FIXING THE CAR

I was sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee and talking to Cecilio Jr., he is my second cousin.  He was looking at our Ford Galaxy sitting in the garage, he said, “What’s wrong with that car?”  I said, “Oh, one day we were in Laredo, we came to a store, parked and smoke started coming out of the motor all around.  Then it wouldn’t start anymore so we had it towed over here.  It’s been parked ever since.”  It had been parked for about 6 months, we had no car.  I’d ride around town in a bicycle, I’d go to the post office in a bicycle.  Future mayor of Encinal riding on a bicycle.  Eeehhh.  We have great hope in this guy.  He can get things done.  If his car doesn’t work, he’ll go on a bicycle. It wasn’t even a full sized bicycle, it was a little dirt bike that Little John had, that yellow bicycle. 

So Cecilio, says, “Take the thermostat off.  Do you know where the thermostat is?”  I said, “On the radiator by the hose.”  He says, “Yeah, right there.   Just take it off.” “Do I put a new one?”  “No, just throw it away.  You don’t need a new one.  Just put the hose back on.  It will be alright.”  “Okay” 

So the next day I said, “Well, let me try taking the thermostat off and put the hose back on.”  I remember you got on the car.  I told you, “Do you want to try it?”  vaarroomm.  It started.   I told you, “Do you want to back it out of the garage?”  “Wow, it runs.”  The next day, we went to San Antonio to see your mother.  She asked, “How did you fix the car?”  “Oh, just took the thermostat off and threw it away, Chema style.” 

Chema was my grandfather’s nephew, Carmen’s son.  He said he was a good mechanic.   When he fixed your car and you went to pick it up, he’d give you a little box of extra parts that he found. He’d say, “I found all of these extra parts in the car.  You don’t need them because I couldn’t find out where they went.  But you better keep them just to be sure.  But obviously you don’t need them because the car is running.  I couldn’t figure out where they went.  But I’m a good mechanic”  

Years later the transmission started going bad on that car and we had it parked.  He asked me, “What’s wrong with that car?”  I said, “The transmission.”  “Oh, will you sell it to me?  I’ll give you $250 for it?”  “Yeah, we’ll sell it to you.”  “Okay.”  So he gave us $250 and we got the title from San Antonio and he took the car.  We drove by his house and he was under the car working on it for about a week. 

Later we were driving home from Cotulla and we saw our car driving by, from Encinal to Cotulla.  “There he goes, he fixed it.” We thought it needed a new transmission.  Ah, it had a bunch of parts it didn’t need, threw them away.   The thermostat?  No, they had already thrown that away, it had other parts it didn’t need.  Yeah, these cars, they put too many parts on them, it messes them up.  Just throw them away and your car is okay.  He probably fixed it for $5.00.  It doesn’t need this,   I don’t even know what it is.  What the heck is this? See, they put too much junk on the car. 

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