As I wrote Bill Babbit about the block he gave me, the machinist finished
cooking and cleaning and pronounced it fit. Whoo Hoo. Then he called this
kid from the back room to carry the block to my pickup. Kid looked 16, but
built like a Patriots lineman. He hefted the block easily and trudged it to
my pickup outside, leaving me shaking my head and muttering something about
young people. But it wasn't over.
Later, when I got the thing home, not having a garage, I had to carry it alone
into my house, down the cellar stairs, and to my workbench. I was doing some
excessive gasping and grunting which I tried to keep to prideful decibel
levels, while my wife fluttered along behind me chirping about how I was going
to have a heart attack, which I indeed considered...until I figured it was
just too frigging much extra effort to die.
Today, as I began to clean the studs the machinist removed, I realized I was
going to have to replace them with the ones from my old block that was frozen
to the ground outside. It being a balmy 10 above in central New Hampshire
this morning, I slathered on dollops of suntan lotion and went out with some
tools and a propane torch. As they went for the New England Patriots
yesterday, things went well enough my way today. The good replacement studs
are now in my cellar thawing, and my project is no longer "blocked."
People who drive TR's are cool. People in the northeast who drive TR's are
the coldest...er, coolest.
Terry Smith
'59 TR3A (Off the frame and in pieces, but they're mostly CLEAN pieces now.)
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