"I wonder how "Spare Parts" Harbison made
out with that queer little mechanic you talked him into taking on his
automobile trip?" Joe Clark observed.
"Must have worked so well that "Spare
Parts" extended his trip to cover a lot more territory," replied Gus, who
was Joe's partner in the Model Garage. "I wish they'd come back. We
need another man right along. I'm thinking and that little Alec
McGregor ought to fill the bill." "Maybe he will come back." Argued
Joe, "but I can't figure out how you know he's so good. You've never
seen him do even one job." "Just wait and you'll see, said Gus confidently.
"Guess I won't leave to wait long," Joe chuckled as he saw a car drive up
in front of the garage. "Here they are." "That certainly was one small
trip, Gus," said Harbison enthusiastically after the greetings were over.
"Never had to worry about the car. Alec, here is the real stuff.
And the funniest thing about it was that we didn't have to use a single one
of the spare parts we took."
"What! No trouble
at all?" exclaimed Gus in mock surprise. "Sure we had trouble. Lots of
it!" Harbison replied. "Never had so many fool things happen on our trip.
Bet Alec here is a regular wizard on that stuff. Nothing went wrong
for the first week. Then one morning Alec suddenly began sniffing the air
like a hound dog. Alec, you'd better explain what was wrong: I don't
quite understand myself."
"Wasn't much," said
Alec modestly. "I smelled scorched paint as we stopped and found the
motor was boiling like a steam engine. Funny part of it was we could
hear the steam gurgling around inside the cylinders but when I poked open
the filter cup on the radiator with a stick so's not to get scalded with the
steam, nothing came out I figured the top water pipe must be stopped up some
place and I took it off after the motor cooled a bit. It was all clear
so I took off the thermostat. A piece of wood-don't know where it came
from-had worked up in back of the valve and when the valve closed after we'd
put the car away the night before, it had jammed it tight shut."
"I wouldn't have found
that trouble in a million years," admitted Harbison. "It probably
wouldn't happen once in a million years," Gus commented. "You did well
to find it so quick, Alec. Great!" "The next trouble we had was sort
of freakish too, Harbison replied. "We had to stop over night at
a little inn up in the mountains and the next morning we found the storage
battery store closed. Alec found that the starter switch had partially
shorted and drained every speck of juice out of the battery. There
wasn't enough left to start the motor even with the crank. It looked
like we'd be stuck until we could get another battery sent in because there
wasn't a battery charger or even any electric light current in the place and
we couldn't find any door bell batteries. And there wasn't any other
car to give us a tow to the nearest service station. But that didn't
scare Alec. He noticed that there was quite a steep down grade in the
road a couple of hundred feet from the inn. So we got behind the car
and pushed it to the top of the grade.
"Alec threw it in high gear and after
we picked up speed down the hill he let in the clutch. We were going
fast enough so that the generator cut in and the needle moved over to
charge. Just before we got to the bottom of the grade Alec threw the
ignition switch and the motor started as nice as you please. You can
bet we didn't let it stop again for several hours."
"Good work, Alec!"
Gus approved. "But what would you have done if there hadn't been any
grade to coast down?"
"I guess we'd have been
stuck," Alec promptly admitted. "We had no trouble after that for nearly
another week." Harbison continued, "and then came the queerest one of
all. A tiny green worm succeeded in stopping this big heavy car.
Tell 'em how it happened, Alec. "I guess the worm didn't intend to do it, "
Alec grinned. "he just made a mistake. Anyhow we were rolling
along at a good clip when the motor coughed a couple of times and then quit
cold. It sounded to us like we'd run out of gas, but the tank gage
showed more than half full even when I rocked the car to make sure that the
gage was working. So I tickled the carburetor, but it wouldn't flood
so I though the pipe between the carburetor and the vacuum tank must be
clogged and I took it off. I could blow through it easy enough.
Then I turned on the shut-off valve at the bottom of the vacuum tank and gas
began to gargle out like water does from a small necked bottle when you turn
it upside down. That meant the vent pipe must be clogged up and sure
enough, when I took it off the gasoline ran fine, so I blew through the
curved vent pipe and a little green worm popped out and hit me right in the
eye!"
"Maybe he thought it was a knot
hole in a tree," laughed Gus. "You've certainly had some queer
troubles. I'm glad nothing more serious happened." "Serious!" echoed
Harbison. "Just you come over here and take a look if you want to see
serious trouble." He rumbled in, turned the steering wheel of his car
a trifle and pointed to the end of the steering arm. "Holy
smoke," Gus gasped as he studied the string winding around the end of the
steering arm and the drag link. When did it break?"
"About two hours ago," replied Harbison, "I was driving along admiring the
scenery when all of a sudden we hit a deep hole in the road and right after
that I noticed that the steering wheel just turned in my hands without doing
anything. I jammed on the brakes just in time to keep from going into
the ditch. I thought we'd have to call for a service wagon, but Alec
found a piece of heavy cord beside the road, cut some short pieces and
looped together and then bound them on as you see. You can bet we just
crawled the rest of the way!" "It's remarkable what you can do
with just a piece of string if you know how," Gus observed. "That ends
your trip till we can get a new steering arm." "That
doesn't worry me," said Harbison. "This was the end of the trip
anyway, and I won't be going on another one for several months."
"Then you won't need Alec anymore," Gus said and he turned to the little
mechanic, "Alec, we can use you right along if you'd like to work for us."
What do you say?" "Well, Chief,"
replied Alec, grinning from ear to ear, "I've been kind of a rolling stone,
but a rolling stone gathers no moss, so I guess I'll stick around and gather
a little-I sort of like the looks of this outfit!"
END
