I took a bunch of garbage out of my old car (which is really in need of repairing) as a prep to getting it ready to take apart and fix up again. Well, found out the door creaked, so I went into the shed to get an oil can. I thought about using WD-40 but that tends to do more harm than good over time, so I took my great-grandfather's oilcan which has not been used in probably over thirty years and decided to fill it.
It was taken apart inside and there were pieces everywhere, which wasn't so good; I put the valve back together on the sliding part of the pump. It was all made of springs and ball-bearings which have to go inside a tube. Very simple but I had never figured it out before so it was news to me. When I filled it up with some oil, I could squeeze the handle & squirt a stream of 30-weight oil 15 feet. Not bad! I like the craftsmanship of old tools and it's always fun to take a bit of a family heirloom and make it 'go' again. Surprised it still had all the parts but it worked so I oiled a few things mostly because I was having fun.
The old car is probably what a lot of people would consider disposable, but I think the '93-'97 Corolla is worthy of its place in the pantheon of people's cars, alongside the Morris Minor, the Model-T Ford, the Citroen 2CV, the Austin Seven, the Beetle, the Ford F-150. I like working on it some, but I dislike the expense and the hassle of car ownership in general. Old cars are great fun to work on, to drive a bit on weekends, but I just plain hate cars. No the Tesla isn't what I'm looking for--I'd like something about like a kei car from Japan, something tiny and minimalist and most of all plain, slow, reliable, and very fun to thrash about on a logging-road. I'm dead tired of motoring by necessity, but I do enjoy driving for sport--My next car is going to be a little death-trap of a runabout built on a homemade clone of an Austin Seven frame, perhaps a scooch larger, on terrifyingly skinny tires with vague brakes and raw torque from a big electric motor straight into the differential. I want a real example of bugs-in-your-teeth motoring, 40mph feeling like going 110. Unfortunately the Corolla doesn't offer that but it is a lot more fun to drive than a modern sedan and besides I'm a bit sentimental about the old bomb anyway.
In the trunk of the car I found two old coffee-pots, one a really nice Sunbeam Coffeemaster electric from 1950, and the other an Ecko stainless 8-cup percolator probably from the late '50s to the '60s, with the $4 Goodwill sticker on it. So I decided I'll fix up my old Sunbeam for sale--and I made coffee in the Ecko which I am currently drinking.
It's raining outdoors and I think it's funny that my deeply conservative lifestyle and the Marxist theory on depersonalization which Girlfriend brings to the table actually go hand in hand. I, something of a mixed bag of leftist and change-hating "young fogey," am living the conservative dream here of patching up a saggy old car, living a grey spring day that smells of wet tweeds and motor-oil and almost corrosive black coffee. Meanwhile in her classroom Girl is learning various theories and the odd part is that the Marxist theory she's taken on is somehow a way to preserve good things. We discussed the culture of the poor, the eerily homogenous culture of the ultra-rich, the benefit to a life that isn't strictly defined by money, and we agree. This goes beyond ideologies and guesses, which all seem a bit silly in the face of Reality--this is something universal and I don't mean the flexible joints on a driveshaft.
Not a bad day so far but the laundry's a mess and needs done and I think I would like a bath.
