Chapter 48

The gear wheel had hardened overnight and I had a time cutting in the two missing teeth ... but I got it done. Reassembled, the gear turned tighter than the originals ... less slop and zero backlash. Stringing up the bass, I discovered I liked playing it and I didn’t like the Ampeg sound with the Eminence. I wonder who cones speakers? Somewhere close to the average threshold of human hearing. I resorted to my phone.

Dialing

“Two Bit?”

“Hi John. Karen Post.”

“I was wondering, Who does speaker re-coning?”

“Grainger?”

“Oh ... the Grainger Industrial Catalog.”

“Where would I find a catalog?”

“Kiewit’s?” I had a flash of understanding.

“Thanks John.”

Fumbling through the Yellow Pages I found Kiewit’s Divisional Office, Sheridan Wyoming.

Dialing

“Hello. I hope so.”

“Grainger Catalog?”

“Good Heavens, don’t throw it out. I want it.”

“I don’t care if it’s last years, I’ll be right in.”

Kiewit’s isn’t in Sheridan ... it’s in Big Horn Coal ... as in the mine. North of Sheridan just past the steep hill that approaches the evidence of the Holocene Ice Age ... the flood banks of the latest ice melt. Until the Tongue River worked its way past the the harder rocks of its canyon there must have been a decent sized lake in the valley between the parallel hills. The mountain glacier melt wasn’t as catastrophic as the Hudson Bay Icecap melt but it did leave its mark. While the event took place, much of the subsurface coal was exposed in the ancient riverbank ... leading to the first mines.

Holocene? That’s the arbitrary Geologic reference to the period relating to or denoting the most recent period in the Cenozoic era, following the Tertiary period and comprising the Pleistocene and Holocene epochs (and thus including the present) Geology 101.

I followed the turn off to the old town of Acme and the Bighorn Coal offices of the local Kiewit conglomerate. I burst through the door,

“Welcome to Kiewit’s. May I help you?”

“Grainger Catalog?”

She passed me the year old but very well thumbed through yellow covered paperbacked book that must have weighed 6 pounds. The pages inside were almost tissue thin.

Millions of business were represented in its pages.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. If you don’t mind my asking, what are you looking for?”

“Instrument Speaker Re-coning.”

“Page 296.”

I turned to 296. Speakers. I looked at her.

“Kid tore a hole in my Electro-Voice HiFi 30 and the replacement cost of the speaker was more than the thing cost in 1967. I can beat the sound if I want to spend three thousand dollars ... and I don’t. So I looked up re-coning.”

“Have you tried AR-3’s?”

“What’s that?

“Acoustic Research makes a speaker under three hundred dollars a pair that Consumer Report says are the best speakers under a grand per speaker.”

While this conversation was ongoing I was multitasking.

“Found it. Cleveland Manufacturing. Loud Speakers and Re-Coning material. Cleveland made my Ampeg 18 inch and the Eminence replacement isn’t cutting it.”