Cocoa tins

in #life6 years ago

7310-019

Sitting on the lawn in the front garden, it's the summer of 1974 perhaps and my dad and Uncle Mel are trying to prolong the life of our Renault 4 by "fixing" the exhaust. This was our first car and it was a cheap one even if it was a bit of a stretch. The exhaust pipe had become rusty and full of holes, as exhaust pipes do (do they still? maybe this was just then). A few minutes ago, they let me crawl underneath to have a look. It's amazing under there, all the grubby bits of metal that only the road sees normally. And yes, I could see where there were three or four rusty holes in the big fat pipe that poked out the back.

Tony and Mel have a plan and they're explaining it to me - they've got a couple of cocoa tins and they've cut the bottom out of each one so now it's like a short piece of tubing. They will slide these over the pipe and fix them (somehow!) so that the hot gasses coming out of the engine won't be able to play the exhaust pipe like an enormous penny whistle. I know what the car sounds like, it's noisy, it's nothing like a penny whistle.

None of us know whether it will work or not. Mel had a mate who said his other mate had done it and it had worked for about six months. Then the whole thing had dropped off. I don't like the sound of that, it sounds dangerous. So they get started and I keep out of the way. I sit on the grass and look very closely at a couple of buttercups that have come through. There's a daisy too. There's no point in picking the buttercup because there's no-one else there to play "do you like butter?" with.

There's a lot of shouting and swearing coming from under the car. It's obviously not a very easy job. Mrs Taylor comes to the end of her garden path and tries to see what's going on. She's shaking her head every time she hears more swearing. Some of the other net curtains are twitching.

I don't remember how well it worked, it probably was another six months. But then my dad got a promotion and with that, a new car and we were no longer those people with a second-hand blue-grey Renault 4, we were those people with a brand new Ford Escort in metallic blue.

Sort:  

Love the old picture, it takes me back to when I was a small kid. It seems our problems with huge holes in the road were very relevant then as well as now.

Fun and amazing memories. I bet it did work. I know I've had a hanger hold up my exhaust on my car before. I'm always buying second hand (refuse to pay for something new that literally is worth almost half as soon as you drive it off the lot!) so sometimes some hard work, chewing gum and good ole' know how is all you need ;) But now I want cocoa! Darn carbs :)

Coin Marketplace

STEEM 0.35
TRX 0.12
JST 0.040
BTC 70351.33
ETH 3563.43
USDT 1.00
SBD 4.72