[BaadAssGremlins] An 'X'mas Story

["Brien Tourville" <hh7x@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Saka, the Gremlin, and the Goodyear Barbeque

So me and Saka are out and about on a dark, moonless Friday evening 
in late fall prowling the streets like Captain Badass looking for 
trouble. We?re struttin? like a couple of prize roosters on fight 
night, and cruisin? all over town in my cherry ride. No one that sees 
us is soon to forget the remarkable image of the two of us rolling 
by. We?ve got the windows down, the cigars are boiling off smoke like 
the stacks of a New Jersey factory town, and the wall of sound that 
Blue Öyster Cult is throwing off from the aftermarket Kraco sound 
system we got on five-finger discount from K-Mart is killing ants 
from a block away.

Tonight I?m piloting my pride and joy. She?s a sweet 71? Gremlin in 
pumpkin orange with the trademark thick black racing stripe, black 
vinyl seats, a roof rack, and a naugahyde sunroof. The 251 one-bbl 
engine was lifted directly from an AMC Jeep, and has a rather 
distinctive note when bleating through the top of the line Midas 
aftermarket muffler. And the performance offered by this massive 
power plant, connected directly to the top of the line Wards steel-
belted radials via the three-speed manual transmission, is 
practically indescribable. Yeah baby, we?re stylin?.

We?re on about our 23rd pass through town and working on a major 
league buzz when we catch sight of our arch nemesis idling by in his 
car over on the next block. Easily recognizable because of its lame 
color, his purple ?73 Gremlin looks pathetically weak next to mine, 
especially since he sold out and got the Levi?s package like some low-
budget midnight cowboy wannabe. About the same time we see him, he 
sees us, and, aha, Watson, the game?s afoot!

We both haul ass, and faster than a chicken on a junebug we start a 
nasty game of cat and mouse on the dark back roads in the 
unincorporated area outside of town. For anyone unfamiliar with the 
game of cat and mouse, it is best described as a thrilling concoction 
of equal parts pure teenage adrenaline and stupidity, mixed 
thoroughly with gasoline, stirred with cheap beer, and punctuated 
with the clanging of big brass balls. Generally two or more 
competitors try to out-drive each other and compromise the opponent 
in such a way that he loses control, loses his nerve, or loses his 
license. Because of the amount of rubber that is left on the road as 
a byproduct, I have to believe that the game was originally developed 
by Goodyear as a clandestine method to sell more tires.


17 Fri 12:30

In any case, me and Saka have been waiting for just this opportunity 
to showcase a couple of fancy new tricks to our hapless antagonist 
and, it is hoped, reduce him to a quivering tool. After quickly 
executing a series of fast seemingly random left and right turns, we 
head to a specially selected site far out in the cornfields south of 
town. This particular road is perfect because of a natural feature of 
the countryside, namely, a small rise in the road with a rather 
abrupt drop on the far side. Fast moving cars on this particular road 
normally tend to squat a bit as they hit the rise, and then the 
occupants experience a brief sense of near weightlessness as the 
speeding car falls off the back side.

On this particular night, the laws of physics are about to be put to 
a serious test. As we make the screaming fish-tail turn onto the road 
and approach the rise, we use the straining power of the 251 to open 
a slightly wider than normal lead over our purple pursuer. Then, just 
as we hit the top of the rise, I shut off the headlights, and the 
Gremlin plunges off the far side of the berm and disappears into the 
total black of the cool autumn night. During that brief yet 
exhilarating period when our stomachs are rising like a light lunch 
of bad clams, I punch in the clutch, grab the juddering gear shift 
and with a mighty grunt begin to grind the straining transmission 
into reverse. The road behind us stays pitch dark, because, 
anticipating just this particular event, me and Saka have carefully 
removed the white bulbs from both reverse light sockets.

After a brief period of agonized mechanical protestation during which 
the gears in the American made transmission emit the screams of a 
thousand tortured souls, the stick shift snicks solidly into reverse, 
and with a mighty roar I simultaneously mash the accelerator and pop 
the clutch. Immediately, the pitiable rear tires lose traction and, 
like a Don Gartlits burnout, begin wildly spinning in reverse, even 
while we continue to move forward down the road at rate well in 
excess of sixty mile per hour. As you can imagine, the spinning tires 
are burning rubber at roughly the same rate at which the Amazon 
rainforest is being consumed, and the quantity of noxious blue smoke 
being emitted by this phenomenon is, in a word, astounding.

The car proceeds in this manner for a short time before the natural 
force of the madly spinning rear wheels takes over, and, in the blink 
of an eye, the Gremlin is whipped around 180 degrees, so that the 
rear end is now in the lead and we are, amazingly, proceeding 
backwards in full reverse down the road at approximately 40 miles per 
hour. With cat-like reflexes I repeat the maniacal and dangerous gear 
shifting, this time wedging the screaming transmission into first 
before dumping the clutch and incinerating another 20,000 miles worth 
of steel belted vulcanized tread pattern.

The wildly protesting Gremlin slowly stops its backward momentum, 
and, tires still shrieking, begins to move forward, inexorably 
returning towards the hill we so recently crested. The entire process 
has taken maybe ten seconds, and the massive cloud of smoke that is 
hanging over the road and that we are now passing through is 
virtually impenetrable. To our amusement, as we approach the hill and 
begin our ascent we can see the glow of the headlights of our 
follower coming towards us.

I turn and nod at Saka, and he reaches for the switch on the dash 
that is the piece de resistance of our little coup. Earlier that 
afternoon, me and Saka spent a couple of hours installing an 
extremely powerful, and patently illegal, set of aftermarket off-road 
high intensity driving lights on the roof rack of the Gremlin. These 
little beauties throw a focused beam of about 100,000 candlepower 
wherever they are pointed, which in this case is directly into the 
eyes of the driver of the rapidly approaching grapemobile.

Saka hits the magic switch at the same time I pull the headlights 
back on, which is milliseconds before we crest the hill and emerge 
from the thick, billowing cloud of smoke thrown up by the tires. Like 
an apparition from hell, we seem to burst from the depths of the 
earth, and then with the brightness of a nova we explode into 
blinding point of light hurtling directly towards our hapless 
doppelganger. One can only imagine the thoughts that are racing 
through the mind of our poor, tortured victim as our evil collection 
of lights sear his ocular receptors. He wrenches the steering wheel 
to the right and goes tearing off the road past us and, like a 
renegade combine, rips into the adjacent cornfield. Our laughter, and 
the haunting sounds of Last Days of May, echo through the field as we 
pause to make sure he?s okay and then roar off into he night.

Later, while we?re sitting in the local drive-in enjoying a 
particularly satisfying burger and a fat Saint Luis Rey Choix 
Supreme, Saka turns to me, takes the cigar from his mouth, and says, 
"Hey, I have an idea. Maybe we ought to put some red and blue film on 
those roof lights of yours and head back into town." But that?s 
another story all together.

 

Copyright (c) 2002 Roger W. Farnsworth

             Brien.
         NEW YORK
   eagle registry #501
eagle kammback registry


-- 
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.296 / Virus Database: 265.5.4 - Release Date: 12/15/2004



------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> 
Yahoo! Autos. Everything you need to know about buying 
or selling a car.  FREE Quotes, 360° Tours, Research,
Blue Book, Compare Vehicles, Buy Used
http://us.click.yahoo.com/kEZsdA/bwnGAA/YiGOAA/YtqqlB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~-> 

 
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BaadAssGremlins/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    BaadAssGremlins-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/