The Shift Shaft
[ editorial note: usually I have been posting free stories on Tuesdays, and those with paid subscriptions can see stories on Thursdays. Given automotive headaches and other travails this week I’m posting one free story today… but it’s a doozy… ]
My brother and a couple of his friends descended on the Bay Area sometime around April in 1998. I played chauffeur for most of their trip, including a day-long trek up to Napa for wine chugging. During the long drive back I first noticed my '79 Honda Accord didn't have its expected amount of speedy vigor. I brushed this off as the car being weighed down by four big dudes and their newly purchased collection of handsome wine bottles.
During the coming weeks I found it exponentially more difficult to climb hills in my groaning automobile. What at first amounted to a slight lack of velocity as I headed up inclines evolved into a deafening roar as the engine burned at 6000 rpm just so I could get out of first gear. Being as how I worked daily in the Berkeley Hills, this became a bit of a problem.
But like all car problems I willfully ignored it until it became a crisis. This crisis came to pass as I barely made it work one day, sweat dripping from the tip of my nose as I stamped down on the gas pedal with all my might, cursing and praying at the same time that I'd make it all the way up the mountain, which I did. The painful part was going home. I coasted down the hill and around the ramp onto highway 24 going into the Caldecott tunnel. My toasted car stopped dead in the right lane of this chronic Bay Area traffic snarl. Lucky for me the highway tilted ever-so-slightly downward, and shifting into neutral allowed me to eventually gain enough momentum to make it through the tunnel and even all the way to my exit ramp. Even luckier was that I timed all the lights to my house, so I made it home but that was all my poor little Honda could handle.
It was time to face the music: my clutch was blown.
I made some calls to several garages the next day, and generally speaking a new clutch would run me at least $400 installed. Considering the entire car cost me $500 when I first got it, and I was kinda broke, I couldn't conceive of paying such a high price for a small fraction of the whole. So once again, I chose to ignore the problem.
Three very inconvenient weeks passed until my housemate Vicky notified me that her drummer friend, Carl, does automotive work on the side and was willing to fix my clutch for only $300. I considered the reduced price and the annoyance of being a carless musician, and figured I should get this work done. Now the problem was: How do I get my car to his house?
Carl lived downtown, and I lived uptown. Vicky told me how to get to his hidden little street and described his place as "the house on the right with the lawn." Fair enough. I convinced Jenya to push with her car to help my paralyzed vehicle limp all the way downtown. I figured a good time to do this was very late on a Saturday evening when all the street lights are turned off thereby reducing my need to stop/start all the time.
I warned Carl of this plan, and he was going to be out of town that evening, so I was to just drop it off and leave the key under his door. He asked me if I knew where his house was and I said, "Yeah - it's the one on the right with the lawn."
Saturday night came around. Around midnight Jenya and I came back from a rock show and we got set for the big push downtown. Her car roared as we got up to speed and down to the end of our block, and I got onto Telegraph Avenue without incident. As metioned earlier, I fully expected all the lights to be blinking yellow at this point in the evening, but I was sorely mistaken.
At every stop Jenya had to ram my back bumper and force me into the intersection. I'd gain enough momentum to get me a block or two until the next light. This method of transport is, or at least should be, quite illegal. In fact, I more or less chose the worst route for such an endeavor as all the lights were poorly timed, and the cops routinely patrol this main thoroughfare at night. Luckily they seemed to all be occupied by a skirmish outside some nightclub, and ignored us as I sailed by a flock of them between pushes. Phew.
We somehow made it through and past the meat of downtown in this manner and to Carl's street. Considering how close we were to the city hub, this part of Oakland was bereft of streetlights and quite dark. Now all we had to do was find "the house on the right with the lawn."
Continuing behind me, Jenya and I slowly advanced down the lane. After a few houses, we noticed one on the right with a lawn. And then another one on the right with a lawn. Two or three houses down we spotted another house on the right with a lawn. In a word: What the hell?
Confused, Jenya stopped her car as I allowed the momentum to carry me further. At first I thought it should become obvious which house was which, but the street only got darker and darker. Once I stopped I couldn't see anything anymore except Jenya's headlights behind me a half block away. I got out to look around.
As I got further from my car my eyes adjusted to the darkness until I made out a large area with a wire fence. From the silence I heard footsteps. I stopped and listened carefully. I heard another set of footsteps, and was quickly able to make out the silhouettes of two large dogs before me. Then I heard snarls.
I backed towards my car as the footsteps continued coming in my direction, faster and faster. When these two beasts were within 50 feet I became quite aware that they were not encumbered by long leashes, or the wire fence for that matter. I gulped and remembered a valuable lesson from my paperboy days: when a dog approaches, hold your ground no matter how scary the situation.
And that seemed to work. As if there was a forcefield one foot in front of me these two rottweiler types screeched to halt at my feet and barked at my face, but no more. I yelled "Hey! Hey! Hey!" to shut them up. Now they realized I wasn't much of a threat they allowed me to slowly back up and walk away without much ado. Jeez.
I walked back to Jenya's car where we had a little meeting about what to do next. I didn't want to just abandon my car in the middle of some random street. With unrealistic hope there may be a pay phone nearby (ah, life before cell phones), we headed towards the main street.
Nope. No phone. We started to get a little irritated with this situation, and angrily discussed our options. The door of a nearby house, made entirely of corrugated metal walls, swung open, revealing its sole occupant who was wondering what all the commotion was about.
I asked this person, "Are you Carl?"
"No," they replied, "Do you mean the guy who fixes cars?"
"Yes! Do you know which house is his?" I anxiously queried.
The nice man pointed down the street and said, "It's the one on the right with the lawn."
"I KNOW that," I squealed, "But do you know which lawn?"
"Yeah. The really *nice* lawn, by that van over there.."
Finally I had more detail to work with. I thanked this guardian angel and we resumed with the task at hand.
Sure enough, obscured by the darkness and a huge van, there was one little house with a really nice lawn. It made all the other nearby lawns look like worthless shit, so I figured this had to be the right place. However, there was no space to park except sandwiched in front of that van and behind some tiny white Toyota.
Oy. So now we had to try to parallel park a dead car into a tiny space in the dark. I pushed my car, still in the middle of the street, towards the open spot.
Our first attempt was a miserable failure. Jenya steered as I pushed my car backward and following my confusing hand gestures she cut it way too hard. We tried to maneuver it into place. I wedged my body between my car and the van and pushed forward until my front bumper hit the Toyota's back bumper with a satisfying thud. I then stood on the trunk of the Toyota and pushed my car until the my back bumper hit the Van's front bumper with an even more satisfying thud. We were still 45 degrees away from parallel, so I pushed the car out of the spot and we tried again.
Once again Jenya cut too hard and we hit the van with a thud. I pushed forward and hit the Toyota with a thud. I then climbed on the trunk of the Toyota to push the Honda and suddenly found myself hovering in midair.
Vrooom! The Toyota flew out from under me. While airborne I came to the immediate conclusion that somehow the force of me pushing my car backward while planted on top of the Toyota must have caused the Toyota to somehow jump start itself. But when I hit the ground I heard somebody inside the Toyota cry out, "I can't believe they hit our car again!"
So all this time, unbeknownst to me, as I'm climbing all over their automobile like a frickin' monkey and ramming its rear fender with my Honda, two people were inside wondering what the fuck I was doing. The Toyota zoomed down to the end of the street, turned around and back towards me and Jenya.
Now my mind reeled with the question: What would two people be doing hanging out in their car on this dark backstreet near downtown Oakland on a Saturday night? Making out? Dealing guns? I couldn't make out their faces as they passed, but I yelled out "sorry!" They just kept going, instead of stopping and (perhaps rightfully) beating the shit out of me. I was both embarrassed and relieved.
The good news was with that car out of the way I now had room to land my dead car into that space, which I did. I scribbled a note for Carl, wedged it under the door of his house with my key, and got the hell out of there.
Part of the sales pitch I got from Vicky about Carl was that he not only worked incredibly cheap, but also worked incredibly fast. However, somehow he caught wind I wasn't in that much of a hurry, so he didn't even start working on my car for weeks. I guess I couldn't complain given the price.
Lucky for me he was about to get married, so he eventually did attend to my car if only to tie up all the loose ends before his big day. Once finished, I happily headed down to his place, handed him a $300 check, took a gander at the old burned-out clutch he had laying around his shop, and headed home. My car's pep was back. Phew.
Six uneventful days passed. I went to work and back thrice during this interlude, and then had a Friday night gig with Herb (the Herb Alpert cover band). I hauled my heavy-ass keyboard, amp, and stand to the gig, which was at some nightclub on Van Ness in San Francisco.
I unloaded all my equipment and parked in a nearby alley. The gig was pretty mellow, though long. They didn't feed us, which sucked, but I made about $70 for my troubles. Having just dropped $300 on my car, the extra dough was nice.
After the show I went to get my car. Before I put my key in the ignition, I stomped on the clutch and it dropped to the floor and just sat there. Given the late hour, my location, and low blood sugar level, I was wholly unable to deal with car problems right now, so in a fit of glorious denial I turned the key.
SCREEECH! Though my emergency break was on, the car shot backward completely out of control. With all the engine's force it flew up onto the curb. By some miracle I avoided hitting the car behind me (or any pedestrians for that matter) and narrowly squeezed between two parking meters on the sidewalk. The car only stopped because it rammed into a closed metal garage door.
Quickly gathering my wits I stopped the engine and began a rather comical attempt of pushing it off the curb. Mind you, this is San Francisco, which has more than its fair share of hills. I popped the gear into neutral and tried pushing it from behind up the steep incline, if only to get it off the curb. No dice.
I might add that I'm wearing my nicest clothes, including very slippery dress shoes, having just played this formal gig.
I prayed for that burst of adrenaline you always hear about - you know, where the 80 year old woman lifts a whole tractor which tipped onto her grandchild. With my right hand through the window grasping the steering wheel and my bicep wedged against the frame, I managed to get the car up off the curb but no further. I needed help. Fast.
With my remaining energy I sprinted back to the club. Chris, the drummer, happened to be the first unfortunate soul I spotted. Huffing and puffing I explained my dire situation, and bless his heart, he ran with me back to my car.
He was also wearing dress shoes, but our combined artery-busting effort yielded a better result. We got the car back into its original parking spot. But now what?
We headed back to the club. I started making phone calls, but nobody was home. It was a Friday night, after all. I personally didn't have AAA, but Jenya did, and she was nowhere to be found. As my exhaustion waned, panic set in. I circled around the lobby, mumbling and panting.
Tom, the trombonist, practically slapped me with his voice of reason. "I have a station wagon. I'll take you and all your equipment home. You can wait for Jenya and then get your car." He was right, and we adhered to this plan. He shipped me and my stuff all the way back over the bridge to Oakland. We arrived around half past midnight.
I paced until around 2:00am when Jenya returned from seeing a show in Berkeley, quite ready to get some shut-eye. I cautiously sat her down and said, "I'm really sorry, but we have to go to the city now and get my car towed."
Being a real trooper, she dug out her AAA card and I made the appropriate phone call. I stupidly told the AAA rep I was still in Oakland, and she insisted that I call again when I was by the car in San Francisco. So off we went in Jenya's car, heading back over the bridge at 2:30am.
We got back to the general area, which isn't very pleasant at this time of night, and at the nearest pay phone made the redundant call to AAA to get a tow truck out here at once. They plugged the order into their system and said that I should sit tight for 30-45 minutes.
Poor Jenya. She collapsed to sleep right there in the driver's seat as we waited and waited. Right on schedule I saw the tow truck appear at the corner behind us and turn the wrong direction down the street, disappearing down the hill. Ten minutes later it returned to the corner, this time turning the right way as I was outside waving my arms like a madman.
We caravaned all the way back to Oakland. Though this service was handled by AAA, it was hardly going to be fully covered by AAA. Upon arrival, I handed 55 bucks to the tow truck driver, which almost completely cancelled out any money I made this evening. What a fucking waste of time.
It was 4:30am, and I went to bed fuming with anger. I awoke around 10:00am with a black bruise five inches in diameter on my right bicep, presumably caused last night when the entire weight of my car was resting against my arm as I struggled to get it off the curb.
I called Carl first thing. With his calm demeanor he figured he forgot to include some very small but very important part during the entire clutch repair procedure. You'd think he'd take care of this gross error with all speed, but for reasons I fail to recall it got put upon me to find the part, buy it, and limp my car downtown so he could fix it. Maybe he used some Jedi mind trick or something.
In the meantime, he explained that I could get around by bleeding the clutch regularly by hand. I couldn't understand his directions, but lucky for me I bought a '79 Honda repair manual at a garage sale for fifty cents some time ago.
Following the diagrams, I managed to bleed the clutch without much difficulty. What happens is air bubbles get into the line and have to be belched out. Normally, you'd attach a tube to the clutch bleed nozzle and let it cough into a pail of water. Assuming this step was unnecessary and strictly for show, I simply pumped the clutch, turned the release screw, and squirt! My car ejaculated a long stream of dirty clutch fluid, coming within inches of my eye, landing with a splash all over my engine. Nasty.
But then I could drive around safely, at least for a while. Had I known how to do this, I could have saved myself some serious time, money, and stress last night. Oh well.
I had no time to deal with finding the stupid clutch part until Monday. After work I walked a mile in the hot sun to the local Kragen auto parts. Like all fucking American chain stores they were slow, completely unhelpful, and didn't have the part in stock. I walked up the way to the local Grand auto supply. Same deal. I schlepped home devastated.
Jenya tipped me off to a shop in West Oakland which, of course, had the part for five bucks. After getting the part and bleeding the clutch once more, I dropped my car off at Carl's. A day or two later it was done, I picked it up, and that was that.
If only I had forked over the 400 clams to get my clutch done immediately by a professional mechanic. Instead, after dealing with all of the above nonsense over the course of two months, I ended up saving a whopping 30 bucks.