BRAND NEW WIPER BLADES

Is there anything in this world better than a brand new set of wiper blades. The only thing I can think of would be when the little man behind the parts store counter trots out to the parking lot, pulls your old blades off, brings them inside, measures them, picks out the new blades, trots back out to the parking lot and installs them. That would save me the trouble of trying to put them on myself. Also the trouble of having to drive back to the parts place after I got home and found that I had picked out the wrong blades due to some size differential or having the wiper blades that have to have the clips versus the kind that don’t. All this despite the fact that I had measured carefully and had addressed the clip versus non-clip issue before I entered the parts store. And what a change that next rain shower. One swipe and everything is crystal clear. Clear as when I was 20 years old and I knew everything and everything was either black or white, no shades of gray; right or wrong, no hint of anything anywhere in between. One swipe of my new wiper blades and my field of vision is now perfect, good enough now to go back to playing dollar poker. The dollar poker I was forced to give up as I became older, because although I could read the other fellers serial number on his dollar bill, I couldn’t read my own because my arms weren’t long enough. The fellers I played dollar poker with weren’t the types that I could trust to read it for me, much less hold it at a sufficient distance for me to read. Not those five or six swipes of my wiper blades a few days ago that didn’t clear my windshield and left me with so many choices. Is that truck up ahead slowing down or turning left, or both; can I straddle whatever that is up in the road or is it still moving, or both? So many shades of gray, so many choices of right or wrong or varying degrees that fall between that I see now that I am zeroing on fifty years old.
The only thing that could be better in this world than new wiper blades and someone putting the correct ones on, would be getting the new wiper blades when I exchanged a set of eight spark plugs that my teenage son had asked me to pick up for him. These sparkplugs were to replace the ones that had mysteriously gone bad in his hot rod. I obtained an oral agreement that I would be reimbursed with cold hard cash, or if not cold hard cash, he would perform some task or tasks around the house. Barring that, some time and attention would be paid to one or all of the automobiles around our house, whether it would be to the exterior or somewhere beneath the hood. The chances of my seeing results from either of these contractual obligations were roughly the same as placing some monetary denominations up the rear end of an overweight barnyard animal (if you are not from around West Tennessee and the previous sentence has you confused, you can email me at rpm@eplus.net and I will elaborate). So it was to my delight and not unexpectedly so that I was informed that I had come home with the wrong spark plugs, despite the fact that I had written down carefully the information I was given as to brand, size of motor and the actual spark plug type. Such is my luck with shopping both for my teenage son and my wife. I still say that an 85% accuracy rating of coming home with what I was sent after from either Kroger or Wal-Mart has to put me in the elite of men shoppers. But after being informed I had the wrong size spark plugs, and that the current plugs in the hot rod were doing fine, I saw myself with a perfect opportunity to turn the ten dollars I had put down for the spark plugs into a new set of wiper blades.
Speaking of hot rods, my son has one and actually works on hot rods. I determine a hot rod to be a car several years old, his being almost 34 years since it rolled off the assembly line and one that has a high performance motor that has a minimum of eight cylinders. He seems to be a dying breed; those people that actually like to get greasy, crawl up under cars, disassemble and reassemble various parts of automobiles up to and including the engine. I know of few people that work on hot rods now, and knew of few people when I was my son’s age that spent much time in that activity. Perhaps I take pride in his ability to do such work, because when I was his age, I enjoyed such activities, with one small difference. When my son rebuilds motors, or moves his distributor and 4 barrel carburetor from his car to his pickup and back again, his motor cranks and purrs with precision. When I was his age, I was allowed to work on the family station wagon, a Pontiac with a 2-barrel carburetor, a standard performance distributor, and a 326 engine, with 8 cylinders of course. Not falling into the hot rod category because of her year model, I was still only to happy to save up a huge amount of money, close to $120.00 and run down to the local Motor Parts and purchase a "High Performance Distributor". After obtaining permission from my parents to work on my back and forth to school and weekend mode of transportation, I set about changing out the distributor. Unfortunately, I was unaware that there was a certain sequence that the spark plugs wires have to be hooked up to a distributor, be it the factory installed "Standard Performance Distributor" or a "High Performance Distributor". Several factors played into my favor upon discovering this tidbit of automotive insight. First, it was Saturday and I had two days to rectify the situation. Secondly, my parents had another vehicle and they both worked at the same business, which would preclude them from having to have the station wagon in running order to be at work Monday morning. Thirdly, the school that my two brothers and I attended was not so far away that me and my two brothers could not reach it on foot. This had not been necessary since the moment I had reached the legal age to obtain my driver’s license and The Station Wagon was in running condition. Lastly, the factor that was most in favor was that my neighbor, Mr. Crain, had been a hot rod enthusiast in his youth and remained so into his latter years. A simple deduction of my situation and a few turns of the motor to determine the firing sequence, soon had my "High Performance Distributor" working and the motor of The Station Wagon purring like a kitten. I can say with pride that the engine sounded almost as good if not as good as it did before I put on my $120.00 "High Performance Distributor". Buoyed by my success with the "High Performance Distributor" I moved on the "High Performance 4 Barrel Carburetor". Again after saving up a huge amount of money, again neighboring in the vicinity of $120.00, I bought myself a "High Performance 4 Barrel Carburetor". I don’t recollect if this was purchased at the local Motor Parts of if I got it at the junkyard. Memory dims, but I do know it was a Holley and it had four barrels. Carburetors are not as worrisome as distributors as you are not bothered by that pesky firing order pattern, and are much easier to install. You bolt the carburetor to the manifold, you have a gas line coming in, you have several hoses to hook up to several parts of the engine and you are done. After bolting the carburetor down, hooking up the gas line, and finding most of the places to hook up the various hoses I was overjoyed to hear the engine fire up as I turned the key. Heck, it purred almost as well as it did before I hooked up the "High Performance 4 Barrel Carburetor". The only drawback to this great accomplishment of automotive modification was although the engine operated in an orderly fashion, one close to that before I made before my modifications, I could never get the back barrels of my "High Performance 4 Barrel Carburetor" to open up. Although my new gas mileage fell a few miles per gallon below my pre-modification level, I was still only too proud to pop the hood and show my off my "High Performance Distributor" and "High Performance 4 Barrel Carburetor" to my peers. Albeit they were no where near the "hot rod" aficionado I was. Despite their pleas to "Throw the coal to it", I told them I could only "shower down" on The Station Wagon in cases of dire emergencies or when I was on the drag strip. Sadly the only drag strip I’ve ever been near then or now is the one I pass out near my father-in-law’s farm. I’m pretty sure that my son’s back barrels open up and open up regularly as evidenced by the fact that he has replaced his right rear tire twice, and this happening after we had sprung for the first set of tires. I’m hoping that most of the missing rubber off his right rear tire was left at the aforementioned drag strip, but from some of the tire tracks I see around the general vicinity in which I reside, I’m not sure that is the case. Dimming memory considered, I’m pretty sure the only rubber The Station Wagon ever laid down was only after the brakes had been applied and applied with some pretty intense pressure.
My days of bolt turning and engine modifications have long since passed and I am now resigned to watching my son carry on in a field that not only fascinates me, but also confounds me. I now shell out for various and sundry automotive parts, and cat litter to clean up the occasionally leaks and drips that come with such endeavors. I can only wait for my current set of wipers to age and wear out so I can once again enjoy the instant moment of brilliance and clarity when I have to replace my wiper blades, or better yet, remember the parts store that runs out there and replaces them for me.
Roy Mabry
September 19, 2001