| Memories Stans first Cars The first car my brother had was an old 49 Nash, my father had bought it originally for my mother but she was never able to master a car with a clutch. After a few months of driving the Nash my brother made a deal with a freind to trade it for a green 1955 Plymouth. The Plymouth was in fairly good shape but needed an engine. My father wasn't too kean on the idea of trading a running car for one that wasn't, but Stan had talked him into it. After saving up some money from his part time job Stan purchased an engine from the local junk yard. With help from me and one of his close freinds, we replaced the old engine with the one he had purchased. One scare that we had while working on the car came when the car was up on a bumper jack and Stan was underneath working on the flywheel assembly. Not heeding to my fathers safety advice, there were no blocks placed under the frame. Stan asked my freind to jack it up one more notch. When he did the car twisted sideways and fell off the jack. There was no right front tire on the car and the car slammed down on the brake hub with the frame almost to the ground. We yelled Stan's name to see if he was okay, but there was no answer. Quickly moving we tried to replace the jack, but the car was too low for the jack to slide under the bumper. Acting out of pure adrenaline my freind grabbed the bumper and lifted the car high enough for me to slide the jack back under the bumper. We then were able to jack up the car while my friend braced the car to keep it from sliding to one side. After the jack was up far enough to look under, we peered under the car. There Stan lay smirking. He slipped out from underneath the car, chuckling and unharmed. Apparently the car fell just perfectly so he was under the center of the cars frame where the transmission and drive train normally are, just narrowly averting disaster. Stan, after realizing he was okay, had kept quiet to scare us and undoubtably it did. We cautiously jacked the car up and found some wooden blocks and blocked up the frame before proceeding. Safety as an after thought was not the best practice. If the car would have slid a few inches one way or another disasterous things could have happened. Just another example of a close call involving one of Stan's 9 lives. |