Wait… Cow story? I got a cow story… And I can confirm Pocket’s claim that that cows can make scary sounds. Sit back, and listen to my cow story…
Ok, it was spring break my second year of college at Mississippi State (1985). My aunt and uncle invited me to stay with them for the week in Brentwood, Tennessee (just south of Nashville). My plan was to leave after lunch, cut over to the Natchez Trace Parkway, and have a nice drive through the woods on the way up. That way, I would get there “about†dinner time.
There was of course one problem with this simple plan: My car was a 1977 Triumph 7. If you don’t know what a TR7 is, it was called “the wedge†and “the shape of things to come.†It was a beautiful car, but unfortunately its design suffered from British engineering and Lucas electronics [shudder]… It was a mechanics nightmare…
I could go on and on about all the failures I had with that car (please excuse the following walk down memory lane). Note that this is NOT an inclusive list of all of the problems that I had with that car, just what came to mind as I recall this 26 years later… heh heh:
There was an electrical short somewhere I could never track down, so I had to detach the battery whenever I parked it (I always parked pointing downhill anyway, because I had to bump start it about 25% of the time anyway)… The oil line that fed the oil pressure gage popped loose, and sprayed HOT oil all over me (and the interior of the car until I could get the engine shut off)… The speedometer failed, so I used my tachometer to judge speed (3000rpm = 60mph in 5th gear)… My gas gage failed, so I would always buy gas when my trip odometer reached 200 miles… When the fan clutch failed, I bolted the fan directly to the fan belt pulley – Of course it eventually snapped the 1/4" steel mounting plate, and the whole assembly (including the 13 bladed fan) shot halfway through my radiator… The engine leaked water through the side of the aluminum head, so I would add 1 gallon of water every 100 miles… I had to cut the drivers door latch pin off because it wouldn’t unlatch… My Dad had to cut the hood latch pin off for the same reason… Even the oil dip-stick failed if you can believe that! The dip-stick was actually a spring, with a tab on the end of it (which of course fell off in the oil pan). I was in Texas at the time, so my “road fix†was to make a new one by unwinding a coil of wire I was using to make chainmail (I just hadn’t cut that spring into individual links at the time)… One time I was crossing Oklahoma, and the exhaust pipe snapped off right behind the manifold (held up only at the back axle), and speared the ground like a pole-vaulters pole (somehow, that didn’t tear the back of the car off… heh heh…) That resulted in another roadside fix with bailing wire… When my headlight switch melted in the off position (somewhere in New Mexico) I cut the wires to the pop-up headlight motors, cranked the lights in the “up†position, and wired the headlights directly to the battery. Then I used a couple wire-nuts for a switch. Later that night in Arizona, a policeman pulled me over because my taillights were out! He escorted me to the fruit inspection station at the state line, where I wired up my taillights the same way… The final straw for that car was when the passenger door fell off when I was on a date (yes… really…)
Hmmm… For some reason, that all sounded like an awful lot of southern engineering for a west-coast guy…
But, yes – This was the car I drove back and forth between California and Mississippi during the summers during college… Look around – you won’t see a TR7 on the street driving around anymore… They are ALL dead… heh heh…
Anyway, back to the Cow story…
A few days before spring break, all of us second year architecture students had turned in our design project for school. We decided to watch a movie to celebrate. Well, for some reason, the movie that we watched was “Texas Chainsaw Massacre.†This will be important in a minute – stay with me…
When it was time to head north to visit my uncle, my car wouldn’t start (no surprise there). After several hours of fighting with it in the parking lot behind the dorm, I finally got the car started at about 8:00 pm – So, now I would be arriving in Nashville well after midnight. I got to the Natchez Trace, and started heading north. Now, if you’ve never driven on the Trace, you need to know that it is actually a long, skinny, national park. Meaning: no lights, no gas stations, no food… unless you just “happen†to know which exit to take (the new GPS equipment takes all the adventure out of everything these days... heh heh…)
So, here I am driving in the pitch dark, when I notice that my engine starts sounding a little loud. So, I started looking for a place with lights that I could pull over. Over the next 30 minutes the engine gradually got louder and louder to the point that I couldn’t hear the radio at full volume (ok… it was a crappy radio… but still…). Out of desperation, I finally took a random exit. Pitch black. Nothing. So, I decided I would drive a mile to see if I could find a gas station. I eventually came across a small group of houses, and there was one lonely street light. I parked under it. Oh yeah, this was during the period where my driver door didn’t open – So I would either crawl through the window like the Dukes of Hazard (I could never do it as cool as them), or crawl over the stick-shift and out the passenger door. The hood opened backwards, since the hinges were near the bumper, and I propped it open with a cut-off section of broom handle. I looked around the engine with my flashlight, but didn’t see anything obvious. So, I crawled back in the car and started it back up. Now that the windows were down, it sounded like a dragster! I crawled back out to have another look with the engine running. Flames were shooting out the side of the engine! I quickly shut the engine back off and looked closer. There was a 1/4" gap between the engine block and the manifold. It was the hot exhaust (which contains unburned gas in an imperfectly tuned engine), shooting through the gap and igniting when it came in contact with the air, that was causing the spectacular fire show.
All this noise on this sleepy little street at midnight, resulted in a few lights coming on in the creepy old houses nearby. It was a bit spooky because it got SO quiet as soon as I turned the engine off. I got out my crescent wrench and tried to tighten the bolts, but they wouldn’t move. I went back to the trunk, and got my socket set and ball-peen hammer… I wasn’t sure what I was going to need.
Every time I got my head down below the hood, I kept thinking about that movie… Chainsaw Massacre… Pfft… I ain’t scared… AHHH!.. burned my hand on the manifold… Need to concentrate… focus… focus… chaninsaw… focus… focus… creepy house… focus…
HHHRRRmmmFFFUUUhhh!!!!
AAAHHHHH!!!!!!!! I screamed spinning around with my socket wrench, and knocking the stick out that was holding up the hood so that it banged shut! There IT was… Wet nose one foot behind my head! The curious cow had somehow silently snuck up (yes… snuck on purpose I’m sure) behind me... and “hurumphed†directly in my ear. AND I MEAN DIRECTLY IN MY EAR!
I chased the cow back across the street, and then it just dejectedly wandered away down the shoulder of the road. Fifteen minutes later I calmed myself down enough to get back to the car and tighten the manifold.
I don’t remember what time I finally made it to my aunt and uncle’s house, but when I pulled up in the driveway, I decided to just sleep in the car until sunrise. When I got up in the morning, my aunt, uncle and I began swapping stories…
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