Watchin’ God – Lord, I’m Lost – Again!
Elusive
Parts
Prelude
Once long ago I owned a 1987 Plymouth Colt E. At one
point it needed the engine bearings redone. No problem, it just required
money. So we thought.
A few days after the Colt was in the shop the mechanic
called. It would be a few more days, and by the way, would I be willing
to drive the 2.5 hour RT to pick up the parts. Seems the bearings didn't
fit.
Turned out that the external parts of the car were for a
1987 model, but the interior engine parts were for the 1986 model. The date of manufacture was August 1986 –
just one month short of the model year change in September. What you see is not always what you get,
evidently.
Loved the car. Wish I had another one.
Fast forward 15 years.
Chapter 1
A chance discovery of old photographs prompted the search
for a friend of long ago. That’s a whole
other story!
The gentleman in question (PR) happened to mention that he
was looking for an elusive part to his car.
He was in Boston, I in South
Georgia. He and his
mechanic had both tried to find the part, with no success. Since it was necessary to fix the car in
order for it to pass inspection and be roadworthy, I attempted to locate the
part, calling all over the country. I did
locate one in Jacksonville,
FL, but for some reason we didn’t
acquire it. In retrospect, $100 for the
whole assembly when only a small part was necessary would have seemed a good
deal. But alas, it didn’t happen. Not to worry – there was a few months grace
before it had to be fixed.
When PR and I were married, I moved up from South Georgia to
the suburbs of Boston. The traffic was horrendous, as far as I was
concerned. Not to mention that the
streets where we lived are narrow and congested. Our street was a narrow two-lane, with
parking on one side. The duplex parking
only allowed us one off-street space, so I’d have to parallel park – not my
forte`. My car was donated to my
youngest son, as I had no intention of driving (or trying to park!) at my new
home.
It was literally 6 months before I would drive south of
I-95. When I had a doctor’s appointment
3 miles from work through a nice quiet suburban area I went to work with PR and
then drove around north of I-95 all day.
Sometimes I’d go shopping or perhaps hang out at a library until it was
time to go home. Sometimes a visit to
PR’s parents was on the agenda, rarely planned in advance. And sometimes I’d just drive around and get
lost.
One day I started to make an impromptu and unannounced visit
with my in-laws after dropping PR off at work. For some reason I took
exit 37 off 495, and turned out to be. . . lost.
It's always fun to get lost.
There's usually a reason or someone whom God wants me to give a
tract. So I kept an eye out that day for what could be the reason.
When I saw a “carpet remnant sale” sign it seemed like a good place to stop,
since we were in the market for a piece of carpet. I figured God was working down my shopping
list.
Don't ask me how I missed the carpet place. The back
warehouse bay door was open, with carpet rolls all over the racks lining the walls.
But I didn't notice it... Instead I talked to the group of guys outside
the bay at a machine shop next door to the carpet place. There were also
4 old solid-wood kitchen chairs stacked outside a dumpster. It would be good to ask the guys if they were
free for the taking. For a confirmed junker, that’s an invitation to stop
even if I hadn’t been lost!
Never being the shy one at an impromptu meeting, I parked
the car and walked over to the group of guys.
“Hi! Can you help
me? I’m lost. Well, actually I'm saved, but I don't know
where the carpet store is.”
They got a kick out of me not being able to find the
warehouse door immediately to the left of their shop. In the course of
conversation, I mentioned stopping because we needed a small piece of carpet.
Pointing out the chairs, I said I'd love to have them, too, but didn't
really need them. One of the
guys said they were fair game, since they had been sitting beside that dumpster
for 3 weeks.
I tried to get all four chairs in the car. It could have been done, except we had a rider
that day who took up a spot in the back seat. I did take 2 of them,
though, and said I'd be back the next week or so to pick up the rest if they
were still there, then went next door to look at carpet.
The carpet guy, Matthew, was nice and showed me what he
had, albeit not much in the line of what I wanted. In the end he gave me
a small remnant left over from a stairway project. I thanked him kindly
and gave him a Chick tract. After all, what’s the point in being lost if
you can’t spread a little gospel seed?
I think the tract was “Somebody Angry?”, which chronicles
the relationship between a country’s negative relationship with modern-day Israel and political
or physical problems - plagues, destruction, political demise, etc. In
the case of America, every time we go against Israel it seems we have suffered
at the hands of either our enemies (the bombing of the USS Cole, the Embassy,
9-11), or at the hand of God (Hurricane Katrina, severe and damaging
weather in unexpected places, etc). http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/1055/1055_01.asp
Never did make it to visit my in-laws that day. And they were none the wiser.
The next weekend PR and I stopped to pick up the
chairs. No one was at either shop.
Chapter 2
Fast forward to several weeks later.
There was a bible class in Haverhill on Wednesday afternoons that I
attended. Exit 37 on 495 is on the usual route. Every Wednesday as
I approached that exit, God would tell me to stop and see Matthew about another
piece of carpet for the bedroom. I always chicken out, because the carpet
is only an excuse for talking about the tract. It's easy to do that on
the spur of the moment, but to go intentionally . . . that's a different
story.
Several Wednesday’s into the class I knew I was going to get
the same message. It was one of
those 8-hour days, and the class didn’t start for another 2 hours. It was only a 20 minute trip from the exit in
question. This time I finally said (out
loud) “Yeah, OK Lord... But you'll have to tell me what to say!!”
(Always a good idea anyway!)
When I pulled into the warehouse area, the carpet store was
closed for the day!
"Now Lord, what on earth was that about???" I asked. Then it hit me!
There is a MACHINE shop next door! Maybe they will have some idea about
the car part. So I asked, and was sent to Jack's Used Auto Parts just
down the road.
Now, I usually am pretty familiar with engine specs on my
vehicle, so I was surprised when the guy behind the counter at Jack's asked if
the Taurus has flex fuel.
Blank stare. I’d
never heard of such a thing.
A kindly gentleman behind the first guy explained to me “flex
fuel” indicated the car used either gas or ethanol. When I asked how to
determine that, he said there would be a tag on the side of the car indicating
such.
No such thing to my knowledge. I said “no”. So
the guy at the computer typed in the appropriate info and printed out a list of
6 vehicles that matched the model year and engine.
The list indicated OHV and I understood our car to be
OHC. After a bit, I got to wondering if they were the same thing. Every now and then it becomes obvious that my
knowledge is lacking. I called the local
Ford dealership. After asking about the OHV/OHC and explaining about the
part we were looking for, the nice guy at the parts counter wanted to order the
part for me. Sure, I'd let him look. Never know when something will
show up. So I gave him the parts number, from the blow-up diagram I got from
a previous unfruitful trip to that same shop.
Then he said a strange thing - 'Oh, it's for a flex fuel
engine.'
Say WHAT?? How could I determine that from my
vehicle? He said there would be a label on the side of the car, or
failing that on a white tag by the radiator. I looked on the side of the car.
Nothing. With the phone in hand, I
popped the hood and asked the parts guy “where's the radiator?!” He must
have been either laughing or rolling his eyes at that! I couldn’t see him, which is probably just as
well. (In my defense, there is no obvious radiator! But I figured
where there's a fan, there must be a radiator.)
No label on the car, no white tag by anything that
would pass for a radiator. Still, as the parts guy and Jake the mechanic said
- it's a California
emissions engine . . . Interesting.
And of course, the parts guy found out the part is no longer
manufactured, and no dearlership in the country has it in stock. I
thanked him when he suggested my only recourse was junk yards. Been there, done that. No luck yet.
Then it hit me.
Remember the Colt? The parts weren't what the engine
specs said they should be. I wonder . . . could the same thing be
true of this part?
Chapter 3
Saturday PR and I went up to Jack's to see. I had the
list in hand, so we didn't even have to stop at the long line at the front desk
to get a list.
We were only able to locate 4 of the 6 vehicles on the
list. The first 3 didn’t have the easily
identifiable but elusive part. PR found the fourth car while I was up the
aisle looking in another location. The car was in such a position as to
be difficult to get to the hood latch. PR had to tug on the passenger
door pretty hard to get it open. Then there was glass in the seat. He did finally manage to climb through the
car to reach the hood latch. And didn't
even get glass in his seat.
Since I was standing by the front of the car, I got to be
the one to open the hood. And there it was! Sitting pretty as
you please - the part we have been looking for for 6 months!
Thank you LORD!
We had a few tools with us, but the bolts were pretty rusted
and we forgot the WD-40. Besides, it was going to be a difficult task
getting to the bolt with the car on the ground. We stopped at the office on
the way out and PR sent me in to ask about having someone help me take the
part off the car when we came back later. It was only 5 minutes to
closing, so I would have to come back on one of those 8-hour days while I was
killing time.
In an exuberant mood, I called a friend of mine in AK and
asked if she'd send one of her mechanics over to take the part off for
us. She laughed and said “Yeah, sure. Give me a minute to arrange
for a flight!” Hey, it would have been cheaper to pay for the
plane ticket and expenses than to have to buy a new car over that missing piece!
The following Wednesday I stopped at the junk yard to spray
the part down with WD-40, hoping to come back with PR on Friday to attempt to
remove it. But Lo! A nice gentleman
offered on Wednesday to have it off the car and waiting for us on Friday! Of course I took him up on it!
The part cost us a grand total of $5.
The car lasted for a few more months, when it failed the
yearly inspection. Seems the struts were
no longer being supported by the rusted-out car frame. The mechanic who did the inspection suggested
I take it to our mechanic for an estimate on the repair. Jake called me a few hours after I dropped
the car off at the shop. “So, what kind
of truck are you buying for PR?” Seems
that not only was the frame rusted out, but the floor pan also had a hole in the
back seat. That would explain why it
felt soft under the carpet. And also why
there was exhaust smell in the car.
We had just 2 weeks prior to this bad news bought a used
car, and were in the process of moving to within a mile of work, so the loss of
the Taurus wasn’t dramatic.
Jake kept the car and parted out the good pieces to people
he knew who needed it. There was a
gentleman who needed tires but couldn’t afford them, and we had just put a
whole new set on the car. I’m not sure
what became of that precious and difficult to locate part, but Jake was careful
to remove it before the car went to the crusher!
Don’t you just love a good “Lord, I’m lost – again” Watchin’
God story?!
