If your tool selection looked like this you were a target for all the goodies on my truck!
Cam Truck goes to the "Moon"
When I couldn't find Lars McInroy, I asked at Sam's place. He, Lars and Richie, my fix-it guy, were all friends and took air-plane-flying lessons to- gether. Sam had explained in good nature the handy aspect that their instructor was a preist and if the plane was going to crash and burn, they had an automatic in when they got to the pearly gates. Lars had worked just down the road at a construction outfit, so I figured Sam would know where he was. I didn't like to lose a good customer if they moved on to another place.
"Angel's handle is toast, Ingrid." Eagle was out beating off a tire when we heard him yelp followed by a peppering of bad language. Sam was buying some replacement handles for his tire hammers, Angel, being his favorite. "Oops, sounds like he missed. We probably need another one, ha, ha, ha, ha." Eagle didn't have the same eye for accuracy as Sam and some of the handles that were still attached looked a little chewed.
"You call your hammer Angel? That's cute."
"You see here where she's flat and then spreads out, it looks like she's got a wing on her back if you use your imagination a bit." Sam explained as he looked thoughtfully at Angel.
"Do you want wood or fiberglass? I've started carrying both. The fiber- glass is a little messy mixing up the epoxy and letting it set overnight, but a lot of guys say they are stronger and better. You have to make sure it hardens straight."
"You wouldn't say that if you've ever pulled out a handful of fiberglass splinters. I'm sticking with wood." I got a shiver down my spine from that remark and found all the sizes he needed with the proper wedges. We agreed that since the hammers were going to be swinging over his head, it was best he did the installation. I usually did it if someone insisted, but was glad not to have the respnsibility.
Back in the office, Eagle was taking a break sucking on a cola with a wet rag laid over his shinbone. "Either one of you guys know where Lars has dissappeared to? I haven't seen him in weeks. I was wondering if he's working on a construction site somewhere?"
"Lars is on the moon." Eagle smirked with crossed arms, like he wasn't going to give out any information.
"Oh sure, that's just great. How am I going to get to the moon, Eagle?"
"That's just what we call it, calm down. He's driving a Moxy dozer up at the Carter landfill." Sam kindly filled in. "It's just when you get way in to that place you feel like you're on a whole different planet because the landscape is trashed! Ha, ha, that was a good one!" Sam was usually more amused than everybody else at his own puns and jokes.
"Okay, I drive by there every Tuesday. It doesn't look so bad from the road. It's right at the turnoff by the Thermogas place, right? Nice hilly countryside there."
"Well, good luck. Hope you have a blowout free visit to the moon. Just tell the guard you are there to see Lars and you won't have to pay." Eagle gave a knowing grin to Sam and smiled despite the pain in his leg and Sam handed me his weekly check.
It was a beautiful, sunny day as I pulled up to the guardhouse and asked how to find Lars. The guy handed me a little map and yelled over the noise of an outgoing garbage truck, "He's over in section B, just don't get off the trail." I studied the map and figured I'd have to stay in the outside trail to get to him. It was a real shame that they were filling up this beautiful ravine, but I concluded that I was a guilty as the next when it comes to making trash. The farther away from the guardhouse I got the more nervous I became. Cam truck was sliding all over the place and in the bright, warm sunshine I had forgotten the deluge we got the day before. The last abandoned farmhouse went out of sight behind the mountain of what looked like thousands of square yards of grubby carpet that had been ripped off in strips and rolled up. Now all I could see was a total wasteland as Cam slid to the right my little map went floating down into the stairwell. I couldn't keep Cam on the trail and for fear of stopping and being swallowed up in the stinking mire, I gave it gas until I got on a spot that looked a little high and dry, sliding into a pile of only God would know what. It was gastly. It was horrible. It was scary as heck, and now I knew why Sam and Eagle called it the moon. In every direction, as far as I could see, was a wasteland of every imaginable thing under the sun we throw out. I was lost. I got out of Cam truck and climbed up the front bumper, grabbed the hood latch and with the help of the windshield wipers for footing I pulled myself up onto the roof hoping to get a clue which way to continue. Making a shade with my hand I scanned the area in every direction, turning slowly around, getting a twinge of panic when I came around to the front again with no sign of a trail or life. I was sitting there with my feet dangling over the windshield wondering how far I could get on foot when I saw black smoke over the next rise. The thought of turning into human toast being consumed in a toxic garbage fire wasn't exactly the way I planned on going out.
I yelled to Rastus as I quickly slid down raking over the wipers, "Smoke, let's get the heck out of here Tazzer!"