More About Findin’ Parts

Afore I continue with this true life tail of the fulltiming lifestye, I needs to do one of the ligature type cuts that authors use. Mr. Busnutty is just to long to keep a usin' so I.M. shortenin' his name down somewhat in this post, though you probably won't even notice I dun it.

I wasn’t sure who was going to bust a gut first, Butty or me, but at last he cut loose with the biggest belly laugh I’d heard in a coons age, and it was lookin’ like my day was goin’ from bad to worse. Then he whacks me on the back with one of his big old hands, and says, “Boy, you got the bus to beat all buses.”

I took that as a good sign, and waited for more. He was a licking his lips and rubbin’ his hands together like he was getting ready to chaw down on some of Ma’s elderberry pie, when he adds, “ It’s got more variety in its parts than Mr. Heinz had when he come up with that 57 varieties number of his. Well now, that didn’t sound all that bad, especially since he’d stopped laughing, so I just kept a doing what I was a doin’ which was nothin’.

He then commenced to give me a run down on the pedigree of Ol’ 5th Wheel, of which there was so much, he lost me after the second pause. In a nutshell, we were the proud owners of the most cobbled together bus in the history of mankind. Whether it was that cousin of Nilda’s we got it from or somebody else, everything worth anything had be takin’ off that thing, and replaced with the most broken down, worthless piece of crap that would do something similar to what the original piece was a doing before it was took off.

The heck with the air cleaner and the brake lines being different from the original, it didn’t even have the same engine or transmission that it should. Then he really laid it to me. Nye on half them parts wasn’t even American, they was from all over the world, with the brakes being from South America of all places.

Butty was a joking that was probably because them South American brakes had failed so many times goin’ down those mountain roads they got, they probably traded them in on something from up here that would actually work. Now I was beginnin’ to see why me and Nilda was always broke down.

All this was interesting, but it wasn’t getting’ us back on the road to our next breakdown, or to put it as I’m learning to put some humor into this writin’ business, on the road to our next brakedown. Sheesh. That was bad, even for a feller like me that’s such an accompliced wrighter.

I never did figure out if Butty just felt sorry for me, or whether he wanted the challenge to end all challenges, but ever since then whenever we breakdown, all I got to do is pick up the phone, give him a call and explain what busted, or fell off this time. Usually within a day he calls back and tells me what the part is, where one is, and what it will cost me.

Take this last problem for example. Don’t matter how many times we try to fix them brakes, they are still gonna break. This last time it was some kind of reverse rear actuator thing that fell off according to Butty. Only it ain’t one of those easy to replace, it’ll be there in a few days, parts.

Oh no, this is some special South American part that hain’t been made in over half a century, meaning they is few and far between. So I wasn’t surprised when I didn’t hear from Butty for several days, and when he did call, it weren’t with good news. Seems this actuator thingy is about as scarce as the hair on Grandpa Tomlinson’s head after he stuck his head into the gas oven so he could see better to lite it.

We’re going to be here for a while, even though he didn’t have no trouble locating that part somewhere in Peru of all places. It’s only a couple of days to ship it here by air, the problem is that they say the mountain climber feller is saying it will take him nigh on 3 days to climb down in that ravine where the bus with this part is a laying, and then another five or six to haul it back out. And now that you can see how me and Nilda’s day went, just exactly how did your day go, and are you sure that you want to take up this mobile, mobile home full time life?