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Caretaker Defamation
I was parked in front of a fancy hotel in North Carolina last spring off loading luggage and when I started the truck back up it blew out a truly impressive cloud of white smoke. In idle it continued to emit blue/grey white smoke at such an alarming rate that I worried for the health of my fellow wedding guests, who were mingling just inside the open door leading into the lobby. I quickly pulled away from the front door (forcing even more white smoke from the exhaust pipe) and parked in a nearby lot behind a row of vehicles that I felt certain did not emit smoke of any kind.
The white smoke can be indicative of a blown head gasket (very bad) or a blown rear seal (also bad) and is not the sort of thing you want to happen to your vehicle while on a wedding road trip that requires you to drive 40 miles between rehearsal dinner and wedding and reception. A friend recommended I take it to a nearby mechanic and have him pour in some of that engine additive seal sealing gunk (and something similar for the radiator) and I had nothing to lose so I did this, and the truck responded favorably. It got me back to Virginia. But that trip marked the last of the road trips for the Mazda B4000. It could only be used locally until I either had major engine work or off-loaded the truck. Except that besides for a noticeable engine skip in the 50 mph range it just kept on running pretty well, so I test drove it up to Philadelphia a couple of days after Katrina hit New Orleans. And no problem. So I drove it to New Orleans in Oct and it did ok so I drove it back up to Virginia and NYC this last week, and now I am driving it back, and, all systems go. I'm not at the halfway point yet but have high hopes for my unlikely success.
In Virginia, on the grounds of Mt. Prosperous, always f-ing off, always working, I had the heating system worked on in both the houses, received delivery of a replacement window (that I had ordered 3 months previous and had given up on ever receiving), attended to a burst hose bib on the bighouse, aired up the tires of a bicycle, and performed complicated banking maneuvers at a Front Royal, VA branch of the bank that handles my NC business as it relates to the rental house there.
In Woodville, VA. I remedied a wood stove problem which was bewitching the radical feminist octogenarian play-write, and only laziness and lack of interest kept me from fixing the pervasive underlying problems of the entire Rappahannock County.
Deep in the bowels of NY City's Lower East Side I met with one of my curmudgeon underlings, inspected his ongoing work, purchased one of his flower arrangements, and fixed his damn semi-circular bathtub shower curtain rod assembly, while he looked on, in sheer awe of my methodology.
If only I could relax when on vacation, instead of always feeling that need to reach out and fix the crumbling infrastructure of others. Such an attitude, however, would be a direct defamation to the essence of the caretaker.