sections of the back seat. Thank the gods, unlike my 89 Cadillac; which had a headliner I also removed and had reupholstered, The trim pieces on the Eagle had screws in them instead of sharp teeth ridden clips that were riveted into the frame and underlying body on the Cadillac. These little fucking things not only cut up my hands, but they tore into the trim and made each trim piece a bastard to remove; I also always felt like I was going to snap the trim pieces with all the prying that needed to be done to access the clips. Long story short I took out everything. I'm planning on cleaning all these pieces; they are moldy and mildewing from 30 years of camping trips and dog piss that are probably all over them. Anyway, the plan is to clean out the car's body and then Rhino line the entire thing before putting everything back.

   

Back to the fiberglass in my skin I had to man up and stick my hand up between the headliner and roof to pull its moldy falling ass apart down; and if you don't know, car headliners; at least from the eighties, are giant layered pieces of fiberglass board that traverse the distance of the roof of your vehicles. The car is now a shell behind the front seats. I took the car for a drive down town and saw the Lovely Mia Allen as she got off work and then headed home. I am now headed into two days off. I'm hoping my usual funk doesn't get too ingrained and I am able to either keep busy with the car or read and write. Gods know I have every desire to attack the world, but no wherewithal. 

With many said Platitudes,

 [Make] babies 

-Dykeout