Captainkirk's Duster project

Chapter 20
“The End”

“This is the end, my only friend, the end”……..
The Doors

Marion Michael Morrison; a.k.a. John Wayne, a.k.a. "“The Duke"”. He was a Hollywood icon, one of the true immortal stars of the silver screen. The man just oozed toughness. It didn'’t matter what movie you watched; you knew how it would end. And you didn’'t care. It just seemed… right! But as tough as John Wayne was on the screen, he was equally tough in real life; a real fighter when it came to life’'s challenges. But he finally succumbed to the cancer he fought so valiantly. As did another “Duke”….

This was a different cancer; but no less deadly. Chemical name, Iron Oxide, a.k.a. “rust”.
After that fateful July day, I dutifully charged the battery a few weeks later, with the intent of pissing the neighbors off yet again. But this time it would be different. When I thumbed the key this time, The Duke complained, but wouldn'’t fire. And then I smelled fuel…...lots of it. I jumped out and popped the hood, and much to my dismay, saw a river of Leaded Premium gasoline floating atop the Torker. This time I’'d waited too long. The float bowl gaskets had dried up and shrunk, pulling away from the sealing surfaces of the float bowls and leaking like the proverbial sieve. This totally sucked. I knew a rebuild kit for the Holley would go for around fifty bucks (back then they were only available from performance stores); and that was about fourty-nine more than I had lying around looking for an excuse to be used on. I felt a real need to get The Duke running that day, so I slapped the AVS onto the Torker using the adapter I’'d originally bought for the TQ and cobbled it together. Dead end. For whatever reasons, (probably the fact it had been sitting on the shelf for oh, seven years or so, untouched), it didn'’t work either. Well, scratch starting the car that day. I’'d have to wait ‘til I could kit the Holley. See, back in those days, the parts stores didn'’t sell individual bowl gaskets. Not around here, anyway.
In the meantime, an event of epic proportions came to be. In front of The Duke sat a steel workbench with a heavy formica countertop on it that I'’d picked up somewhere. The top should have been screwed to the counter, the counter to the studs on the garage wall. But they weren'’t. The countertop hung over the front edge quite a bit, as well, making it a bit unsteady and front-heavy. And so it came to be, that my son was out in the garage “helping me” when he climbed up and sat on the edge of the countertop……
You can probably guess the rest. The whole shebang tipped forward, and whatever had been on top (including Chris) was pitched forward towards the car. Fortunately, Chris was unhurt (though a little shaken up) and the car sustained no damage…. Except for the rapidly growing green pool of car-plasma beneath it. You guessed it. Something (I don'’t remember what) had shish-kabob’ed the radiator. Run it through. Given it “Green River”, as the mountain men of yore would’'ve said. This gave the phrase a totally new meaning…..but I failed to see the humor in it at the time. Now I had TWO problems to contend with. I made a few calls; nobody local had any exchanges, and a radiator re-core job was going for around 150 bucks. Great…. Now I was 200 smackers in the hole.
It was spring before I got the money up for the carb kit. I went through the entire carb and bagged it. Unfortunately, my luck didn'’t hold as well with the radiator. Due to the damage incurred along with it’s age, it just sort of fell apart while moving it one day. The solder holding the seams together just crumbled. Fixing it would no longer be an option.
I’'d begun to get worried about the motor sitting for so long. I pulled the plugs a few times, squirted oil down the cylinders and pulled the engine through. But time finally got ahead of me, and the Duster under the tarp in the garage got fewer and fewer visits. It sorta reminded me of the song “Puff the Magic Dragon”; Puff lost his power as little Jackie Faber grows up and stops playing with (and believing in) him,…… so Puff slinks off to his cave with his tail between his legs and disappears into the dank, mossy nooks and crannies of his lair, so to speak. That’s kinda what happened to The Duke as well.


Out of sight, out of mind they say. A very true statement. Once you lose your mojo, the game is over. Once you stop CPR, the guy on the ground is legally dead. And the same goes for the car under the tarp. I tried to keep it on life support; I really did. I’'d go out every so often and pull the plugs, squirt oil into the cylinders and wrench it through a couple times (the battery was long since dead and buried now). Still, the spectres of rust and decay haunted me, to the point where I finally cracked under the pressure of the fear of the unknown and pulled the rocker covers and intake to have a look-see. Now I could see what I was up against. A little rust on the cam, mostly surface rust, but the valve stems had a thick, scaly growth of rust on them. The cooling system had been open for quite some time now, with the radiator gone, and I envisioned the water jacket all full of hard scale and rust. And I knew if the valve stems were rusty, the cylinders with the open valves couldn'’t have fared so well either, well-oiled or not. I knew in my heart that at the very least, the heads needed to come off. This drove the ever-enlarging wedge even further in, between the Duke and the open highway. My son Chris, who as a three-year old used to scream and run into the house when that dragon would snarl and snort, breathing fire in the driveway, now referred to it rather matter-of-factly as “the 'gwage-cow”' (garage-car). Fitting; as that is exactly what it had become. A dinosaur in a museum, to be viewed with respect and a little awe while remembering it’s former fearsome presence, but just a harmless skeleton of a beast that had once been nonetheless, held together with wire and bolts but no longer breathing, no fire in it’s eyes; it could no longer strike terror into the hearts of children, let alone adults. Like John Wayne, The Duke was dead; only to be remembered on celluloid and in the mind’s eye of it’s creator…me.


The difference between the Li'’l Red Minx and The Duke was this; the Li'’l Red Minx was physically gone; removed from my sight, and barely even there in my memory. The Duke was just as gone to be sure, but like the mummy of King Tut, there was still a lifeless presence to look at, to remember, to dream about, a sarcophagus full of gold, spices and untold rare gems all surrounding one very dead guy in an Ace bandage. The garage had become my pyramid in the Valley of the Kings. (The Procol Harum song “Conquistador” comes to mind.) Over the years, there were numerous fits and starts; I would get fired up at a car show, a conversation, or by reading a magazine, go out and spend an hour or so doing something insipid and meaningless. But the reality of the monstrous size and cost of the project held me back. At last, I conceded to logic, deciding I would no longer allow myself to take pieces off that could be lost or damaged until I could launch a full-scale assault on the Duster. (I no longer referred to it as The Duke; The Duke was just as stone-dead as the Li'’l Red Minx and probably deserved a fitting burial). Over the years I encountered quite a bit of flak over this; old friends would razz me about it (You still got that hunk of junk?). My wife gave me grief about getting rid of it and freeing up that half of the garage. (Suuuure…..when you can pry the keys from my cold, dead hands….). Even my kids ribbed me about it. Chris, now grown up, told me I might as well just give it to him to fix, as it would sit there until I died, at which point he’d get it anyway. (I told him he'’d just have a damn long wait, then, so not to hold his breath!). I remembered my vow and dug my heels in……..and waited. For what, I wasn’'t sure. I'’d know it when I saw it. This much I knew.
Funny thing was, it didn'’t happen like that. There was no voice in my head, or a light bulb going on. In fact, it all started with a screw and a motorcycle.