Chapter 3: Curric U Kill Em’

[At the gas station, the frequenting cab drivers in their rusty vehicles]

At college when my first semester started I was a business major for lack of anything better to do. It was what you chose when you didn’t know what you wanted and I sweated out registration for the first time. I didn’t know, was formerly an unhappy commercial art student but college was an entirely different thing. And it didn’t carry the constant threats parochial high school forced on students.

Here I wouldn’t encounter mean nuns who seemed to be able to read my mind. The whole thing with religion wasn’t forced on you. Nobody said I had beady eyes behind my glasses. Now girls seemed to be interested in me. I wasn’t ready for that. I’d never been handed self worth.

Meanwhile after I’d groaned my way through some varied classes in business I found my place. It was Biology, utterly unexpected.

I fell in love with science and the head of the biology department, Mrs. Chee, was a wonder of inspiration.

She was like no other teacher I’d ever had. I was set. I’d come home. She WAS Biology and Science, I loved it and reveled in exactly what branch of it I might end up in after some extended study time.

The future ahead seemed really clear. So I began the work with all the dissection and research. It went on and on but it seemed some girls also liked science, at least the ones who showed interest in me. And I was scared out of my wits, had no experience in either but I could immerse myself in the lab work without relating to the opposite sex except when working late and having interested female persons show up and have me to themselves for conversation.

The parochial overlords had earlier schooled me well in my entrenched girl fears. And my other fear foremost was conversation. I didn’t do conversation. It just didn’t work and I’d always run out about two-three sentences in.

And as always I’d have to run, get back to work at the car lot, Wally’s demands.

I’d started my job at Pepo, was really getting into a groove, detailing cars, minor tune up, light body work. I was investigating and discovering cheaper ways to detail and fix cars to make them look like new. All kinds of tricks evolved. I think the bosses were happy with me because I assumed to do so much. But they were also very busy chasing women, one of them married, Wally, but it seemed to matter little to him. He assumed it like a duty he had been called to.

They, especially Wally, seemed extraordinarily horny. I wondered if it was “Hawaii” atmosphere responsible for that.

The shed on the lot, the only other building beside the office, was a steel structure with a storage lock-up covered with rusty dirty used steel roofing ribbed vertical with jagged nail holes appearing where the roofing was first used then torn off.

The storage room was loaded with junk but it was my lair. I only needed a few square feet for my tools and I organized that, the rest I didn’t care about immediately.

My skills at buffing out a car evolved quickly with the advice of seasoned car detailers and I experimented to find my favorite buffing compounds and finish wax. The ancient electric buffer I cleaned up, serviced the motor, cleaned the armature, added a new buffer wheel. I needed to learn not to burn the car paint with too much buffing enthusiasm.

For cleaning interiors and upholstery I found Ivory Snow loaded thick in a bucket with a little water, let sit for a time, created a snot like base used liberally to scrub seats and other upholstery. It was never a problem getting it to dry in Hawaii and the results were splendid. Smelled good and fresh too.

Learning, watching the daily drill of car sales was interesting and even more interesting was the female traffic frequenting the place. It seemed the partners were spending a great deal of time taking turns looking for female companionship in Waikiki just a short distance away.

Frequently rather sexy women would come to the office and then be off with either Wally or Dave. I didn’t want to be noticed as spying or being nosy but I could go work on a car on the front line if I needed a better view. My work shed didn’t give me much visual access and I was curious especially after I began to realize the length and breadth of what went on aside from selling cars in paradise.

I found I spent more and more time wondering what it was like to be them. I had no idea whatsoever about the conquest of whatever it was they did with those women. But they were inspired, like they were far more interested in being with the women than running their car business and luckily there were two of them to spell each other while one was gone venturing.

I loved my experimenting with techniques to make old cars look a lot better than they actually were. The bosses let me do what I wanted and I ordered stuff, paints, polish, Motor Honey called “Scam” from the auto parts house to make engines, transmissions quieter. I realized I was sort of doing some scam’ming myself to make old turd vehicles sell quicker.

One of my favorites was pressure washing the engine compartment to clean it up best possible and then after drying spraying everything with clear lacquer. It made the hoses, engine, battery and firewall, even the radiator all look like new. In the salt atmosphere of Hawaii the old brass radiators rotted fast, cars rusted out unbelievable-quickly and the tropical sun ate the paint down to the base coat. This is no exaggeration.

(With my new friend Siza) [The old car with its new porch paint “shine”; the surfers loved it]

Once I tried painting a car with a brush using some old porch paint left laying around in the shed. It had non skid feature abrasive built into the paint like little sand beads. It was a dumb idea but I’d scrubbed the sad thing with Bon Ami cleanser to take a layer off the oxidized finish, then brushed on the aged lumpy stuff to quick dry in the sun.