Emmy Jackson's Blog

It may not have seemed like it but we HAVE been working on new writing. There are a couple of large half-finished projects floating around, and then we got distracted from those by starting to work on Empty Cradle’s world again.

After about 300 pages of scribbling and plotting, we decided that what we had would make a better serialized story than a closed-ended novel. So, we looked to Patreon to offer an avenue to present that to the world, rather than just sitting on it. So, hey! If you want to go read a thing, you can!

In addition to the further happenings in Ivy, Holly and Shiloh’s world, there is a lot of car content, as it’s been a convenient place to chatter about what’s going on with the fleet as well. That stuff’s available even if you’re not a patron. If you want to read the fiction, well…there’s enough posted now that it’s worth it to spend $4, binge-read it all, and bounce back out again before you have to pay for another month. It’ll be fun!

Ah, this poor abandoned blog.  We have a habit of forgetting it for months on end, while things go on around us.  And life has gone on, don’t mistake us.  Ohhh boy has it!  Insert maniacal laugh; it’s 2020, you know what we’re talking about.  

Amid the turmoil of the real world, we’ve been sheltering in sheetmetal, like usual.  Remember, back in September when we had a half-dozen cars and were thinking, “ha, ha, this is an awful lot?”  Well, fast-forward nine months and now we’re at an even dozen. Flaming heck, it’s finally happened: we’re out of parking spots.  

Is there really a short version?  Freckle, Terranova, Trundle, Truck, DemonKitty, Bovril and Armadilly are still here.  In order to rescue Meganeko and Alison from New Mexico, we brought home a Ford E-350 extended murder-van and named him Pete.  Come the winter, we found a new home for Doubletap and replaced him with a Volvo 740 wagon that was christened Ratatosk.  And then, a rusty, neglected Mercedes C280 fell into our lap with a request to turn it into a post-apoc car, and now it’s been turned into a pursuit rig named HAZ.  

Got all that?  In the meantime, Armadilly’s transmission is going out so he’s been parked off-site til we can get him a new one, Freckle has a collection of new body panels, a new roof, a new interior courtesy of a junked M Edition and a bunch of maintenance. DemonKitty’s gone out to California so Spud can work on her, hopefully finishing the process of making her street legal (and we’ll figure out how to get her home in the face of a pandemic later). 

It’s been a busy few months.  But the fleet is looking pretty good. 

Mood: Facebook posts about terrible things make me mad. Facebook posts about debunked rumors make me mad. Facebook posts that are legit news items but several weeks old make me mad. Facebook posts that are stupid pun memes make me mad. Facebook posts with that goddamn baby Yoda make me mad. Facebook posts about holidays make me mad. Facebook posts that are memes about how the poster’s orientation, gender identification or neruodivergence make them awesome, make me mad. Facebook posts with strangely-modified cars labeled “what in the [insert long string of “redneck” puns here] is this?” make me mad. Facebook posts about Bernie Sanders make me mad. Facebook posts by people trying to justify opposing gun control make me mad. Facebook posts about generational battles make me mad. The fact that I’m being angry at Facebook instead of having the spoons to do ANYTHING ELSE makes me mad. I think that’s about it.

The Christmas season brings a familiar frustration, of finances that won’t stabilize, all the things we need to spend money on to make them right, and all the things we wish we could buy for folks. Not because we feel like gifts equal love, but because we like getting things for people that they enjoy, regardless of the season. Christmas is just when everyone else is doing it too, and it reminds us that we have a hard time affording gifts at the best of times. And yes, all the inexpensive/intangible alternatives are there too, but they don’t make us feel the same way. It’s complicated.

Lots of little things are piling up to make a mountain of frustration, even while life, at a baseline, remains good. That said, it may be getting close to time to climb that mountain, stand on its summit, and punch God in the face.

Since Thursday, we have woken up every day, looked at what’s to be done, and thought, “Ugh. Not sure we can do this.”

Every day, we have managed to do the thing, though. So that’s something? We made bean soup from scratch, for company. We tackled another all-you-can-carry day at the junkyard. We helped a friend buy a car and fetch it home for repairs. We moved Bovril out of the garage and put Freckle in, so she can undergo a few weeks of significant repairs (Miata needs the front subframe and steering rack replaced, the leaky top replaced, a speedo cable, a valve cover gasket and turn signals replaced, as well as the doors. It’ll be less awful to do that in the warm garage.). And, ho ho ho, we managed all of this while not running ourselves completely ragged, so that’s something, right? It’s hard to think about getting enough rest when there are too many tabs open, and every day seems to open a bunch more without closing any.

All that’s repetitive though. What you need to know is that Pizza Hut has online ordering, which took a ding out of our meager finances tonight because DAMMIT THIS UNIT IS AN ADULT AND IS ALLOWED TO DO THAT, and that we’re planning to build a box-bed but not certain we are able to do the thing.

On the other hand, considering the way the past few days have gone? Can’t really take the “you-can’t” feeling seriously right now. Don’t think about the thing, just do it. Build, drive, write, plan. Do all the things.

Clatter and clutter.  Suddenly it’s the first of November again. End of nice-car-weather season.  Beginning of NaNo. A quick and busy slide toward the end of the year, punctuated by tumbling politics, finances, projects, family and chores. 

We feel like we’re pushing up against the edge of a breakover, into a more-evolved version of ourself, ready to shed a too-small skin and see what the new set of wings and claws and eyes is capable of.  

There’s still a Toyota to be rescued in Albuquerque.  A book about Tael to make complete. An exercise regimen to create.  A Patreon idea to pursue. A half-dozen cars to build and skills to learn.  

The “you-can’t” feeling is pretty thin.  Veils feel thin as well, between worlds, between states of mind.  

Winter’s a season we like. We don’t hibernate.  The weather pushes and we push back. And so often that pushing feels reflexive, making space for ourself lest we be encroached upon and overrun.  

But right now it feels more like pushing Tetris pieces around, not just making space but making New Things, clearing clutter but also building steam toward something.  

We’re speaking in vaguenesses.  We’re out of practice, in terms of putting thoughts to scribble.  Since the last time we opened this window, we’ve been to Wasteland and back, we’ve brought Alison (the F250) home, we’ve acquired a big cargo van  we’ve been to Theatre Bizarre and we’ve let go of some assumptions about ourself. It’s a changed world, is what it is. 

But hand in hand with that feeling of imminent self-evolution is a growing conviction, familiar to us from growing up during the Cold War, with the threat of nuclear war always hanging overhead:  the world itself is on the verge of cracking open as well. There are entirely too many fractured moments with the desired outcome requiring people to do the right thing, people who have extremely poor track records at exactly that.  The number of scenarios in which we see a good, peaceful outcome to America’s schism is dwindling fast, and so come those old fears of the world coming to an end, whether locally or globally, or both. And with them, there’s a very adult, very somber feeling always in the wings:  enjoy that sushi, take that hot bath, appreciate your Miata, cherish your time with your partners.  Because there’s a growing sense that, evolution or not, we’re speeding toward a near-ish future where they’re not going to be available any more, and will be haunted by every occasion that we didn’t appreciate them to the fullest.

November first is Dori’s birthday too.  Not that she expected you to remember.

So many of my days lately end in exhaustion, as though I’m worn out from the effort of pushing pushing pushing myself through the heavy atmosphere of the world around me.  The voices that tell me I don’t belong and they don’t want me are loud, even if they’re not a majority.  The heat grows oppressive so the very atmosphere seeks to drive me indoors.  Everything’s difficult, everything’s telling me to just give up, stop, I’m not allowed, You Can’t Do That.   So, I buy trucks halfway across the country.   One ’72 F250 and one ’80 Toyota pickup, added to the fleet.  Deal with it.

A cheap engine comes up three states away and the voice says That’s Super-Impractical, so I go and get it in a crazed one-day Red Ball Express run in Armadilly with a rented UHaul trailer wagging out back.  The F250’s gonna need an engine, and the more I think about it, the more I prefer the idea of a 300 straight-six than a V8 in it.  The engine was the right price, and included the transmission, ECM, engine wiring harness, fuel tank and fuel pump.  Even if half of it needs replacing, the price was still right.  I met a friendly dog named Ford, I discovered that straight-sixes are way bigger and heavier than I thought they were, and I stuffed it in the trailer anyway.  On the way home, a frost heave somewhere in Chicago caused the trailer and engine to bounce into the air, which snapped one of the five ratchet straps holding it down and slapped it against the floor of the trailer hard enough to crack the oil pan.  I forced my way through a downpour and made it home intact nevertheless.  Success.  Truck will now have an engine.

There are three Major Hurdles keeping Terranova from running (excepting weird wiring issues I won’t know about until I have her all together, of course) and the voice says No Way Will You Ever Finish This, so I quickly map and rewire the ignition switch to match the new wiring harness and purchase the correct 33-gallon fuel tank.   Two hurdles down.  After that, for good measure, we reassemble Terranova’s front end and mock up a placement for the Jeep bumper we found in the desert.  Yeah, that’ll do.

Doubletap needs some structural welding done to finish replacing the gas tank and rear suspension mounts, but there’s no one to help.  The voice says You’re Out Of Your Depth Now, and so I roll up my sleeves (then roll them back down) and start fumbling through the necessary welding myself.  It’ll look ugly, but it’ll get the job done.

Trundle’s still leaking from the transmission dipstick tube.  Before the voice can even say anything, I’ve got that tube off the car to get the crack repaired, since I can’t find a new one.

Stop telling me what I can’t do, world.  Do not stand in my way.  I will walk around you.

The door started to swing shut, then was pushed quietly ajar again.  Shiloh stepped inside, and her puffy eyes and red nose made it clear that her face wasn’t just wet from the rain. Her hair was dirty and matted flat, and a black grease stain on the side of her face suggested that she’d slept under a car, possibly for more than one night.  “Did you miss me?” she asked in a voice watery from weeping.  “I’m back now.  Lucky you!  Congratu-fucking-lations!”

That’s the mood at the moment.  Shiloh’s been quiet to the point of being missing for a little while. It was a bit of a concern.  Usually the imaginary friends who populate my stories are fairly active, chattering genially about their lives or the world around us, but about two months ago Shiloh just went silent.  Didn’t really have any idea why, and of course the only one who could have explained…wasn’t talking.  But she’s back now, and has brought a pile of generalized anxiety and unhappiness (that we hadn’t noticed was gone) with her.  Therapists would probably say that we put that away for a while, and now we’re ready to deal with it, or at least have decided that it’s time to deal with it.  We don’t usually think too hard about that stuff; all we know is that Shiloh is back, which makes the collective happy, but she’s kind of a miserable ball of misery, which makes the collective less happy.  Not so much in a “wish you’d stayed gone” way, of course.  We want to help.  Life’s better when everyone’s happy, and a depressed Shiloh is dramatically out of character and worrisome.  Is the world really that bad?  (Yes, it is.)  Is there any way to fix it?  (Not sure.  Maybe not.)  And if there’s not, can we convince her to just be her hedonistic self and not think about it any more?  (Also not sure.)

Maybe we’re just looking at the possibility of a depressed Shiloh from here on out.  We hope not, though.  Will continue looking for solutions.

Meanwhile, there are rifteen weekend work days till Wasteland 2019.

“Here’s something I learned from my sister, and from Shiloh: right or wrong, people react to cleanliness. I always kept myself clean enough–out in the dirt, you’re going to get messy, and most folks understand that. Dwellers expect scavs to be dirty. When we were with Gallamore’s, everything was always clean, dust wiped off. The teamsters would grumble so much about having to wash the mud off of everything after a storm! And I didn’t blame them.

“And then, when Holly came home and started traveling with us, she insisted that we do the same thing, always cleaning up, washing the dirt off, washing my clothes. She would insist that we wash before going to any new city or town. I fought her on it at first, but now, it’s fine, when we can we just take extra time to stop a few miles from town and clean everything up.

“But do you know what? It does something. It makes a difference. We get better trade. People are friendlier, and they don’t try to cheat us. Swan and Shiloh both say it’s part respect and part intimidation. Dwellers see us, coming in from out of the dirt, from fighting biters and spiders and whatnot to get to them and bring them cargo, and we walk in looking fresh and rested and cleaner than they themselves are sometimes, and they don’t know what to think, that we can just shrug all that bad stuff off so easily. I guess it never occurred to me that scavs could get respect from dwellers?

“Anyway, no, Holly’s skills aren’t useless to us, and don’t ever start thinking that they are.”

I don’t know if this is going to make a lot of sense, but I am really enjoying approaching my post-apoc rigs from a scavengers’ mindset. That is to say, acting like the rigs I have are all there is–there’s not an option to get another one, we have to make do with what’s there, for as long as possible. So, where I might have in the past said, “yep that one’s cashed in, get another car,” with the post-apoc rigs I choose not to give myself that option.


 


This is on my mind for obvious reasons today, as we’ve discovered that the subframe that has to be dropped to change the fuel tank has severely rotted mounting points on one side. I can get them off, but they’re unlikely to exist any more once the subframe is free. (Personal fleet history note: this is pretty much the reason I got rid of my Rabbit GTI, my first Ranger and my Sidekick–rotted-out rockers and other structural areas.  Though, thankfully, Doubletap isn’t quite as bad as any of those cars yet.)  So…I’ll have to find a way to get some new structure in there. (Already have some ideas.) Oh, and to drop the leaking gas tank and get the whole underbelly of the car cleaned and aired out before I try to weld anything…So, Doubletap will be off the road for a few weeks, but he’ll come back stronger. And I get to be creative with metal! Simple, right?  Winning all around.
In other fleet news, it’s looking like we’ll be up to 10 vehicles by the fall, if plans to collect a tiny, unkillable Toyota pickup from New Mexico come to a satisfying conclusion (wait, no, eleven if you count the Fat Cat, but it’s not gonna be street legal).  Funny thing about that, it’s a ridiculous number of vehicles (especially considering six of them will be Empty Cradle-promoting post-apoc vehicles) but it feels very right, somehow, like having a properly outfitted toolbox.  As soon as we made the decision that yes, I can absorb that many rigs, it was like a puzzle piece clicked into place, a strong feeling of this is going to work out just fine.  Not just about the cars, but about life, work, the house, my other projects, everything.   Maybe it makes no sense, but apparently, in this moment, this pile of vehicles is what I need to properly face the world.  So…onward and upward.  Tomorrow it’ll be time to tackle Trundle’s transmission leak and continue rebuilding his roof rack, and then it’ll be time to clear the driveway for major surgery on Doubletap.

Chasing the promise of a parts car for Doubletap, we loaded the Element with recovery gear and headed for Albuquerque.  It’s been a long time since we had a parts car, but it’s a fun affair:  sawing the thing to pieces in the driveway, taking absolutely everything possible, not unlike a roast turkey in the weeks after a holiday.

That’s a weird analogy.  Anyway, it is what I was up to.  G volunteered to come along and co-drive, more hands and eyes always being welcome.  Albuquerque’s 23 hours straight through, presuming all goes well, and we only had two days off of work.

 

 

Fast forward to the parts car.  It was as promised, a rust-free ’93 Subaru wagon with enough bits to make it worth dragging home.  Rust-free meant that we planned to swap most of its underside (including the floors) onto Doubletap eventually.  Good find.

The partsRoo lived in S’s good-sized lot, with his assorted post-apoc vehicles and other cool projects (including an adorably scruffy little deconstructed Toyota pickup that we kind of want to adopt as well). It seemed generally open to being fussed with, and some adjustments were made to the suspension to get it roadworthy.  Working on old cars from dry climates is so easy–the bolts actually come off instead of disintegrating!  Once that was done, it was loaded down with more spare bits, and set up for flat-towing.

That wasn’t the end of the Albuquerque adventure, though.  With the extra time, M took us up the mountain to look at a ’72 F250 longbed.  He vowed to find us a pickup after Wasteland last year, after learning of our soft spot for bumpside Fords, and the right truck at the right price landed on Craigslist just as we got to town.  To be honest we were both thinking that the right truck wasn’t ever going to show up, considering that the collector market landed on them hard in January and prices have been going up and up.  There’s a point at which the $500 restorable vehicles all but dry up, and that point seems to have been about five months ago for the bump- and dentside Ford pickups.  But no, a super-clean, utterly rust-free roller was found up on the mountain, and a favorable deal was struck.

What’s the truck’s story?  Well, the owner was sitting on the “old piece of shit,” as he put it, for unknown reasons, but it had to be sold because they were moving.  The engine was in pieces in the bed, the interior had been invaded by squirrels (and consisted of Aerostar seats, a disassembled dash and a tiny, ugly Grant steering wheel anyway) the hood hinges were gacked and some of the trim was missing, but it also sported a pleasingly beat-up vintage cap and a cool diamond-plate rear bumper.  And it looks too much like the F250 Lexi drives in some of her books for us to resist, to be fair.  So, we towed the F250 back to M’s house, to await proper transit back to Michigan.  Holy shit, we actually got a truck!  These things happen when you least expect them.

One last thing: M had the carcass of a Honda Fat Cat in his scrap pile, saw us playing with it, and said we could have it if we wanted.  So it got chucked in the back of the partsRoo as well.  What the heck, there was space, and the Fat Cat was asking us to turn it into something; might as well indulge it. Picking up new projects all over the place, we are.

Time was wasting though; we got the rig packed and hit the road, for a full day’s drive back home.  The weather was good, other than storms brewing in the Midwest, but the aim was to beat them home.  Armadilly didn’t have any trouble dragging the partsRoo, and things looked good…at least for the first few hours.

In the dark just a few miles from the Texas border, there was a sudden thump and screech from the back, and the partsRoo started dancing.  We got pulled over, and discovered that both rear tires had locked up.  Something had gone wrong inside the rear differential; if rolled backward, the wheels would turn for a while, then lock up again.  When the wheels seized, they had also knocked the right rear lower control arm loose, and it was dragging on the ground.

After considering, we decided to try removing one of the CV axles, hoping that the open differential at the rear would allow the other to spin.  This operation took place by the light of a pen-sized Maglight, in the dark along I-40 in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico.  Lacking a proper jack, we used the partsRoo’s scissor jack as best we could, and had to improvise some tools (thankfully, we had the foresight to bring the special 32mm Subaru axle nut in our travel tool kit, just in case), but the operation was a success.  We tossed the axle into the car, stuck a bolt in the control arm to hold it, and tried to get going again.

Nope, the remaining axle locked up within an eighth of a mile.  Whatever was wrong in the pumpkin, it wasn’t going to let the rears turn.  We attempted to repeat the operation on the left side, but this time the partsRoo wasn’t having it; the axle nut wouldn’t budge, and soon the damaged diff was turning freely, since there was no opposite CV axle to turn against.  Removing the axle was going to take an impact gun, which we didn’t have.

So!  We called AAA, and requested that someone come out to bring us an impact gun, a grinder to cut the axle off, or a flatbed.  Though we preferred the former, AAA only had the latter, and said it would be a while.  We settled in to nap just as the thunderstorms walked up over the top of our sadly stopped parade.  The Element became a welcome shelter as we were lashed with rain and hail; the constant lightning made it difficult to nap.  AAA arrived three hours later, at almost four in the morning, and a very friendly and cheerful driver hooked up the partsRoo and hauled it into Amarillo.  Rather than going to a shop, we found the nearest WalMart, to get some power tools.  As the sun came up and Amarillo’s rush hour was beginning to get underway, we attacked the stubborn axle with an angle grinder and cut it clean off.  Voila!  The Subaru rolled again!

For a while, anyway.  We made it through rush hour, then past Amarillo.  A couple of hours later, though, there was a much more significant BANG and scrape and the partsRoo began cracking the whip violently.  As I struggled for control we saw one of the rear wheels go bouncing past us, into the median.  I kept an eye on it while bringing the Element to a stop and keeping the towed vehicle from losing control completely as the rear hub dug a sine wave in the concrete (remember: don’t touch the brakes!).  The tire threatened to bounce into oncoming traffic, then veered back toward our side and went off the road to the right at a perpendicular, disappearing in knee-high weeds.  

The reason why was obvious as soon as we stopped:  the hub and bearing had ripped free from the control arm, and once the assemblage hit the ground, the control arm itself was ground half away by the road.  Better yet, on the driver’s side, the stub axle, which we’d cut as short as we could, had managed to work its way partly out of the CV joint and spin enough to break one of the lower arms of the suspension.  So, if the passenger-side rear wheel hadn’t come off, the driver’s side probably would have not long after.

This left us with a very difficult decision.  The partsRoo wasn’t going anywhere without new hubs, a trailer or a flatbed.  Calling AAA twice in less than 24 hours is a good way to get one’s membership revoked, so another tow was out–plus, why would we put money into fixing a parts car?  Even if we could have rented a car hauler, we didn’t have a winch to pull it up, and the Element’s not sturdy enough to tow one.  A wild idea involving strapping the rear end of the partsRoo to a U-Haul tow dolly was floated and discarded, partly because of the difficulty in securing the front wheels and partly because it’d cost $400 or so to rent one from Texas to Michigan.  Budgets are tight!  Some phone calls were made to find a hub, but there weren’t any within 50 miles–not saying much since there wasn’t anything else within 50 miles at all.

We had the title in hand, so a junkyard would certainly take it, but we were unlikely to get what we’d just paid for the whole pile of parts.  So, we decided to go with Crazy Plan #4, and stripped the car by the side of the road.  If the partsRoo was ending its journey at a junkyard in the Texas panhandle (where, given the local demand for 25-year old Subarus, it was most likely gonna get cubed within days), then b’damn we were taking as much of it as we could with us.

Out came the tools and jacks.  We kept a wary eye on the clouds; a storm was building to the north of us, and it looked like a vicious sequel.   That drove us forward with a feeling of urgency.  Within a few minutes a couple cars’ worth of local sherriffs stopped by for a, “hey, what’chy’all doing?” chat, but after being reassured that it was our vehicle, it was definitely not fixable and that we had a plan and weren’t going to abandon the carcass of a car on their freeway, they advised us to carry on before the storm hit.  Before they left, one of the cops “just had to ask, I don’t mean any offense but I gotta know, what’s with the nails?” Oh, right, our nails were painted metallic blue, which has become kind of a default these days.  We did not tell the cop that if you think a question is offensive, you probably don’t actually “have to ask” it, and just pulled out Stock Homophobia-Deflecting Answer #1, that they’re painted to match Armadilly.  For some reason this makes folks nod in understanding, as if that’s okay, but whatever, it dodged a conversation about being confident in one’s masculinity with a Texas cop, so that’s fine.

Over the next two and a half hours, G and I peeled the partsRoo like the scavs we are.  The Fat Cat was stuffed into Armadilly, as were the parts car’s fuel tank, alternator, a spare set of wheels, struts, rear suspension, intake manifold, filler neck, sun visors and an assortment of smaller bits.  We removed the rust-free doors and strapped them to Dilly’s roof.  (To be honest, we’re still smarting that we had to leave behind the manual transmission, two sets of exhausts complete with mufflers and catalytic converters, the rest of the rear suspension and of course those wonderful rust-free floors and inner wheel arches.  Unfortunately we were out of space inside the Element, and judging by the suspension sag it wasn’t ecstatic about the weight anyway.  So, like a stricken ship, we had to salvage what we could and reluctantly let the rest slip away.

We didn’t stick around to see how creative the junkyard guy had to be to get a non-rolling car on three wheels onto his rollback.  There were miles to eat, and a storm still bearing down on us.

Without the car being towed behind, Armadilly was better able to keep up with traffic, but the weather caught up to us just past Oklahoma City.  With tornadoes and violent hail north of us, we stayed on the 40 for a while longer, trying to skirt it.  No such luck though; the storm hit full force when we got to Tulsa, and we drove all night through a windy, lighting-firing downpour.  The rain didn’t let up until we reached St. Louis, and even then only briefly.  As a result, speeds were limited to about 50mph much of the time, and the overnight drive took a lot longer than usual.  By this time it was Tuesday and I’d had to burn an extra vacation day, and was more than ready to be home.

The weather finally cleared around the Michigan border, and we rolled up in the driveway with a sizeable haul of scavenge.  Not as much as we’d hoped for, of course, but definitely the most expensive bits that Doubletap has been asking for.  Overall, good adventure.

Next steps:  fix Doubletap and figure out how to get the F250 home!