Troubles

It wasn’t DeRay’s best weekend.

Saturday as we were pulling out of the driveway to go to the play, ***BUMP*** hard. By nature, always blaming someone else, he cursed the weight in the backseat calling us FAT _ _ _ _ _.  Innocent Eddy, Verla and Jeanette; hurt and insulted. He didn’t bother to confess that he had left 12 reams of paper in the trunk because they were so heavy he hadn’t figured out how to get them upstairs.

He thought he just hit the trailer hitch and drove on.

Sunday, Verla asks if he wants her to move her car out of the driveway before he goes to church. “Oh, no. I’ll be fine.”  CRUNCH. CRASH.  Holy Toledo.  He comes home after the sacrament to access  the damage. “Nothing,” he declares. “Wasn’t there already a dent by the front light?” Amy checks and she sees measurable damage including red paint. That’s one advantage of being old and blind. “Sorry, Verla. I’ll give you six oranges if you’ll forgive me.”

As he drives the next few days, he decides maybe the exhaust is dragging. He stops at a station.  Looks OK.  But he hears more as he drives and decides on Wednesday to have it checked at muffler place in Clearfield.  $506.40 estimate to weld up the muffler and install a catalytic converter that had buckled with the force of the jolt. “Well, at least we’re all still alive. No one was hurt.”

In the afternoon, he takes the car down to Brandon, who made the conversion on the car to natural gas. Brandon gave him an estimate of $300.  Two hundred dollar savings, my friends.  “Let’s take a look,” he suggests, so they hoist it up and with a jack they put enough pressure to unbuckle the catalytic converter and smooth it out. With that straightened out, the muffler rides in place, and DeRay can’t wipe the smile off his face.

“How much did that cost you?” I query. He makes a circle with his thumb and forefinger. ZERO!