spots

I was just talking to my dad on the phone about my swamp cooler fix. I had to laugh as I hung up because my dad would do stuff like duct tape the bumper back on our car (and leave the tape on until the bumper fell off again) or unbend a hangar to make it into an antenna for the car. It didn't help that we always had ghetto cars like a huge van or a lincoln town car (bought, appropriately, in Vegas at 4 am, which is another story entirely). At the end of our conversation my dad was like "I definitely need to come out to Colorado this fall". I think he feels left out that I'm fixing stuff without him.

As I was writing my other blog post I remembered a time that my dad had come out to Colorado and rented a white car (think it was a Ford). We were going to the mountains but my dad wanted to stop at some refinery. He has a thing about taking tours in places normal people don't go.

side note: When my youngest brother Steve was being interviewed for a gifted school, at the age of 4, a teacher showed him a charcoal briquette and said "do you know what this is?" My brother rattled off an explanation of how coal is used for power. The week before my dad had taken us to tour a coal plant because it was on the way to my grandparents' house. The interviewer told my parents that he had to write down what my brother said and then fact check it because he didn't know how coal was converted into energy. Needless to say, my brother got into the school and weirdly, studied mining engineering in college and now works in part with the coal industry.

We pulled into the parking lot of the refinery and the air was heavily ladened with the stench of tar. No other cars were parked in the parking lot. The tour took an hour. As we headed back to the car we were shocked to discover it covered in black dots. It turned out the refinery was having its roof re-tarred (hee) and the wind had blown tar onto our car.

My dad was pissed so the guy who did the tour for us said we could drive the car through a car wash down the street and the refinery would pay for it. All the car wash did was spread the tar around. We drove the car for another week and when my dad returned it the rental company didn't say anything.

Which reminds me of another time, before I was living in Colorado, when my dad rented a Ford Taurus that we intended to drive around Colorado picking off 11 fourteeners in 9 days. We were on the approach to Torrey's and Gray's peak, which is notorious for being a rutted mess (even more so back in 1995). For what ever reason my dad was speeding. We rounded a curve, hit a rut, and I saw something fly off the car. My dad stopped and I got out of the passenger side. The trim under the door had been ripped off, all the way across the side of the car.

I picked it up and was like "what the fuck do I do with this?" My dad was like "just throw it in the back seat". Nine days later, when we returned the car, my dad was like "Just walk casually towards the airport bus." As we were walking a guy from the rental company called after us.

"Sir, I think you left something in the back seat!"

My dad said "Uh, no, that belongs to you!" Then he looked at me and said "RUN!"

We ran to the bus and watched through the back window as the confused rental car check in guy pulled the trim out of the back seat of the car from the driver's side. We had a great laugh. My dad was never charged for damaging the car.

Looking forward to my dad coming out here, hopefully in the fall...