Actually, I’ve no idea what possessed me to pen such a title. The two are really not related. Or maybe they are related.
The other day, remembrance flooded back to a time when I experienced my own personal ‘Desolation Highway’.
Driving home from my job at a little radio station in the middle of nowhere, the red “TEMP/PRESS” light came on. Ordinarily, not critical; this was my Chevrolet Corvair. For those of you who’ve owned one, that light is the one you don’t ignore. Once that light comes on, the driver has about 15 seconds to shut down before the engine seizes. Being air-cooled, the indication is that the fan belt has snapped or come off it’s tension bearings, and without air being forced over the exposed cylinder walls, the engine reaches something like 500 degrees in 10 to 15 seconds.
The second option, of course, is that something has caused the oil pressure to drop to like zero. And, the oil circulation pump also is driven by the same belt that runs the fan. Ingenious engineering, that.
Actually, the design was first used in an airplane engine. Air cooled, horizontally opposed cylinders worked quite well in an environment where the air temperature could be counted upon being considerable cooler than, say, ground level. Nevertheless, the Corvair was generally quite dependable and fun to drive. The rear engine changed the handling characteristics somewhat and Ralph Nader had a field day when enough drivers smashed them up to write a best-selling book (“Unsafe At Any Speed”) and make a pile of money.
So, the light had come on and I coasted to a stop by the side of the two-lane blacktop. To walk back to the radio station, the distance was close to eight miles. That would take, by my, estimate about two and a half hours. Which would mean that I could use the station phone to summon help at One thirty in the morning. This was in a town that effectively rolled up the sidewalks at Nine o’clock.
The other option was to continue on foot, homeward bound, hoping for some driver to pick me up, alone, out in the middle of nowhere, with my thumb out. Yeah, sure. I counted the cars that came past me on the fingers of one hand and had enough left over to pick my nose. One finger left, the other right.
A blister started to form on my right heel about six miles down the road.
About three and a half hours down the road my mouth was a dry as a Steven Wright monologue. At four and a half hours, I felt the blister ‘go’ and the cooling effect of moist sock attended the area. Relief, of course was transitory (about 30 seconds). Blessedly, the sharp pain became a dull ache rather quickly.
Finally, at about six and a half hours the faint light of a highway phone booth signaled that the ‘wye’ intersection of two highways was not far off. By my recollection the little country store which would, of course, be closed, had a drinking fountain. As the sun was just starting to light the eastern edge of the landscape, whether the water was cold or just tepid was the least of my concerns.
And, a phone call into town brought an acquaintance from the all-night truck stop down to bring me the last five miles to my neighborhood.
Since then, any time I’m on some back road I harken back to that night, and if there’s some poor soul limping along slightly, I hope I’ll have the humanity to slow down and offer a ride.
Some day I’ll write a song about “Desolation Highway” and what it taught me about where we are and where we want to go.
Tomorrow: A Stranger in a Strange, Strange Land
Today is December 19th; 761 days until the end of the Bush Administration
The other day, remembrance flooded back to a time when I experienced my own personal ‘Desolation Highway’.
Driving home from my job at a little radio station in the middle of nowhere, the red “TEMP/PRESS” light came on. Ordinarily, not critical; this was my Chevrolet Corvair. For those of you who’ve owned one, that light is the one you don’t ignore. Once that light comes on, the driver has about 15 seconds to shut down before the engine seizes. Being air-cooled, the indication is that the fan belt has snapped or come off it’s tension bearings, and without air being forced over the exposed cylinder walls, the engine reaches something like 500 degrees in 10 to 15 seconds.
The second option, of course, is that something has caused the oil pressure to drop to like zero. And, the oil circulation pump also is driven by the same belt that runs the fan. Ingenious engineering, that.
Actually, the design was first used in an airplane engine. Air cooled, horizontally opposed cylinders worked quite well in an environment where the air temperature could be counted upon being considerable cooler than, say, ground level. Nevertheless, the Corvair was generally quite dependable and fun to drive. The rear engine changed the handling characteristics somewhat and Ralph Nader had a field day when enough drivers smashed them up to write a best-selling book (“Unsafe At Any Speed”) and make a pile of money.
So, the light had come on and I coasted to a stop by the side of the two-lane blacktop. To walk back to the radio station, the distance was close to eight miles. That would take, by my, estimate about two and a half hours. Which would mean that I could use the station phone to summon help at One thirty in the morning. This was in a town that effectively rolled up the sidewalks at Nine o’clock.
The other option was to continue on foot, homeward bound, hoping for some driver to pick me up, alone, out in the middle of nowhere, with my thumb out. Yeah, sure. I counted the cars that came past me on the fingers of one hand and had enough left over to pick my nose. One finger left, the other right.
A blister started to form on my right heel about six miles down the road.
About three and a half hours down the road my mouth was a dry as a Steven Wright monologue. At four and a half hours, I felt the blister ‘go’ and the cooling effect of moist sock attended the area. Relief, of course was transitory (about 30 seconds). Blessedly, the sharp pain became a dull ache rather quickly.
Finally, at about six and a half hours the faint light of a highway phone booth signaled that the ‘wye’ intersection of two highways was not far off. By my recollection the little country store which would, of course, be closed, had a drinking fountain. As the sun was just starting to light the eastern edge of the landscape, whether the water was cold or just tepid was the least of my concerns.
And, a phone call into town brought an acquaintance from the all-night truck stop down to bring me the last five miles to my neighborhood.
Since then, any time I’m on some back road I harken back to that night, and if there’s some poor soul limping along slightly, I hope I’ll have the humanity to slow down and offer a ride.
Some day I’ll write a song about “Desolation Highway” and what it taught me about where we are and where we want to go.
Tomorrow: A Stranger in a Strange, Strange Land
Today is December 19th; 761 days until the end of the Bush Administration
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