Findin’ Parts

Anybody that knows me, of which by now there is a couple more than before I started writin’ this here blog thing, knows that our life on the road has been one of fits and starts. There being far more fits than starts. That’s “fits”, as in, I know that part that fell off Ol' 5th wheel “ fits” back on somewhere, but exactly where it goes, and what it’s supposed to do has me baffled. Sheesh.

But back to where I was a headin’ before I got off track, which was the education I’ve got into finding parts for our mobile, mobile home, one of which is trying to describe Ol’ 5th Wheel to somebody. Somewheres back in its earlier days it was a bus, but now today we call it our home. Still whenever I’m on the phone or in a vehicle salvage yard, rememberin' that we used too call a junkyard, a junkyard, but today there bein' some sort of stigmata or something like that attached to calling it what it were, so I deal with salvage yards now.

Anyways, that cussed piece of junk we refer to as our mobile, mobile home apparently has a more convoluted pedigree than any of old Mr. Jeeters hunting hounds had. One fellar told me its a GMC, another said it’s a Yellow, and still another called it a Flxible, though I think he wrote that down wrong, and it should have been Fixable, which in a way suits it better than either of them first to names.

Then I found some parts feller that apparently knowed what it is through the internet. Or tellin' it more truthfully, I should say that my uncle Horace, who runs the Gulch Automobile and Horseshoe Pitchin’ Association office, learned through some of his contacts in the Associations home office which is in Peewee Valley, that there was a fellar named BusNutty that should be able to help me out of my continuous difficulties with findin’ parts, when they fell off somewheres that I couldn’t walk back and find them laying alongside the road.

Now it just so happened that Mr. BusNutty was a travelin’ the same direction we were back a few years ago, and as luck would have it, we broke down in the same RV park he was a stayin’ in. I remember those eyes of his lighting up as he gazed upon Ol’ 5th Wheel, kind of like when a feller first looks at a girl and suddenly realizes she’s got more to her than just a name that makes her a female.

So I give Mr. Busnutty the grand tour, inside, outside, topside and bottomside, all the while with him constantly pullin’ on his beard until I thought he was gonna make his-self look like a plucked chicken. He was also a sounding more like a stuck record than somebody that was supposed to the number one hexpert on these here buses, saying over and and over again, “Well, I never, well I never” until I was wondering if he’d ever seen a real RV, or if his bus learnin’ all came from books.

When we was a done with the lookin, he just stands there, a starin’ off into the sky, like he was trying to get some kind of inspiration from the clouds or something. I was about to go back to walking along the ditch on the road out of this here town in hopes of findin’ whatever had fallen off this time, when he turns to me and gets this cat swallered the canary grin on his face. I’m a thinkin’ either the answer to all my problems is about to come out, or this fellar is gonna bust a gut laughin’ at my stoopidity for drivin' this piece of junk.

“Well,’ he starts out, which relieved me a mite, but still had me on edge, “I’m not sure how to say this, but,” and by now I’m really on pins and needles, cause I don’t have a clue which way he’s gonna go. Then he just stops and sucks in the biggest breath I ever did see a body take, well, except for the one Tammy Joe Jamison sucked in just before she commenced a bawling away when the Judge give me my certified certificate that day in Simpsonville.