Date: Wed, 01 Jun 94 12:50:33 CDT
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From: Joel Walker <JWALKER@ua1vm.ua.edu>
Subject: for you early busers: a little entertainment ... (kinda long)
O'Kane & The Enchanted Bus
by Dick O'Kane <Road & Track, March 1972>
"You ever get the feeling you're driving around inside a whale?" my
wife asked.
That pretty well described it, assuming that the insides of whales
also feature acute flatulence along with the dampness, darkness and mud.
Rain slashed like birdshot against our great tin container, overwhelming
the wipers, which were already having their problems with the wind; in
the really bad gusts, they left the windshield to wave vaguely about in
the air. Couldn't see a thing past the 20 feet of gloomy dirt road the
lights lit up. But we kept lurching and racking slowly onward ...
sooner or later the road HAD to go up there.
We had been sloshing down a secondary Spanish highway toward Almeria
and a place on a beach we know about when we spotted the crumbling ruin
on a high pinnacle above a little town. It looked both inviting and
forbidding, brooding there in the last light of the stormy day.
"What do you think?" I asked Jeffi. We're both nuts about Moorish
ruins. Nobody but nobody bothers you when you spend the night camped
in one, and there's an odd sort of fascination in sitting there in the
moonlight, letting the place's strange, ancient vibrations wash over
you.
"Sure, why not? It'll be dark in a few minutes, anyway. Look,
there's even a road going up there." In the last grey light I could
just make out a strand of lighter color winding up the dark pinnacle.
We went on through the town, and on the other side we found a dirt
road going off in the direction of the castle. We'd been following
it into the dark for about 15 minutes now.
Every time the road curved, we'd think, ahh, now, finally it'll
start going up. But it never seemed to. "I don't think this is gonna
make it," I said as we humped around another right bend. "In fact ..."
Suddenly, we weren't alone. I FELT the two black, hooded shapes
before I really saw them ... felt them in the pit of my stomach and the
back of my neck. And when I finally realized what I was seeing, I
didn't know whether to floor the gas pedal or the brake.
"Gaaaahhhh!" my wife remarked.
Not ol' super-cool, observant me, though. "It's okay," I said in a
semi-strangled peep, try to regain control of my bladder. "Ghosts
don't have machine guns." These guys did.
"Buenas tardes," I called to the apparitions.
"Buena' tarde'," they answered in the local accent. Following
Guardia Civil custom, one unslung his machine gun and stood back to
watch while the other one came forward to exchange pleasantries.
"Is it possible to drive to the ruin on this road?" I asked him.
"The ruin! Yes, the road goes there . . . why do you want to go to
the ruin?"
"We sleep in our truck, and we're looking for a place to pass the
night. Nothing more."
"To pass the night!" He turned to grin at the other one, who slung
his gun and came forward. "They spend the night in the ruin, Vicente!"
the first guard told him. "In the TRUCK."
Vicente grinned at us and his buddy. "Si?"
"How much farther is it," I asked.
"Less than a kilometer. But is is very steep, sen'or. Perhaps you
would rather spend the night here below. It is very pleasant here.
Muy tranquil." He shouted this last over a cataclysmic roar of wind
and splatter of rain.
"Is there some reason why we should not go to the ruin?"
"Oh, no, sen'or. It is permitted, of course." He smiled and
shrugged. "But most people do not go there. They say there is a curse.
An old legend, you understand," he added, smiling broadly and crossing
himself.
"Umm. Well, I think we'll try it anyway. Perhaps, sen'ores, you
will come to our camp later? For a glass of wine . . . or some hot
coffee on such a bad night?"
They exchanged glances. "Many thanks, sen'or. But soon we go off
duty."
"Si, si, muy pronto!" the other agreed, nodding a bit too vigorously.
We thanked them, said good night and lurched onward into the gloom. Soon
the road began to rise. And before we'd gone 200 yards, we were in
first gear, the old truck scrabbling frantically for footing in the mud
and rocks. We lurched and jolted, stuff fell out of the cabinets in
back, but we were still moving forward and up.
The road got steadily worse ... and steeper. And we were still far
below the castle. By now, though, I was determined to get to the thing,
curses, steep roads or whatever. The Mighty Son of Moby Truck, however,
was not, and we finally reached a piece that all its 40 ferocious
horses couldn't manage.
"Well, we can't stay here. We won't sleep very well standing on our
heads."
"Maybe we could back up it," I mused aloud. "Hell, I'm gonna go
look at it first, though." I got out the flashlight, pulled a poncho
over my head and walked up the road in the spattering, whipping darkness.
The steep piece went up about 50 yards and then leveled off at a wide
flat area. A footpath, too steep for the car wound up the final slope
to the ruin.
"There's a grand flat place up there," I told Jeffi when I got back
to the truck. "Let's try backing up a bit and making an all-out
charge."
"Is it all spooky and cursed up there?" Jeffi asked as we backed up.
"I couldn't tell ... it was too dark. All I could see were glowing
red eyes and luminous blue scaly things about the size of cows."
Our "all-out charge" (heroic, misleading phrase) did the trick.
Wheezing, clattering, rear end going BAM! BAM! BAM! as it leaped and
churned and slewed back and forth, we tumbled up and over the top. The
truck sat level, idling quietly. And the little red generator light
was on. I blipped the throttle. The light stayed on. Something had
jolted loose, probably. Why do these things always seem to happen at
night, when you're being vigorously rained at? Well, it'd just have to
wait until morning.
We had a fine, big dinner with lots of red wine and went to bed to
listen to the drubbing rain. The truck rocked gently in the gusty wind.
"Do you believe that about the curse?" Jeffi asked sleepily.
"Sure, why not? I stopped believing in reality after the last
presidential election."
We slept the sleep of the righteous and just, curse or no, and during
the night the rain stopped. We awoke to a bright, warm sun and an
electric blue sky, and the view was just fantastic. Below us, the town
was a glittering white splotch on the red-brown earth, and the mountains
all around us gleamed in a new dusting of snow. And way off to the
south, we could just see the blue haze of the sea.
"You want to go up to the ruin?" Jeffi asked after breakfast. "I
think I'll go up there and sketch."
"Maybe soon. I've gotta see why this thing won't generate, first."
While Jeffi roamed around the ruin, I tried to figure out the red light
problem. Everything was connected and in place, and whatever the trouble
was, it refused to be diagnosed by a test light or the scientifical
spark-and-zapp techniques favored by under-equipped mechanics. Far as
I could tell, the generator was working, and so was the regulator ...
I tried my spare one with no success. And everything was connected. But
the generator light continued to glow fiercely red.
"Maybe it's cursed," Jeffi suggested when she came down from the
castle. "Have you tried sacrificing a goat?"
"I was thinking more along the lines of a virgin. Hell, I can't do
anything else up here. Let's go down to the town, maybe there's a
generator shop there."
There was. A small, cluttered, gloomy place, but the guy had the
necessary equipment, and he knew how to use it. After trying every test
conceivable with an elderly roll-up console rig, he grunted to himself
for a moment, then started pulling the generator. None of your
mess-with-the-fan-shroud, take-out-the-carburetor business, either. He
went right after the big nut that holds the generator shaft to the fan,
and had the thing on the bench in three minutes flat. Clean it, test
it, put in new brushes, test it again on the big machine. Perfect.
Take out the regulator, test it. Perfect. Get a reading off the
battery. Fine. Check every last wiring connection. Perfect.
Satisfied, the buy put it all back together. "Start it", he said
finally.
I started it, staring intently at the generator light. The light
stared redly, malevolently back at me.
"Puta," the guy said softly, peering at the light. He went away
mumbling, came back with a voltmeter/ammeter and started testing it
again. Everything checked out. But the red light glowed and no
current seemed to be getting anywhere. The guy said some very
unscientific things about the breeding habits of Germans. It didn't
help.
"I do not understand, sen'or. It is not possible, this." We
studied the engine silently for a moment. "No es possible," he said
again, shaking his head.
"I thought at first that something was loose," I offered. "The road
was very rough and the car was bouncing badly. We were on that old dirt
road up to the ruin when it first . . ."
"La ruina!?" the guy yelped, looking at me like I'd offered him
violence. "You went to the ruin? With your car? Ay, sen'or, why did
you not say? La ruina! Dios!"
"Um, well ..."
"You should have told me, sen'or! It would have saved much time ...
much work." He went to the front of the shop, looked furtively out and
then closed the doors. "You must now go to Don Manolo, sen'or," he said
in a whisper. "Tell NO ONE, comprende? No one! Do not say it was I
who sent you."
"Now, wait a minute. Let's start over again . . ."
"No, sen'or, there is nothing to say. You must go now ...
immediately to Don Manolo." He glanced at the windws for spies, then
knelt on the dusty floor. "The road to the ruin is here . . . and here,
a few hundred meters in, is a road to the left. Turn onto this road
and follow it. It will take you to Don Manolo."
He stood, spit on his dust map, crossed himself and rubbed it out
with his foot.
"What do I owe you?"
"Nothing, sen'or. Go quickly!"
"Let me pay you for your time, at least ... and for the new
generator brushes."
"Very well, a hundred pesetas. Quickly, sen'or, I beg you. Remove
your car from my shop!" He squirmed and danced and screwed up his face
like I was keeping him from the john, so I laid a hundred pesetas on
him, started the truck and backed out of the shop.
"Sen'or! Sen'or!" The guy came running out. "Take these with you!"
He threw the old generator brushes into the truck and scurried back to
the shop, closing the doors behind him.
"Far out," I remarked to my wife. "Let's go see Don Manolo. This
is getting wilder by the minute!"
The other dirt road wound and bumped through the dusty hills for
about two kilometers, then petered out into a track. We heaved and
lurched along, slower now, for another kilometer.
"You ever get the feeling you're involved in a massive put-on?" I
asked Jeffi. "I don't think this track goes anywhere." We stopped.
Ahead, the track faded into a rocky path.
"Umm . . ." Jeffi, said, staring to the left. "Umm . . ." I looked;
to our left, across a dusty yard, was a small white house with a man
sitting in the doorway. He was smiling at us.
"Was that house there all the time?" I wondered aloud.
"The hell with that," said my wife. "Is it there NOW?"
"I'll ask the man."
I got out of the truck and approached the house. The man stood up
and stretched his back, still smiling. He was about five-ten, slender,
maybe 45 or 50, and dressed in the usual white shirt without collar and
shapless, dusty black suit. Ordinary. But his face was not. Brown
and weathered with high, strong cheekbones, it was seamed and creased
into permanent lines, as if he had spent his whole life being vastly
amused at something, and the hot Andalusian sun had cured his leathery
face into a permanent smile. His teeth were even and white, and his
black eye sparkled.
"Don Manolo?"
"Yes, I am Manolo," he said extending his hand. "Welcome. I have
been expecting you. Ah! Please ask the sen'ora if she will join us
for some refreshment." He turned on his heel and went into the little
house.
He came out carrying three glasses and a bottle of dark red wine.
I introduced him to Jeffi and he bowed low. "My house is your house,
sen'ora. I am honored." Charmed ol' Jeffi right up the wall, he did.
We sat on a rough bench, Don Manolo sat in his doorway and we drank
to each other's heath a time or two.
"So, sen'or ... your coche does not function correctly?"
"The problem is in the dynamo, Don Manolo. Or so it appears."
"No matter," he said with a smile. He drained his glass, stretched
slowly upright, took a crooked stick from beside the door and walked to
the center of his dusty yard. A brown and white goat came out of the
house and walked over toward him. With the stick, Don Manolo began to
scratch a big circle in the dust. Then, while the goat stood and
watched, he drew another. Soon, five big intersecting circles had been
drawn, making a design some 20 feet across. Don Manolo and the goat
went and stood silently in the center for a moment. ONE of them was
mumbling something, and from where I sat, I'd have sworn it was the goat.
"Now, sen'or, please drive your car here to the center of the design."
I backed the truck to the place indicated, got out, and watched Don
Manolo repair the circles where the tires had crossed them. "Now we
must wait a time. Come! Some more wine!"
We sat on the bench again and watched while the goat began to shuffle
in a slow, wide circle around Don Manolo's design and my truck.
"Uh, Don Manolo . . . is it permitted to ask . . . uh, Que pasa?
What's happening here?"
Don Manolo shrugged and smiled. "It is simple, sen'or ... you got
too close to the old citadel, and your coche has fallen under the Curse
of Iron. We must now remove that curse and replace it with a charm.
More wine?"
"A curse, you say? What kind of curse?"
Don Manolo laughed softly. "Yes, a curse. But not so terrible a
curse. The people here frighten easily, you understand. No, the curse
does not harm people, sen'or. It harms only metal. Don Manolo poured
some more wine, then settled back against the door jamb.
"Many hundreds of years ago," Don Manolo continued, "when the citadel
was near the end of its time of glory, the caliph who ruled it had a
great and powerful wizard ... the seventh son of a seventh son of a
seventh son. Those were decadent times, sen'or, and one must assume
that the caliph's faith in Allah's protection was ... impaired, let us
say. For when the lookouts called the approach of the armies of the
reconquest who had come in all their armor to take the citadel, the
caliph ordered his wizard to cast a protective spell. Allah's
intercession, it is said, was sought only as an afterthought.
"So the wizard, not content with a mere spell (which could be broken
by any journeyman sorcerer), threw a curse over the whole citadel and
the area just below it. This was the Curse of Iron. It rendered any
metal in its presence useless, and the caliph found to his amazement
that his scimitar would not even cut butter. Having demonstrated the
power of the Curse of Iron, the wizard then ordered that all metal in
the citadel be brought into his presence. And when all of the metal
and armor and arrows and weapons had been brought to the throne room,
the Wizard charmed them . . . and the delighted caliph now found that
his scimitar, and all the other weapons in the citadel would slash
through solid iron without dulling or breaking. And when the crusaders
attacked, their armor and their weapons failed them, and they withdrew
in defeat."
Don Manolo paused to sip at his wine, and I found myself gazing at
distant ruin, which glowed deep red in the afternoon sun.
"They were a great people, sen'or. But the tide that carried them
to glory had turned, as it must, in time, for all great peoples. And
as their spirit ebbed, they became quarrelsome and evil and cruel, and
they fought among themselves. The crusaders had only to wait. In time,
the citadel fell from within and flung open its gates to the inevitable.
Crumbling walls and a lingering curse are all that remain."
The goat, which had stopped its roundabout shuffling, came over to
Jeffi and nibbled her sleeve. Then it stood with lidded eyes like an
overgrown tomcat while she scratched its ears.
"And you, Don Manolo?" I asked, "you know how to remove the Curse
of Iron?"
"Yes. And I also know how to place the antidote ... the Charm of
Ahmed El Fkih. That was the wizard's name. And I am seventh son of
a seventh son of a seventh son . . . it is many generations, sen'or,
but it leads directly back to Ahmed El Fkih himself. And with it has
come the Vision and the Power." Don Manolo said something to the goat
in what I'll swear was Arabic. The goat turned and looked at him, then
went back to the important business of gettings its ears scratched.
"It is done, sen'or. Your coche will now function. Also, it is
protected from future harm by the Charm of Ahmed El Fkih."
I got in, twisted the key, the engine whirred alive and the little
red generator light blinked out.
Don Manolo wanted no money. "Your company has repaid me," he said
with a smile. He glanced at the goat. "And Ahmed El Fkih is sorry for
your trouble and for the one-hundred pesetas you spent in town. Also
he thanks the sen'ora for scratching his ears." The goat nodded gravely.
"Oh, Jesus Christ," Jeffi whispered, looking wide-eyed at the goat.
"Adios." Don Manolo and Ahmed El Fkih turned and walked into the
house.
(News item: The absolute world land speed record for '63 VW trucks
was set over three flying kilometers of dirt road in Spain on April 15th
of 1971 at 4:32 p.m.)
"Keep a sharp eye for guys in white with butterfly nets," I told
Jeffi as we boomed down the highway to Almeria. "And to hell with that
Spanish red ... let's get us a big bottle of cognac tonight."
And that ended it . . . sort of. Gradually, the memory got fuzzy
around the edges and blurred about the middle, until it was finally
classified down into our vast collection of Weird Trips and Funny Bits
... like the night we got hopelessly lost in the rain and dark and found
that the "big mother rain puddle" that kept blocking our path was the
Mediterranean. And by the time we got to Amsterdam, the glitter and
stink of science and civilization had just about erased the event.
But one day in a Dutch campground I began to wonder. Something
wasn't right. Or rather, everything was a little TOO right; the truck
had never run better ... it hadn't acted up, broken down or crapped out
for almost two months ... ever since that day in Spain. And this was
not typical of our truck. There was always SOMETHING.
Well, running right or not, the oil was still due for a change, and
while I was at it, might as well do the valves and set the points, too.
So I put on my grubbies and scrootched under the car. . .
The feeling that something was amiss was not helped by the fact that
I couldn't get the oil drain plug out. I pulled and strained and grunted
and braced my feet and beat on it and swore at it in Tongues, but the
nut would not come loose. Very well then; I would think about the
problem while I did the valves.
I will spare you all the things I tried. Just suffice it to say that
the locknuts on the rockers wouldn't come loose, either. And when I
found that I couldn't even get the distributor cap off, I threw all my
tools back under the seat, changed, collected my wife and headed into
Amsterdam. There, we spent a fruitless but memorable hour and a half
watching a team of five Dutch VW mechanics try to change the oil.
Toward the end, the shop manager came forward with a sly little smile,
carrying the Main Breaker Bar and the Great Ceremonial Cheater Pipe. We
left them, finally, standing around in a little huddle thoughtfully
regarding the stripped and mangled teeth of a 17-mm socket.
So at that point, we stopped trying to fight it. That oil's been in
there for eight months now, and it's still fresh and clean. And the
truck just never, ever, EVER gives trouble!
Another thing we found ... that truck also has a strange effect on
parking meters; they stop running in its presence, and you can park for
a month on ten cents. Cops can't give it tickets, either ... pencils
break and ball-points make a little "glurk!" noise and dispense all
their ink at once, making the Man in Blue considerably bluer.
Strange, yes. But it surely is nice to know that your car will
always get you there and back. ALWAYS. In fact the only drawback to
owning that truck is the strange feeling you get when you lie in there
on a dark night and think about it. Too, Jeffi occasionally has a
recurring, mildly disturbing dream where this goat follows her around
asking for cigarettes in Arabic. When she gives him one, he eats it.
But our time here is coming to an end soon. We'll have to sell the
truck in the spring and turn our minds to other things. Hey, that
reminds me ... you know anybody coming over here who might want a very
reliable, maintenance-free VW truck? I'll take $1000 for it. Yeah,
sure, I know that's steep for a '63. But where else you gonna get a
5000-year, 50,000,000,000-mile guarantee?
........................................................................
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