When I left off I was working at the Shell station. A lot of things that you did, you learned by osmosis. You did not want people to know that you did not know what you were doing so you just faked it. Well this happened about the second month that I worked there. My buddy Rich Halsted, who owns the cornucopia coffee company in town was a year older than me in high school. Well winter came early to glen park that year and the service station did light towing and would jump start your battery and that kind of stuff. I had gone on a couple of service calls which now qualified me as a certified technician. I just had my drivers license for about 6 months (which reminds me that I’ll have to write a blog about drivers training with coach Polly). Anyway, I’m at the station on a Saturday morning and a call comes in that rich Halstead is stranded down by the library. No one else is around so mike the owner sends me on the service call. Now I was still mastering driving a car let alone the tow truck. At that age you really don’t know any better so I said , “I’m on my way.”
The library was on 39th and Broadway and the station was at 49th. 10 blocks doesn’t sound far but it seemed to take me forever to get there. Of course being my first solo in the truck probably had a little to do with it. I find Rich sitting in his car because it’s cold out and it had been snowing. He waves me down. That’s when I went into big shot mode. He was parked facing south on the west side of the street, so I made a u turn and parked the front of my truck facing the oncoming traffic next to the front of rich’s car. I had all the lights flashing on the truck and I was blocking one lane of southbound traffic so everyone starting gawking as they slowed down. They thought something big was going on till they looked over and saw this dumb kid (me) just kind of standing around.
As I asked Rich what the problem was he answered in typical glen park fashion, the ___ ____thing won’t _____ start. I understood explicitly then, that besides not starting, he was not in a good mood. Rich was a senior and I was a junior at the time so they always had a attitude about underclassmen anyway. I put the jumper cables on and nothing happened. We tried to let it charge up a little and tried it again, nothing. We did this another 3 or 4 times when Rich asked me if I knew what the hell I was doing. I answered defiantly even though I had no clue.
Finally I said we are going to have to tow it in to the station. Now he was really honked because it was going to be another 20 bucks to tow it in. He said ok because we really were not getting anywhere. Now I had hardly ever driven the truck, let alone tow something so now I was in deep dodo. I went ahead and did what we normally do in this situation and faked it. I got under his car and hooked it up, laying in the snow trying to figure what to hook it to. I had turned the truck around and Rich’s car was parked between two cars and I was trying to figure out how to get the front end hooked up behind the truck while I was still one lane over. Luckily the guy parked in front of Rich came out and left, which gave me room to maneuver. I got everything connected and we were getting ready to take off. All I had to do was winch it up. Rich was sitting in the front seat warming up and I went to operate the winch. I started it up and the front end started to raise up, when all of a sudden all you could hear was sheet metal ripping and the sound of a car bouncing up and down on its front tires.
Rich came flying out of the truck and could not believe his eyes. I, at the young age of 16 had no idea how to hook something to the frame of the car. I had faked it by hooking to the front of his bumper which was still hanging by the hook in mid air. I don’t remember his exact word but it was something like you dumb son of a ____. Do you have any idea what you are doing? Needless to say I went back to the station and told Mike who also gave me an earful. We went back and got Rich’s car and fixed it for him. I didn’t go on many service calls for a while but I did learn a valuable lesson. Now I don’t fake it anymore unless I can get away with it. Whenever I stop at Cornucopia Coffee Company Rich always never lets me forget I pulled his bumper off.
Until later ……………………………………Ciao
Fred Cicco