jump her? i barely know her! (a throwback)

all i wanted was a damn sandy’s special…

dopey me.

i should have known bad automotive karma was hovering over sandy’s (in south austin) when i saw the wreck…which i was told about by a lockhart police officer (who was built, and dressed, like a brunette britney spears) and just happened to be there because her friend was driving the truck that turned INTO the van and basically bent it in half, injuring no one, which was surprising given the way the van looked…and given the fact that when he went to back his truck out of the van he had to gun it because it was impacted in so deep that idling backwards just wouldn’t do.

but i stayed anyway. amazing what us south side folk will do to score a great cheeseburger – fries – drink combo for only $3, huh?

2026 note – it’s now nine bucks

but the really crappy part kicked in when i went to leave – because when i turned my key all the lights went out and it just clicked. NOT cool. a couple of weeks ago i tried to jump my uncle’s truck and couldn’t because there was so much corrosion on the battery terminals (which i later found out is typically a signal that your battery is starting to fade). i figured that was the problem and i have done MORE than my share of ghettofied auto repair, so i went right back to the sandy’s counter and got a pepsi, which i then poured on the corroded terminal. within a minute or two, about 80% of the corrosion was gone, but not all of it.

(think about that – this stuff will eat through car battery corrosion, and people INGEST it…)

when that didn’t cause the car to start, i knew i had some phone calls to make, and the only person i could think of on the south side who both knew cars and would head down to help in a heartbeat was my old boss from star, americo (which most people call “co” for short). he was on his way to the star office anyway, so he stopped by about fifteen minutes later when he was done there.

neither of us had money (okay, so i had four bucks in my bank account) or tools. once he found out i had tried the “give yo battery a coke” ghetto method, and we still couldn’t jump start it, the hilarity ensues. it was autozone time.

the play, in four acts (each act being a trip to autozone):

act i:

we go to the autozone at oltorf and congress, about five miles from where my car has decided to spend it’s evening. it’s 9:30. they close at 10:00. there are no customers there and everyone who works there appears to be in their late teens / early twenties. this guy walks up to me with grungy hair, a slight build, and a late adolescent attempt at a goatee that looks more like he went down on an unshaven girl with some kind of adhesive on his chin and this was what stuck behind as a souvenir.

while he appears to be an incompetent dipshit, i figure he just looks that way but instead has that type of white trash mechanical skill where he can make a cd player using his little brothers laser pointer, his girlfriend’s vibrator, chicken wire, duct tape, and a miller high life beer coaster, otherwise he wouldn’t be assistant manager at an autozone. he is out of normal battery posts but sells me an extended one that he guarantees me will work just as well. i buy that, a wrench, and a bottle of water. my $4 checking account balance is now $.28.

we go back to the car to discover that my corroded beyond recognition terminal is not just covered in acid funk (isn’t that a type of music?) but also stripped down more than a drunken sorority girl at a post game keg party. the wrench is useless for removing it. vice grips are in order. i make this discovery as co discovers he has money he was supposed to deposit in his sister’s bank account in the car. it’s back to “the zone” for vice grips.

act ii:

it’s now 9:57 when we walk back in. they don’t like us much for this. i don’t care. we get the vice grips and split. once we get down to the car, we get the old post off and put the long post that chin pubes guaranteed me would work. it takes about two seconds to realize that the white trash mechanical genius was in fact an incompetent dipshit.

(early moral to the story: always trust your first instinct when dealing with white folk who you KNOW dream that one day chevy will bring back the iroc z)

we do the best we can to clean the old post, hook it back up, and try to jump start it again using co’s little nissan. deciding more power might be needed (typical male hypothesis, right, ladies?) we flag down one of those 4×4 trucks that looks like the real version of a kid’s toy – roll bar with enough lights to light up a stadium, body lift so high you can change the oil while standing, a stereo that can drop a moose at fifty yards when the right eminem track is played, and tires taller than any of the last three girls i’ve dated. we heave one end of the jumper cables up to the truck, he revs it up, and i try to start the malibu. no dice. maybe third time will me the (mother fucking) charm.

act iii:

we’re now creeping up on 10:30 and have to go twice the distance to an autozone on stassney and south first in south austin – ironically three minutes from co’s house. i walk in with the long terminal and bitch loud and hard about how much chin pube boy sucks and needs to die. they trade me the long terminal for a short one AND a can of battery corrosion cleaner just so the cable will make a solid connection. we head back down to the car, clean, swap, clean some more, grab the cables and attempt to jump it three times

(just like that time i got too drunk at a strip club, but without the messy pepper-spray-fueled ending…but this is neither the time nor the place to go into that)

still dead as a doors singer. time to admit it’s the battery. so much for that “third times the…” pig crap, huh?

act iv:

it’s now 11:45. co drops me off with the last of his sister’s dough and goes home to get real tools for the battery extraction since it’s only three minutes from autozone to his house. i grab the battery and wait. when co gets back we head down. he just hands me his old vice grips and sits in the car. i can’t hassle it – he’s been a saint about all this. i have the old battery out in sixty seconds and the new one back in in another ninety (the tray that holds it in place gave me some trouble, so i had to kill it). i finger tighten the ground, then the hot. i grab co’s old vice grips (all metal, no insulation on the handles) and start to tighten down the hot. with the last turn the grips touch the ground post, creating a shower of sparks, shocking the hell out of me, and sending co into hysterics. “all tightened?”, he asks between giggles. “yep”, i reply. he reaches in and turns the key. the car roars to life. the night’s ordeal is over. it’s now 12:30 – four hours after we started.

prologue:

the next day i sleep in a bit, then get up to go pay co back at the star office before heading to work. as i leave my neighborhood i hear a pop through my car stereo speakers. the cd ejects. the air bag light starts to blink. and the gauges all spike up to their peak positions and settle back down.

this can not be a good sign.

i drive over to where a friend of mine works. it’s an auto parts store and he’s a mechanic. the same scenario plays itself out with my electrical system two more times on the way there. i call in to work and tell them i’m gonna be late and i don’t know HOW late. when i describe everything to him, he says it sounds like my alternator is spiking and needs to be replaced and that that’s what might have drained my battery. since my alternator is, as luck would have it, from autozone and has a lifetime warranty, i drive to the lockhart autozone. we hook up the machine to test the battery and alternator. battery is okay. after ten hours, go figure. the alternator is, too, which gives me that fear of having to trace out the whole electrical system to find a short or something. as I go to unhook the jumper cable hook ups and get a little surprise. remember the shower of sparks from the night before? yeah, well, i had left the ground finger tight and it was even looser once the next morning rolled around. i was panicking just because i hadn’t tightened down a cable and it was loose in the battery and causing the problem.