daneallred

Automotive Repair

AUTOMOTIVE REPAIR

Why does society allow someone like me who has dozens of accidents to keep driving? Another automotive adventure was with the Mazda RX-7 which we had bought from my mom. Debbie drove the car during her cancer treatment and even jumped it over some curbs somewhere when she was on morphine. After the chemotherapy, she thought the car smelled like the drugs they had injected her with, and she couldn't drive it anymore. I got to drive that car into almost total collapse, and loved every minute of it.

When it first decided to quit working on me, I was driving up the hill in Payson and had just made it past Smith's. I was in the left lane ready to turn, and almost to Payson High School, when a black cloud emerged from under the hood. I was in the middle of the road, and the car had stopped running, but not smoking. I looked ahead and there was nothing but smoke, and a quick check behind me showed the coast was clear. I quickly decided to back down the hill against traffic, go across the southbound lane while northbound, and swing the car into the Smith's parking lot. Coasting backwards downhill was challenging and the turn into the parking lot was also in reverse, so I hoped anyone pulling out was paying attention. I coasted to a stop right in a parking spot. The smoke continued to pour out. I grabbed the window washer fluid from the back and popped the hood. The engine was in flames. It was from a broken PLASTIC gas distribution piece which is mounted right on the engine. I’ve heard this is a common problem with these cars. The rest of the windshield washer fluid I had in the bottle was just enough to put it out, and the bag boy who had ran from the store with an extinguisher was amazed I had put it out myself.

I had to wait to visit a couple of different auto shops to finally get the car fixed, but the good news is that it did run again. Did you know that if your mechanic parks your car illegally on the street, you may still be expected to pay the fine? At least that’s what I learned in Provo court. I even got the chance to drive it one entire winter without heat and to replace the heater control unit the next summer. Eventually it wouldn't pass inspection and I had to sell it.

I was parking it illegally on the street and moving it every few days. I wanted a thousand dollars, but it probably wasn’t worth that much. Here’s a negotiating tip. Show up with cash.

The two Hispanic gentlemen who showed up to buy were two hundred dollars short, but as soon as the money came out of the younger one's pocket, in CASH, I knew I had seen the last of the Mazda.

It made me think back to the good old days when I could fix the stuff I drove. One night during my high school years I was going up Parley's Canyon to Vernal. I was cutting pine poles and pine posts for extra money, and Dad had helped me buy an old truck and put an old bed on it. As I neared the top, the accelerator flipped to the floor but the engine went to idle. No matter what I did with the pedal, the engine just putted along. I had to pull over to the shoulder and try to figure what was going on.

Without a flashlight.

As I climbed into the engine, I could get the engine to rev by pulling on the throttle, but the accelerator wasn't working. That means there was something wrong with the linkage. I could feel where the problem was, and it seemed to be a part missing between two holes. Now if only I could find a piece of wire, and join those two parts, then I could be on my way. If only I could find a piece of wire.

Without a flashlight.

Luckily it was dark and deserted enough that night I don't think anyone saw me crawling along the freeway groping in the gravel for wire. But then I found a piece!

I fixed it after another half hour of cursing the darkness before it all worked. I made it to Vernal that night, and I don't remember ever buying the correct part for the engine. It was working fine, and I was convinced that if it ever happened again, I would be able to fix it, even in the dark I wonder what kind of demand there is for blind mechanics.  I really think I could do it if I had to.

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Abundance Unselfishness Sept 25

Go to  daneallred.com for more selections, including other original pieces by Dane Allred and his audio versions of many famous novels, short stories and poems called Literature Out Loud, plus lots more!! This is the complete episode of Abundance called Unselfishness from September 25th.

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The Complete Collection of

SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS

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Sonnet Forty by William Shakespeare

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Sonnet XL

by William Shakespeare

Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all;

What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?

No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call;

All mine was thine before thou hadst this more.

Then if for my love thou my love receivest,

I cannot blame thee for my love thou usest;

But yet be blamed, if thou thyself deceivest

By wilful taste of what thyself refusest.

I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief,

Although thou steal thee all my poverty;

And yet, love knows, it is a greater grief

To bear love's wrong than hate's known injury.

Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,

Kill me with spites; yet we must not be foes.

 

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Sonnet 40

Sonnet Thirty-nine by William Shakespeare

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Sonnet XXXIX

by William Shakespeare

 

O, how thy worth with manners may I sing,

When thou art all the better part of me?

What can mine own praise to mine own self bring?

And what is't but mine own when I praise thee?

Even for this let us divided live,

And our dear love lose name of single one,

That by this separation I may give

That due to thee which thou deservest alone.

O absence, what a torment wouldst thou prove,

Were it not thy sour leisure gave sweet leave

To entertain the time with thoughts of love,

Which time and thoughts so sweetly doth deceive,

And that thou teachest how to make one twain,

By praising him here who doth hence remain!

 

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Sonnet 39

Sonnet Thirty-eight by William Shakespeare

much more Literature Out Loud at daneallred.com

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Sonnet XXXVIII

by William Shakespeare

How can my Muse want subject to invent,

While thou dost breathe, that pour'st into my verse

Thine own sweet argument, too excellent

For every vulgar paper to rehearse?

O, give thyself the thanks, if aught in me

Worthy perusal stand against thy sight;

For who's so dumb that cannot write to thee,

When thou thyself dost give invention light?

Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth

Than those old nine which rhymers invocate;

And he that calls on thee, let him bring forth

Eternal numbers to outlive long date.

If my slight Muse do please these curious days,

The pain be mine, but thine shall be the praise.

 

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Sonnet 38

Sonnet Thirty-seven by William Shakespeare

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Sonnet XXXVII

by William Shakespeare

As a decrepit father takes delight

To see his active child do deeds of youth,

So I, made lame by fortune's dearest spite,

Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth.

For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit,

Or any of these all, or all, or more,

Entitled in thy parts do crowned sit,

I make my love engrafted to this store:

So then I am not lame, poor, nor despised,

Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give

That I in thy abundance am sufficed

And by a part of all thy glory live.

Look, what is best, that best I wish in thee:

This wish I have; then ten times happy me!

 

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Sonnet 37

Sonnet Thirty-six by William Shakespeare

more Literature Out Loud at daneallred.com

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Sonnet XXXVI

by William Shakespeare

Let me confess that we two must be twain,

Although our undivided loves are one:

So shall those blots that do with me remain

Without thy help by me be borne alone.

In our two loves there is but one respect,

Though in our lives a separable spite,

Which though it alter not love's sole effect,

Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love's delight.

I may not evermore acknowledge thee,

Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame,

Nor thou with public kindness honor me,

Unless thou take that honor from thy name:

But do not so; I love thee in such sort

As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report.

 

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Sonnet 36

Crossed Wires by Dane Allred

Crossed Wires

by Dane Allred

When I miss a step

And you miss one, too.

Our wires are crossed.

The best news is our paths are also crossed.

It takes some time

And a little unraveling

Then when the knots

And misunderstandings are untied

We usually find ourselves

Back on the same path

Hoping we don’t get our wires crossed again.

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SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS

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Sharing by Dane Allred

Bright Space

Sharing

by Dane Allred

It takes a decision

To do something unselfish.

Giving of ourselves is a choice.

We are choosing to do something

For someone else when we could do something else.

Life is all about the choice.

We make one decision or another.

We don’t always know where the path will lead.

But helping someone else is almost never a bad decision.

One of the most sublime moments is when we can lose ourselves in the service of others.

When we get the chance to help others on their journey here

It’s part of our work as well as theirs.

We were once together in that Bright Space

Wondering what this place would be like

And if we would cross paths again.

We wanted to come here to experience our own life,

While all the world experiences their own reality.

But when we were together before,

We knew all there was to know

Sharing all knowledge and eternity.

But there came a time when we knew we would have to leave the Bright Space

And learn in the only way we could.

Apart and alone

Distant from those we once shared all with,

Wondering what that nagging familiarity really was,

When we see each other by chance.

Or is it by chance?

As the smallest particles of the universe spin

Influencing another small particle somewhere else

It is the same with us as we circle in the spheres

of human interaction

All around us.

My world intersects with yours

And your path crosses another.

Something you need to hear from someone else

May be waiting for you just around the next corner.

When we wander in this wonderful world.

Is it any coincidence we find those who

Think like us.

Act like we do.

Wonder like we do at the connection we feel from the first time we meet.

The first time we meet again for another time.

The next time that momentary recognition happens to you

Stop and help those we were with before.

LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text

The Complete Collection of

SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS

all 154 poems $3.99 DVD with FREE shipping

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Click on the player below to hear the audio version of this piece. Sharing

Wendover Wanderings

Debbie and I decided one weekend to go to Wendover and just relax for the weekend. I think it may have been some weekend where we had some extra days off during the school year.

I had been running several races during the summer, and when we got to Wendover I decided I should keep in shape by running to that rock off in the distance and back. I said goodbye to Debbie and jogged off into the desert.

The rock off in the distance was a bit farther off than it looked. I jogged and jogged; endless miles jogging for hours seems like only minutes. You really don't notice the passage of time and you don't really pay attention to the distance.

By the time I got to the rocky crag, I’d been jogging quite a while. I climbed to the top of the rocks and discovered the small bones. I put them in my pocket and started to jog back.

It took quite a while to get back, and when I finally arrived at the motel, Debbie was sitting on the hood of the car with the bags packed. I was hoping for a shower, but she had to check us out, since I had been gone jogging for about four hours.

She said she had planned my funeral and decided on a list of speakers. She had gone from furious to worried to panicked and back to furious when she saw me jogging up.

She stayed furious for the three hours it took to get back home, and it didn’t help I had to measure just how far I had gone by driving the car out and back. I can't remember if it was 12 or 15 miles, but it was a lot further than it looked.

I wish I had learned my lesson, but I didn’t. The last marathon I ran was a disaster. I was anemic, but didn’t find that out until later. But when you get to be an old coot like me, you may be able to finish a marathon just out of pure stubbornness.

At mile twenty, I stopped under a bridge to rest in the sun for a moment. I had worn a sleeveless shirt that day, forgetting I hadn’t been wearing one all summer. I was pretty sunburned after running in the hot sun for hours.

It was then that my knee decided I was done running. It kind of locked up and refused to do anything but walk. The few times I tried to run again it protested long and loud.

Needless to say, not only had the first twenty miles taken longer than I liked, the last six took much longer than I wanted. But I saved a bit to run at the finish line, even though the marathon crew had started to dismantle the course. It is also needless to tell you how long it took me to run, walk and crawl the twenty-six point two miles.

You know you are running very slowly when the police direct you to run on the sidewalk instead of the road, which had previously been cleared for the run.

My wife had decided to come along this time to the marathon, but I had told her I would be a couple of hours faster than I actually was.

It was the Wendover incident all over again. She was watching the news to see if some old man had been hit during the race and taken to the hospital.

She flipped from channel to channel to see if her husband had suffered a heart-attack on the course.

She probably planned my funeral again.

Since I like to shower and rest after a marathon, she had planned on shopping after I got back. I know she was more worried about me than about missing shopping, but when I dragged my sorry butt into the room two hours late, she told me she had been frantic. After she calmed down, I convinced her to go shopping and buy herself something nice.

I cleaned up and collapsed on the bed. After resting for about an hour, I twisted my leg and my knee popped back into place.

It was one of those pains that really hurt at the moment, but it felt better after it was back where it should be.

Is there a moral to the story?

If you ever get tempted to jog off into the desert, choose a landmark closer to the city. Or tell your wife you jog a marathon slower than you think you can.

Then you may be spared the details of your very own funeral.

LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text

The Complete Collection of

SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS

all 154 poems $3.99 DVD with FREE shipping

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Click on the player below to hear the audio version of this episode.