CLIFF'S FOLLY by Douglas Grant Johnson
Edward Kinsella III
* * * *
Cliff's Folly, some were calling it.
It wouldn't surprise me if there were others who would go as far as to call it plain crazy. Whenever I happen to mention it, my wife, Lillie, expresses her opinion about it by simply smiling and shaking her head slightly.
One afternoon, about a week after I parked it in one corner of my place of business, the Cliff Mills Garage, I began to think maybe everyone was right. It had been a long day with no customers, and I had spent most of it doing little more than sitting there looking at it and adding up all the hours I would have to spend to finish it.
What it was, was a 1925 Dodge four-door sedan. It was only a few years old, but it looked like it had been run over by a horde of Roman war chariots, including the horses. I had bought it in this condition for about what a junkyard would have offered.
The idea for it hatched itself some time ago. I had been browsing around the new car showroom at the Ford dealer over at the county seat, admiring a truck I had no hope of ever buying. A few days later I announced to Lillie that if I couldn't afford one, I would make one. And I knew of a car that was priced just right to provide the raw materials. Plus, I said, I often had a lot of down time in the shop and I might as well turn that time into something useful. The idea would be to cut out most of the back half, bring the rear panel of the car forward, and make a pickup truck out of it.
And that, it now seemed, would be the easy part. I would also have to remove an uncountable number of dents, wrinkles, gouges, dings, and scratches. Not to mention a whole lot of rust.Oh yes, and I'd also have to fabricate some sort of bed, probably out of wood, to complete the project and make it into a proper pickup truck.
The fact that the engine still purred like a kitten was the reason I'd become interested in it. But now that just didn't seem to be enough incentive to save it in any form, sedan or pickup.
I don't mind telling you I was beginning to feel a sharp dose of reality coming on. Sort of like the fellow in the movies who looks over his shoulder and notices a fast-moving locomotive about fifty yards away and realizes he's parked squarely on the tracks.
* * * *
Late in the afternoon, my thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a car pulling up in front of the shop. I looked around to see a man get out of a big Packard and walk toward me through the big open doorway. Dust smears on the crown of his homburg and on the sleeves of his coat looked very much out of place. And he didn't look happy.
"I had a flat tire on the way over here. I need you to fix it,” he said.
"I can handle that.” I wasn't sure he heard me, or even cared whether he did because he had already turned back to his car, clearly expecting me to follow.
I did, even though I didn't like his manner. Normally I don't spend much time fixing flat tires. Most people around here fix their own. But he was the first chance I'd had all day to make a buck. Actually, four bits was the going rate. But four bits was four bits these days.
He opened the rear door of his car and gestured toward the tire sitting there, expecting me to roll it out. He hadn't bothered to put it back on the front fender where the spares usually rode on this car.
"I've got an errand that'll take me only a few minutes. Have it ready when I come back."
"Do my best,” I said without too much conviction.
"I'll want you to mount it on the car too. I put a big scratch on the fender just changing it, and I don't want any more of that to happen."
My eye went to a jagged scratch about three inches long on his highly polished black rear fender.
I guess he didn't expect any response from me because when I looked back at him he was already climbing into his car.
I watched him drive away, wondering who he was. It was a rich man's car. And he dressed rich. No one in this town wore a hat like that. You only saw them in newsreels on the heads of diplomats or Wall Street tycoons. It was easy to picture him as an evil banker whose errand was to throw some poor family into the street. A lot of people everywhere were having trouble paying off loans and mortgages.
It was a couple of years after the crash of ‘29, and the effects of that were getting worse rather than better. The depression that followed was what had brought me and my little family here to the small town of Watsonville. We were refugees from unemployment and all the other ills of the Depression up in the state capital. When our money and other resources ran out and we were faced with life in the local Hooverville growing in one of the parks, Lillie's family offered us the vacant home of her grandfather. We could live in it rent free if we could keep the taxes paid. While that lifted a big load of discouragement, it did little to put food on the table. But we took the offer anyway, and when we arrived here, I discovered there was no auto repair shop in the town. That was what I'd been doing at the Cadillac dealer up at the capital before they'd let me go, so I decided to employ myself. I rented, for next to nothing, what used to be an old blacksmith shop that had stood vacant for years and opened the doors. We'd done okay since then. At least we'd been able to keep our heads above water.
I took the tire into the shop and got right to work. Its owner seemed like the type who meant a few minutes when he said a few minutes. Not more than twenty minutes later—something of a record for me—a rusty nail was gone and the tire was ready.
I rolled it over to the front of the shop where it would be handy and paused to look up and down the street. My customer and his car were nowhere in sight. With nothing else to do, I relaxed against the doorframe and watched the late afternoon traffic pass by. Main Street in our little town is also the main highway, and sometimes all sorts of interesting vehicles pass through.
A moment later, a tow truck passed, hauling a big Cadillac Brougham. It was a nice-looking car, and I wondered what was wrong and where the fellows in the truck were taking it. The name on the door of the cab identified it as a towing service from Spring City, the next town west of here. I'd heard of the company, although I'd never had any occasion to call them. They must have more than one tow truck, I thought, because this one was older and pretty beat up. A short time ago I had seen a different one with the same name on it, a big one that looked fairly new. It had been pulling a big freight truck back onto the highway where it had tipped over following an accident.
It would have been nice if the Cadillac were being taken to my shop, I thought. Under the hood, I was familiar with that car and certainly could have used the work.
A half hour later, long past my regular closing time, I was still watching the traffic go by. By then, I guess I was also feeling a little perverse. When he came back, I wanted this arrogant gent to think he had kept me waiting. But I'd waited long enough.
As I pulled my big front door closed, I paused to take one last look at the tire. You could see it was almost new because the mold marks weren't completely worn off. I remembered the well-worn spare tire he'd put on in its place. It had seemed a little out of place—a poor man's spare on a rich man's car. On the other hand, I'd often heard it said you got rich and stayed rich by pinching pennies.
But the really troubling thing was, the fellow hadn't seemed like the type who would just go off and forget about his new tire, especially if he had any distance to go.
* * * *
"You're late today,” Lillie said as I came home that evening. It was an observation, not an accusation. “Busy day?"
"I fixed a flat tire."
"That's all? That didn't take you all day."
"It was the only business that came in. And then the fellow who left it didn't come back to pick it up. I even waited for him after I should've closed. That's why I'm late."
"Maybe he'll pick it up tomorrow."
She began to move food from the warming oven of the stove to the kitchen table. I sat and watched her for a moment before I spoke.
"I've decided to get one of the junkyards over by the county seat to co
me and pick up the Dodge,” I said.
"Really?” she said with a little laugh.
I expected her to have more to say, like, “What a good idea that was,” but she continued silently setting up the table.
I shrugged. “If a customer brought in a car in that condition, I'd probably tell him it would be cheaper to buy a new one."
"I thought the whole idea was to put some of your idle hours into something that might be useful."
"I guess that was the idea."
"And what's happened that it isn't a good idea anymore?"
"Billy may be old enough to drive by the time it's finished."
She gave a little laugh. “Billy's only three and a half."
"Almost four. But that's my point."
"If you have many days like today, it seems to me time wouldn't be a problem."
"I, um, thought you weren't so high on the idea."
"Well, I did think it was kind of silly."
"Everybody who has stopped by the shop probably thinks I'm a little off upstairs. And the ones who haven't seen it have probably heard about it."
She paused while she looked me in the eye. “'Silly’ is not the same as ‘a little off upstairs.’ And I don't think you're a ‘little off upstairs,'” she said. After a pause, thinking over what she had just said, she smiled and added, “Well, not normally, anyway. So what exactly did you do with all your time when you weren't fixing a customer's flat?"
"Pretty much sat and stared at the Dodge."
"All day?"
"I swept the floor once."
"Nothing else?"
"I straightened up the tool racks."
She stopped what she was doing. Perhaps, I thought, she was considering whether I had gone over the edge after all.
"And you didn't start doing anything on your pickup project?"
"Hard to know where to start."
She put another serving dish on the table and stood quietly beside me for a long moment.
"I think,” she finally said, “you shouldn't give up on it."
"What?” I wanted to rattle my ears to see if I had heard right.
She made another round trip to the stove without a word. Then she paused to say, “If you give up, people might think you're a quitter. That's worse than being a ‘little off upstairs.’”
"It could take years."
"Really, Cliff, if you quit, aren't you afraid people will still call it ‘Cliff's Folly'? Especially after it's gone?"
I hadn't thought about that, and it took me a moment to digest it. “Maybe they'll think I've come to my senses and give me a pat on the back."
"More likely, what they'll remember is, when a tough job came along, you gave up."
She was right, as she usually is. It was going to be “Cliff's Folly” either way. I must have looked pretty glum because she smiled and put her hand on mine.
"Go call Billy so we can eat. He's in the backyard. Supper's already getting cold."
* * * *
For the next couple of days I was busy doing one thing or another for several customers. Invariably, each looked askance at the old sedan, and offered the polite opinion that I was in for a lot of work. I could almost feel the words “Cliff's Folly” forming in their minds.
See, the problem with a project as big as this ... well, when the big door of my shop was open, as it usually is in good weather, you could even see it driving by. It's so big, people can't help but notice it. And talk about it.
I was feeling so gloomy about it, I think if I'd had a free moment, I might have borrowed someone's telephone and made the call, despite Lillie's advice.
From time to time I glanced at the tire leaning against the wall, wondering why its owner hadn't shown up to claim it.
It was troubling in the same way as a problem with a car. Like when you've removed all the reasons an engine doesn't run and it still doesn't run. When that happens it's because you've misdiagnosed something. With the tire, I didn't have enough information to make any kind of diagnosis, and that was frustrating.
When I reported in each evening, Lillie's raised eyebrows asked the obvious question.
"No, I didn't call a junkyard."
"Good,” she'd say and give me a kiss on the cheek before continuing what she was doing.
With that one word her arguments were brought quickly and clearly into focus and I heard them as forcefully as if she had spoken them again. She was still right. The old car would be “Cliff's Folly” forever if I gave up.
About then I finally figured out what my dose of reality had been trying to tell me about it. I knew a body man where I used to work who had many years of experience. He often said good body work was like sculpting. Well, what I knew about sculpting was less than what I knew about the back side of the moon. Compared to him, I was an amateur and my a project needed his experience.
And this amateur had been looking for an easy way out. What I needed, I suppose, was a good swift kick to get me started.
* * * *
In the early afternoon the next day, Mr. Samuelson came by. He operated one of the two grocery stores in town and was also the owner of the old blacksmith shop I was renting for my auto repair business. He asked me to step out and have a look at his car, a two-year-old Plymouth sedan with a badly dented fender and a crushed running board.
"My wife had a little difficulty avoiding a fence post while she was visiting her folks a couple of days ago,” he said, running his hand over the wrinkled areas of the fender and smiling ruefully.
"Sure. I can handle that,” I said quickly.
It was my usual response when a customer brought a car into my shop. But, alas, I wasn't thinking. What I should have said, if I had been thinking, was, “Not my line of work.” What he had asked me to do, and what I had agreed to do, was body work!
I didn't think I could diplomatically take it back, so I just gulped and realized the good swift kick I needed had just been administered by none other than myself.
"Actually, what happened was that another car ran her off the road,” he added, not noticing what must have been a look of dismay on my face. “Weaving all over the road, she said it was."
"I, uh, I guess I'll need to look it over and see, um, what needs to be done."
"Fine. I'll leave the car with you for a while this afternoon. I'll pick it up later and you can tell me what it's going to cost."
When I told Lillie about the prospect of working on Mr. Samuelson's damaged car and expressed my opinion of my fender unbending skills, she said, “Well, you've got a fender or two of your own to practice on, haven't you?"
What could I possibly say to that logic?
* * * *
The next morning the abandoned tire and the Dodge were right where I had left them. I took a moment to look over both of them as I began to plan my day. I was not encouraged by either one.
When Mr. Samuelson returned to pick up his car the afternoon before, I told him I thought the big dent in his fender could be straightened, but that because the running board was of heavier metal, it would be easier and cheaper to find a replacement at a junkyard. He thought the price I quoted for the job was fair. I told him I'd start looking for a replacement for his running board right away.
Since moving to Watsonville and opening my shop, I hadn't had occasion to poke around any of the local junkyards. Most of the repair work I'd been doing was the kind where you're better off putting in new parts. But I knew about two of them because I'd passed them whenever I went over to the county seat. One of them was where I'd been thinking of sending my Dodge.
Before locking up, my gaze settled on the fenders of that battered Dodge. As Lillie had pointed out, if I could learn to straighten one of its fenders, I might do okay with Mr. Samuelson's Plymouth after all.
I took a deep breath and decided I would spare an hour or so to make at least a token effort to get started on the Dodge. If I did that, perhaps the urge to get rid of it would go away. I grabbed a couple of wrenches and started to
remove one of its fenders. Compared to everything that needed to be done, it was no more than a symbolic gesture. But at least I could tell Lillie I had started. An hour later, with the help of a blowtorch to loosen the rusty bolts, the left front fender was off.
I was getting ready to leave for the junkyards, when my friend Dave dropped by.
Dave is the town marshal, although to look at him you might not guess. He doesn't wear a uniform. What he wears is a pair of striped bib overalls because that's what he wears to work his large farm on the outskirts of town. He can do both because there isn't much for a law officer to do in Watsonville, and what little there is, he can usually take care of by the strength of his logic and the force of his personality. He doesn't wear a badge either. I suppose he has one, but if he does, he probably doesn't think it gives him any more authority than he already has.
"I've been wondering when you were going to get started,” he said, smiling and nodding toward the Dodge's fender lying on the floor.
I sat on a stool next to him and looked at the car.
"It looks even worse without a fender,” I said. “You've heard some're calling it ‘Cliff's Folly'?"
"I wouldn't fret about it. Talk like that will go away when it's done."
It was almost the same thing Lillie was trying to tell me. It's the kind of thing that's nice to hear when at heart you're not so sure of yourself. I don't mind telling you it feels good to have friends like Dave. Neither of us said anything for a moment, then Dave shook his head, seeming to remember why he stopped by.
"You hear about the Grower's Bank being closed up this morning?” he asked.
It wasn't the first bank to close I'd heard about. The papers were saying it was starting to happen all over the country. I looked up with a sigh of relief.
"I've got no money in it."
"That's good. There's state people all over it this morning. Murdock, the owner, he's gone missing without a word to anyone. There's rumors he's absconded with the remainin’ assets of the bank."
"I don't know him."
"A lot of people do. He's holdin’ more'n a hatful of paper on property around the county, and I understand he's been personally spreadin’ foreclosure notices around the last few weeks."
AHMM, November 2007 Page 10