TV Car

vs. reality

Are you old enough to remember the TV series Starsky & Hutch? The red and white Ford Gran Torino from the series was my dream car at the time.

The closest that I ever came to owning something like that was a 1975 Mercury Montego (the Montego is Mercury's version of the Gran Torino). I’d like to say it looked like that sporty car above, but in reality it was big, green and quite ugly. Mine even had four doors. I don’t have a picture of it, but this is a better representation.

On the way to work one morning it stalled halfway down our dirt lane and wouldn’t start up again. This had happened before, so I knew it was going to take two people to get it going. I walked back to the house, got my wife out of bed and we both took an early morning stroll back to the car. I popped the hood, pulled off the air breather and sprayed some carburetor cleaner into the carburetor. It seems I have a really bad habit of creating workarounds when a car is broke rather than actually fixing the problem. While I was leaning over the engine, hand on the carburetor, I told my wife to try and start it up. It was dark outside and the thick canopy of oak trees made it seem even darker. She turned the key and watched me, straining to see through the bottom crack of the raised hood.

Suddenly, it backfired and an unexpected fireball quickly engulfed my upper body. I immediately jumped back and started frantically patting everywhere I could reach. My wife recounts that all she saw was a bright flash of light and then me running around like a crazy man. Thankfully, I came out of it with only some hair loss on my arms and a ringing in my ears that persisted for a couple of hours. True to form, I never got the carburetor fixed, but I did tell the guy who bought it from me about the issue.