posted
Dude, it's not a true WHAM-mobile unless the shocks bottom out when getting airborne at railroad crossings. But you're right, it does have to be your mama's car.
I hope that by WHAM you don't mean that the car's radio only plays George Michael tunes.
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posted
“Fine man, you can drive, but this isn’t the Indy 500, the WHAM-mobile isn’t formula one, and your dirty dog driving ain’t gonna pass mustard or any other cars. You got that manno?”
“Calm down sweet-cheeks, I’m fine at driving, I just wasn’t used to a WHAM-mobile last time, All right?”
“Don’t call me sweet-cheeks!”
“Calm down sweet-cheeks, and get in the WHAM-mobile.”
posted
It's a song. These are verses. They have the same metric structure. Or else it's a poem. It sounds like it's not authored by Hobbes, either. He's quoting something or someone. <my guesses>
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Well, to begin with, when parking in a tractor-trailer slot at the mall, you can almost always expect to have a run-in with a trucker. But in this case, you might have had a run-in with a trailer trash family, living in the parking lot...return to the car to find a clothesline attached to your bumper, and the trash-lady's unmentionables hanging on your radio antenna.
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posted
Okay, I’ve got a WHAM-mobile story for you.
Seems that back in the fifties and sixties most everyone was white trash, at least folks I knew. About the time I came along, they were just getting indoor plumbing and electricity, and moving their iceboxes and washing machines from the front porch to the kitchen.
My pop, he was a TV repairman. We had us a pile of busted up TVs on the front porch, and another pile of TVs that pop was fixing in the living room. Pop and me, we made a good team. He even showed me how to check vacuum tubes on the tube tester. I liked to help pop by salvaging usable parts from his bone pile. Pop, he told me: “son, you don’t want to be touching them cathode ray tubes, as there still might be an electrical charge on them.” Well, I just had to try one out. Touched one with a screwdriver, and next thing I knew, I was clear across the front yard.
Anyway, pop, he got this idea that he was going to take the family on a vacation. We were going to spend a fun-filled week, camping in the White Mountains of Eastern Arizona. Pop had swapped a feller a couple of them color TV sets for an old truck that he didn’t have much use for. The feller even threw in an old camper. That’s all pop talked about for three months, was spending a week in that camper in the mountains.
This truck had four-wheel drive, and pop took us all four-wheeling out in the desert one Saturday. I got to sit up front between mom and pop, and pop showed me how to work the gears: “this here’s called the granny gear, and we use that for climbing hills.” We took that truck all over the desert, following old trails, making new trails, and seeing how steep of hills we could go up.
Pop, he was satisfied that the truck was up to the task of taking us on vacation, and the following Friday we loaded the camper with an old army pup tent, some sleeping bags, our bicycles, and some canned food, and we headed out.
Pop let me ride in the camper with my dog Fred. Fred just stuck his head out the window with his tongue hanging out. Me, I about cooked to death in that camper. Finally we pulled over and I had a chance to get out. “What are we stopping for,” I wanted to know. “Mom forgot the can opener.” After much debate, and after pop demonstrated that he could open a can with his army surplus knife, we decided to continue on.
About an hour after leaving town we came to the first serious hills. That old truck would slow to a crawl and then lurch forward momentarily and then slow back to a crawl. We pulled over to see what was wrong. Pop said the truck was “vapor locking.” I didn’t know what that meant, but pop said it had something to do with the fuel line getting too warm. He said that he once heard someone say that you could prevent vapor locking by wrapping the pull-tabs from soda pop cans around the fuel line. Pop popped the hood of the truck, and sure enough, there was a neat row of pull-tabs arranged on the fuel line. We decided to let the truck cool a bit.
About four hours later we were finally coming in to some mountains. We pulled into a gas station at a place called Hannigan’s Meadow. Pop told the attendant to fill her up with ethyl. Fred and me got out of the camper and stretched our legs. Next thing you know, pop’s bombarding me with big ole Ponderosa pinecones. Fred and me ducked behind the station and found us some ammo, but when we came out from hiding, the truck was halfway down the road. Fred and me took off running, and pop finally pulled over. He just laughed and laughed. Fred and me climbed into the camper, and Fred collapsed on top of our gear. His tongue was hanging out, and his sides were heaving really hard. Then Fred vomited all over our gear.
We turned off on a dirt road where the sign said “KP Cienaga, 11 miles.” Me and Fred were choking on the dust, and we had to close the camper windows, but by then it was cool enough that we didn’t die from the heat. The road was getting pretty bumpy, and I had to hold onto Fred to keep him from getting hurt.
We were going downhill when I heard an explosion, and the truck skidded to a stop. Me and Fred piled out of the camper. Pop was rubbing his chin, looking at a blown-out tire. “Lucky we’ve got a spare,” he said. He crawled under the truck to where the spare was hanging, and I handed him a wrench. He pushed the spare out from under the truck, and mom and me could see that it was flat too.
“Lucky we brought the bicycle pump and some patches,” pop said. “You get to work pumping the spare, while I jack the truck up.”
It was getting dark when we finally pulled into the campground. We quickly set up the tent and got a fire started. After all that talk about sleeping in the camper, I had to sleep in the tent, and I smelled dog vomit all night.
The next morning, mom wanted to look at the tires on the truck. The spare had gone flat again, and four of the five tires were completely bald. “I thought you were going to get new tires,” she said. “Tires were so darned expensive that I could only afford one, and it’s a re-tread.”
We spent a lot of time that week patching that spare, trying to get it to hold air. Pop said we’d better try to get the blown-out tire fixed too, but it had a hole the size of a silver dollar in it. Pop, he took my K-Mart sneaker and sliced the sole off using his surplus knife. He put that sliced off shoe inside the tire and then inflated the tube. It held, and later we had to use that blown-out tire on the way home. Pop said the feller at the tire store in Phoenix just laughed and laughed when he saw our repair job.
We had many more fun trips in pop’s truck. Pop finally had to take a real job at a computer company, and he had to buy a car to drive to work. Mom inherited the truck and used it for shopping and running kids to the doctor. Later, when I got my license, I inherited the old truck, and discovered one Saturday night after the teen dance that I could do a wheelie if I got up to speed in reverse with the camper attached, and then suddenly shifted into forward and popped the clutch. Truck go WHAM!
posted
There's a famous WHAM-mobile jump here in the Salt Lake Valley on 54th South, just west of Kearns High School. If you are westbound on 54th South you will come to what appears to be a typical railroad crossing with the exception of the 15-MPH speed limit signs. This railroad crossing is deceptive because, while it looks like level road, the road drops away severely on the far side of the crossing. Numerous gouges can be seen in the pavement on the far side where WHAM-mobiles have landed. Some gouges are as far as four car lengths from the launch point. As this section of road is lightly patrolled, the 54th South jump is a temptation to both young and old WHAM-mobile drivers.
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