Every so often, we got a nicer than usual vehicle donated to camp. One example was a pretty nice Cadillac. For good reason, I never got to drive it, but I heard it had a distinct fish smell. It was as if the previous owner had been a fish monger and demanded only the most impractical delivery vehicles.
I did get my hands on the Jeep Wagoneer that was donated. This was a really nice vehicle, particularly by camp standards. Power windows that worked, seats that were still upholstered, roadworthy, etc. There were a lot of miles on it, but in someone else's hands, it had a lot of life left. I am sure someone knows the backstory, but from my point of view it just showed up one day. Because it had working 4 wheel drive, it was a personal favorite of mine to take into places it shouldn't go. I don't think it had been taken off road much, if at all, earlier in its life. I think it was much like the mountain bikes that some hipsters like to hang up in their apartment. Just for show. I tried to make up for its coddled childhood.
M.L. and I were engaged in a particularly spirited jaunt around the old race track and for once I didn't get stuck. At the time, I didn't think anything of it. Later that day, our camp director, Topher, took us into town in the Wagoneer. I believe it was me, Toph and M.L. Topher was an extremely laid back dude. I think he just sort of stumbled into the director position, but did a very good job at it. What I appreciated is that he just told you what needed to be done and didn't tell you how it had to be done. For instance, if you were moving the canoes from the basement of the storage building to the lay down area about 150 feet away, Topher would not mind if you took a quick detour with the canoe to the dining hall. As long as it ended up where it needed to be.
All trips out of camp involve driving around Brant Lake. It is a pretty drive, probably 8 miles or so and follows the shoreline of the lake. At the end of the lake there was a general store, Darby's. Darby's was a great place, one of the last true general stores. You could go in get a sandwich from the deli, a bucket of nails, a pair of socks and a hedge trimmer if the mood struck you! Unfortunately, it burnt down a number of years ago. There were a couple of other businesses around that area along with the fire station, town hall etc.
As soon as we left camp, we noticed a distinct clicking coming from the Wagoneer. Toph instantly knew I was to blame. But, at the time, I thought it was just a click that would lend a bit of character to the old girl. The problem was that as we kept driving, the click got louder and louder. In fact, it was more of a repeated screech of metal on metal by the time we reached Darby's and the Wagoneer was essentially undrivable at this point. So I did what anyone would do, I opened up the hood and stared at the innards as if I had some clue as to what I was looking at. Of course I didn't. Fortunately, one of the locals ambled over and immediately noticed that we had a large pool of transmission fluid underneath the vehicle. This was one of the few times I saw Toph get upset. He explained to me in no uncertain terms that there were vehicles at camp that were for fooling around in and those that were not. He was right. I appreciated that Toph understood that as long as there were vehicles and mud, the two would meet. He just wanted me to be more sensible about my choices. Regardless, we had a problem.
What I did next, did not make a lot of sense at the time. It makes even less now. My solution was to go into Darby's and purchase some transmission fluid. I then poured the fluid into the appropriate part of the Wagoneer. Not surprisingly, all this did was increase the size of the puddle. At this point the locals were quite amused.
Then, we got a really lucky break. The assistant ranger at our camp was for many years a guy named Chris. He was a local, probably late twenties early thirties. I will write a post purely about him sometime, there is a lot of material. He only ate one meal a day, dinner. For the entire rest of the day, he subsisted on nothing but coffee and cigarettes. His rig up at camp was this old pick up truck that was a stick shift, but the shifter was on the steering column. Apparently, he was the only one who could drive it successfully, because you had to follow a very strict shifting pattern or the linkage would get all bound up. He had a large family, almost all brothers, and they would often pop into camp to lend a hand.
One of Chris' older brothers, I'll call him Carl, happened to see our predicament. He understood that the solution was not more fluid. In fact, he quickly discovered the problem. During the off roading adventures, I had apparently hit something that caused one of the metal lines that carries transmission fluid to move so that it was up against the drive shaft. That clicking turned screeching was the drive shaft and the transmission line clashing, over and over again, until eventually the transmission line developed a hole. Not only did Carl know what the problem was, he knew how to do a quick fix. Even though it was a super hot day and he probably had his own business to attend to, he dropped everything to help us out. While he was under the car, M.L. and I had no choice but to stand around and watch. We noticed that Carl had a half finished bottle of apple juice and we joked about drinking it. Fortunately we didn't. First, this guy was doing us a monster favor. Second, he could have destroyed us rather easily. Although I had never wrestled Carl, I had wrestled Chris once. Chris did not look that strong, but he was and he really knew how to wrestle. Probably because he grew up with those brothers. Our little bout was over before it even got started. Instantly, he had flipped me onto the ground and established total dominance. Carl was bigger than Chris.
Ultimately the patch was put into place and I went into Darbys and bought yet another round of transmission fluid. This time it stayed in. We thanked Carl, I got another lecture from Toph about making wise choices and we continued on with our journey.
The next day, I went off-roading in the Wagoneer again.
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