Tasting Life in the Slow Lane : I had purchased a beautiful woman and discovered he was a transvestite.

Every man needs a hobby, an activity to take his mind off the pressing requirements of today’s merry-go-round world. Time and duty weigh heavily upon the guy who lives his work 24 hours a day with no mild diversions to lighten the load.

Women can be happy simply drying their fingernail polish or performing facial isometrics as they drive to the supermarket, but men require avocations with more challenging facets. Which is why I am rebuilding a Mustang. That’s a car, not a horse.

The only other hobby I have ever had was shooting rats at the city dump. My friend Leo had a .22 rifle and on weekends we’d go to the dump, which wasn’t very far from where Leo lived, and blast the rodents off the top of the garbage.

Leo used to say it was the humane thing to do since the rats were going to die of the stuff they were eating anyhow. Our shooting them simply expedited the process. Leo said it spared them a lot of pain.

I am not trying to spare my 1967 Mustang any pain. If I could cause it pain, in fact, I would be quick to do so, since that is all the fool car has ever caused me.

I don’t know why I bought it in the first place, but I did. The man who sold it to me, a dragon tattooed the length of his right arm, said the car was an American classic. “They don’t build ‘em like that no more,” he said. True. For one thing, they don’t hold ‘em together with chewing gum no more.

The minute I got the Mustang home it fell apart. A new paint job has never been able by itself to keep a car running. The disappointment was severe. I had purchased a beautiful woman and discovered he was a transvestite.

I got the car running again just barely and loaned it to a teen-age boy for a while. That was mistake number two. He effectively destroyed the paint job, the grille, the hood, a passenger door and a sheet of metal below the tail lights that goes by a technical name I can’t remember. Rear panel, I think it is.

“That car’s really a dog,” I remember him saying.

So I am rebuilding the dog in order to sell it, which certainly diverts my attention from my usual line of work. Working on a car is not even remotely similar to writing, unless, of course, you’re writing for television.

My only prior experience with automotive mechanics was in high school shop. It lasted two weeks. The teacher suggested I switch to home ec. I just didn’t give a damn about the thrust rate of the spontaneous combustion engine.

But that was yesterday and now I’m trying to save money. So last week, I began visiting junkyards on the fringes of the Valley, looking for used Mustang parts. I smoked a cheap cigar. I wore denims and old boots and spit and scratched in personal places like a real man in order to coexist amid the steel and sweat. I carried a Recycler in my hip pocket.

If you have never been to an automotive junkyard, you have not viewed life from the grease pits. It is an experience not unlike standing before the Acropolis of Athens or amid the ruins of the Coliseum at Rome. The Great Works of Man, worn to their essentials.

Well, maybe a ’59 Ford isn’t a wonder of the world exactly, but when its rusting hulk is piled high atop a stack of three other cars, there is an awesome quality about it.

“You don’t sposed to be backere,” a man’s voice said. The voice belonged to Chuck, an employee of the junkyard. “Surance.”

People who work with cars employ an idiom that combines jive with a language spoken only by the early Mesopotamians. I understood Chuck to say I was not supposed to be back there alone due to restrictions placed by the company’s insurance carrier on the free flow of non-essential personnel in the automotive dismantling environment.

“Gechuread bashed.” Accidents might occur.

I explained to Chuck I needed a right door for my Mustang. We picked our way through stacks of junked cars. Novas, Cougars, Nixons, Agnews. The fast lane ends here. The Mustang was atop a flattened El Dorado. In looking it over, I discovered the window wouldn’t roll up.

Chuck said something equivalent to no problem and pulled the window up by its leading edge, using both hands and all his strength.

“That just won’t do,” I said.

Indignantly: “Whachaneed a winofer?”

“Ferain,” I said.

“Indis wedra?”

While I certainly did enjoy exchanging pleasantries with Chuck, I didn’t buy the door, even though he was willing to lower the firm price of $100 to the rock bottom price of $90 to an absolute minimum of $85.

It’s just as well. Although the experience of visiting Valley junkyards was illuminating, I don’t believe rebuilding a Mustang is for me. It requires more expertise than knowing where to insert the key in order to start the engine.

I still don’t have a hobby. I may go back to shooting rats again. There goes one of them little suckers now. Pow!

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