...the only sane person in an insane world?

There's something to be said about all of the visiting I do at the nursing home; I've always had an affinity for listening to the elderly, and I certainly always love a good story. On Dad's birthday last week, I found a florist nearby and bought him a few balloons to tie onto his wheelchair. I don't know who's having it the worst of late ...Zeke with his doggy-cold, or the residents of the Alzheimer's ward; the more lucid of the residents have been asking about him frequently and I hope I can take him back soon. When I got there with the balloons, the staff informed me that Dad was in the lunchroom. When I walked into the room, he and another gentleman were sitting and listening to one of the other residents play the piano. The gentleman playing was confined to a wheelchair and rather gnarled; he could still play, and from his talent even now, it was a bit obvious that it was likely just a shadow of what once had been. He was playing Christmas carols with a twinge of a ragtime flavor. Dad was in a pretty good mood, and even a little talkative; I found out a few days later that I had just missed his sister by a matter of minutes.

He didn't even remember that she had been there; a shame, because it was the first time either of his sisters have been to see him since he's been in the home. It may be the last time; I've only seen one of his sisters once in the last 10 years. He was quite happy with the balloon's and was ready to go home (or, "get on the road" was the exact remark as I recall) ...I made some of the usual gratuitous remarks I would have found utterly offensive even a year ago, but that we all use so freely now. He wanted me to be sure to "find Dad" so he wouldn't "miss any of it." Sometimes the most you can do is play along with him and try to pretend to be wherever his mind is at the moment. His attention span rarely goes beyond seconds, so I no longer really have any guilt feelings about playing along, or telling him I'll be right back when I leave.

I remarked to Dad that the guy playing the piano was pretty talented, and Dad responded with a somewhat derogatory remark about him not being all there, or something to that effect. As of the visit today, I was certainly able to deduce that the gentleman is indeed as mad as a hatter; whether it is Alzheimer's or just your garden variety dementia is anybody's guess. As Mom and I were talking to Dad, he was jabbering away about wanting more coffee ...quite fixated on it in fact. As I listened more, I realized that the larger percentage of his sentences were a form of absurd prose, and he was actually trying to rhyme his sentences (with no small amount of success; I doubt many really listen though). There was a comedic sort of "performance" quality that seemed to be hidden behind it. The mind certainly wasn't all there, but there was a vestige of method somewhere within the madness. I don't think there was a conscious knowledge of his ramblings; there was certainly an obsessiveness about it that precluded the notion that he consciously knew what he was doing. I could still see hints of the former man sneaking past the madness though.

He'd rap his cup on the table, and babble about greeting her in the morning through the end of a spout, and if there was none to be found, he'd certainly shout. The rapping of the cup on the table was really getting to some of the other residents ...I mentioned to one of the aides that more coffee for him might be in order (but they might want to go for decaf), lest some of the other residents go postal or something. He mind appeared to be stuck with wanting coffee ...he rattled and rambled over and over in a lyrical fashion, often to be punctuated with a melodramatic sounding laugh. Given his talent on the piano, it made me wonder if the gentleman may have been a performer at one time. There was a moment I found a bit amusing in which after one of the residents becoming extremely agitated over his rapping the cup, an aide decided to take his coffee cup away from him. She asked him for the cup, and he said no ...he stated flatly that he knew she wouldn't bring it back if he let her have it. She then told him that she would simply refill it for him and bring it back. She was firm, but still somehow gentle as she took it from his hand; as she walked off, he looked me in the eye and said with near perfect lucidity that she thought she was tricking him, but he'd let her think she was getting away with it because he liked how she smiled while she did it.

...and then he went back to the rambling. I laughed as he smiled and then carried on with his monologue.

I asked the head of the unit about the gentleman a few minutes later, and she was quite surprised either that I picked up on the fact that there was some method behind the madness, or that I noticed that he was trying to rhyme whilst she never had. She said she was unaware if there had been any past performance history with him ...but that he had told her before that he had been the mayor of a small town in another state. I'm not sure if that qualifies or not.

I wrote his name down, determined to look him up on the internet and see if I could find any information about him. His name was unusual enough that quoting it in the google field immediately pulled his late-wife's obituary from 2004 ...from the small town in the other state that the director had mentioned no less. Small world indeed; ...it was the first hit. As of 2004, he had outlived two sons out of six, and still had two daughters ...one son and one daughter live locally. Only one of his boys lived in the town where they had lived when his wife passed. I can only make speculations of course, but one thing from the obituary struck me.

He and his late wife took a great deal of pleasure from taking the children, and then later the grandchildren, on yearly vacations that almost always included a trip to Disneyland. I'd like to think that his mad ramblings in near poetic prose replete with the melodramatic effects are probably the remnants of the pleasure he took from playing with his grandchildren. I doubt he knows why he does it, but I suspect it made him happy to see them laugh, so he acts out now ...perhaps he knows why, perhaps not.

Perhaps he simply enjoys our smiles.

Nissan weekend #7

Well, the seventh weekend was a bit of an odd one ...half because it wasn't really a "work weekend" at all, and half because although I did manage a little over 4 hours work-time ...I didn't feel as though I got as much done as I had hoped for, yet when I write about it, it seems like a pretty good bit for the amount of time I had (it certainly wasn't totally wasted time at least). I also proved that when one has slightly fragile health to begin with, that pushing your luck can have consequences.

It was the 51rst "Autumn Trails" parade & festival ...something we have done as a family for nearly a decade; there is a parade of antique cars, and we try to have Dad's '49 Ford truck in it every year. There were numerous troubles getting the old truck started, and they almost gave it up at one point when it died on the WAY to the parade start-off point. It turned out that the battery was bad ...which probably should have occurred to me (of all people), but it just didn't (but then, I wasn't actually there yet when they were having all of the problems getting it started the night before either). I would have had them swap the batteries with my Nissan, but the BIL said it was no biggie ...it needed a new battery, so "when" wasn't really an issue. They were going to simply park the truck for the parade, but then saw the big "OPEN" sign at the local NAPA parts house, so he just bought a new battery on the spot, and did the parade as usual.

The old truck always gets a lot of admirers, and this year was no exception. Zeke stayed back at the ranch this time ...which was a bit of good and bad at the same time. He actually would have been less trouble this time than most years in the past ...he's also just not feeling as well this time as in the past, so maybe it all equalled out in the end. Winsboro is probably one of the most dog-friendly towns I've ever been in; Zeke loves all the attention, so it was a bit of a bummer from that perspective though.

The noise from the parade gets to me every year; noisy, chaotic environments and I never tend to do well together. The low lows of the engines and exhaust and the higher highs of some of the horns and whistles hit my dizzy "buttons" just right, and I think I've always gotten pretty sick as a result ever since my disability started. I've always contended that I can't just stop living, so if I'm going to get sick, then I might as well have some fun while it's happening. This year I could actually tell you the exact car that started the whole thing rolling downhill though ...it was a Ford Mustang, and the exhaust was the tipping point for me.

I wasn't quite up to snuff when the parade was over with, but I still wanted to cram in a few hours of work on the car. When I had been back in Dallas, I had been poring over the pictures of the rear control arms and the rear suspension of the car. When I had cleaned up the the one arm I had dropped out on the #6 weekend, I had reached the conclusion that the simple cleaning would be fine ...there would be no real need to repaint them. The longer I looked at the pictures, the more I realized that I DID want to throw a coat of paint on them. Once again ...if I'm going to THIS much trouble, I might as well do it right. When Mom and I arrived Friday night, we dropped my parts and tools off and when I unloaded the bags at the house, I ran back down to the shop and grabbed the control arm and bracket and threw a quick coat of paint on them so they'd have the night to dry. The highest compliment for my work was when we got back and BIL's Dad came down, looked at things and asked why I had bought a NEW control arm when the other one had looked fine to him?

I had my brother grab one of the tools from my BIG toolbox that's in his garage and bring it to me while he was in my neck of the woods for "Mom business" (we may need to make arrangements to get that big sucker over to Winsboro one of these days): of course, the tool wasd my ball joint press that I had WISHED I had for the bushings on the front control arms. As hard of a time as I had THIS time, I wouldn't have been able to have done anything AT ALL without the press. I did NOT however, start with the suspension this time ...I figured I had better get busy on having the transmission ready since the actual engine was already ready to drop in. On the #5 weekend, Sis had helped me a bit with cleaning the exterior of the transmission; this time I intended to finish the job. I started out with the pressure washer, and it didn't take me very long to figure out that water simply wasn't going to cut it. I had bought a couple of cans of brake parts cleaner along for this very eventuality. The front seal on the transmission had been leaking pretty badly, and the inner bell housing was literally caked with gear oil that time and heat had endowed with the consistency of tar. I used the air compressor and blew it out with an air gun to dry it, and then went to work with the brake parts cleaner.

For people who don't know much about cleaners and such ...have you ever been in a parts house and wondered why there is so much carborator cleaner stocked in EVERY parts house when nobody had used a carborator on a production vehicle in at least twenty years? The reason is because it is SUCH an awesome cleaning agent; the downside is that it tends to cost a lot. Another thing that you can do with carb cleaner is actually start a car and keep it running in the eventuality that a fuel pump isn't working ...not QUITE as widely known or used, but still very useful to know in certain cases (I can recall quite a few times having somebody sit under the hood with a can of carb cleaner in the air intake rather than to try to push the car into the shop). Brake parts cleaner is a little bit less well known by the "shade tree" variety of mechanics; it's an awesome cleaning agent, but it has a few advantages that carb cleaner lacks. The largest single advantage is that it's almost completely safe for rubber, plastics and paint; it's also not nearly as caustic to human flesh as carb cleaner (not to be saying it isn't caustic, just not AS bad); it's also not nearly as flammable and comes in a larger sized can for about the same price as carb cleaner. Both a good and a bad thing about the larger sized can is that it's under a lot higher pressure than carb cleaner ...what it lacks in "oomph" that carb cleaner has, it makes up in pressure when hitting whatever you are cleaning. I'll choose brake parts cleaner over carb cleaner any day just for the aspect of not having to worry about screwing something up by accidentally getting it on it; carb cleaner WILL fuck up rubber and dissolve paint.

So anyway ...I got after the inside of the bellhousing with BP cleaner, a wire brush and mostly my fingers. It took about a can and a half to get it to a reasonable point of cleanliness (I don't have too much reason to go all OCD on something you won't even SEE once I put it back in, but then I'm not going to leave anything caked in it either), then I went for trying to get the housing off to reach the leaky input shaft seal. This was a bit of a weird thing for me ...not that I really have much of any experience with transmissions, but most all I've ever seen have the seal right there for you to swap. This one had a moderate-sized housing that had to be removed ...kinda odd (and I'm hoping that it won't be fucking with my world down the road). Of COURSE it couldn't just be unbolted and taken off ...apparently the Nissan OEM gasket contained at least a small amount of super glue. I had to remove the clutch-fork "boot" from the side of the tranny and push in a long screwdriver to pry it off, and of COURSE the gasket came off in about three peices (I shouldn't bitch; there's no fucking way I would re-use an old gasket ...and there will be more on that later).

Good news was that it came off without TOO much beating ...bad news was that something else fell out into the bell-housing in peices (I fucking HATE it when that happens). I had the inner seal ...two actually; there were two different 5-speeds used by my year model so the guy gave me both. I found out later that the other option was only for the turbo ...they look almost identical, so I'll probably have to look it up online or something to figure out which is which (and throw away the other once since I bought it nearly two months ago). Given the lack of a gasket for the housing and the head-scratcher of the metal thingy that dropped out when I knocked the sucker off; there wasn't going to be any "putting back together" on this trip, so I turned my attention to the cleaning again. I got the electric drill and wire wheel and went to town on the rest of the transmission, then gave it a nice coat of the glossy black high-temp engine enamel. BIL remarked later on in the evening that I'd better have a LOT of people crawling under the car to justify all the "purty-work" that I was doing in places that you can't even SEE! ...he may have a point.
The next step was the dreaded rear control-arm bushings. I say "dreaded" because I had already figured out that I was getting the same bullshit I had to go through on the front, only plus a little bit this time: they weren't even giving me a new inner metal sleeve for the rear bushings; I had to re-use both ...AND the old bushing was nearly twice as long as the one on the front. Good thing I brought the press this time. I'm betting that the other arm will go a bit faster now that I actually know what I'm trying to do, but the first one was a real bitch. I pressed the entire bushing out on the first one (there are two bushings per arm on the rear as compared to just one on the front ...and as fucked up as it was, I still had both bushings changed on the one rear arm in a lot less time than either side with the front arms); the second I only pushed out the center metal sleeve. I will try to ONLY do the inner sleeves on the other side when I get to it ...maybe even try to drill out some of the rubber to make my life a bit easier next time as well. Once the rubber bonding breaks ...everything moves fairly quickly; grinding out the old rubber is messy, but really doesn't take that long.

I'm writing about this weekend over a week and a half after the fact ...and therein lies one of the OTHER problems I had. The rear control arms are quite large, trying to work on them on the floor wasn't really an option, but putting them it in the vise was no easy task either. I'll grant that "no easy task" is a far cry from "fucking HARD" because it wasn't all that bad. One just has to bear in mind that the person doing it not only is having a bad day from the dizziness, but also has shoulders that aren't really strong enough to hold even a paperback book over shoulder level for more than a minute or so ...much less a 20-30 pound press and an pnuematic impact wrench. The problem comes in when I don't really have the ability to do it, but I do it anyway. It hurt like hell, I dropped shit every other time I tried to hold it in place ...but I still managed to do it. I suffer like hell for weeks afterward, but I still do it ...at least for a little while. There have been a few times that not even sheer willpower would cut it; it's been almost two weeks, and I'm still in chronic pain even now though. Advil and Halloween candy ..yummmmmm!

I finally got the bushings in and went ahead and put the arm back in; as I was putting the bolts though ...the sis came out and informed me that it was almost dinnertime, and I needed to find a stopping point. I went ahead and put everything on that side (except for the shock absorber) back together, and then took the other wheel off so as to remove the other brake caliper to take home for rebuilding. I got back up to the house before I remembered that I needed to pop the caliper pistons out BEFORE I cleaned up ...I needed compressed air to get the pistons out, and fluid would fly when I DID pop them, so I made a quick trip back down to do that. After dinner, I went back down and finished picking my tools up, and got the (few) other things to bring home for cleaning, rebuilding and/or painting.

It didn't FEEL like I got all that much accomplished, but for only having 4-5 hours total, I think I did fairly well all things considered. I'll have the other side to do next time, I'll change the fluid and gasket in the differential and probably put the fuel tank back in. I'm sort of hoping to be able to put the engine back in, but that may simply come down to being a matter of time, and whether I'm willing to go there next time. It isn't as though there is going to any shortage of "things to do" on the silly car in the immediate future; this is for sure.

I guess that this could be a decent "fruits of my labor" as to the present though; I think it will look pretty damned good even if you'd have to be under the car to enjoy it. I guess that I may well enjoy the lack of grime when I put it back in at the very least though!