Chapter 8: WELL ARTICULATED

“Well, are you pleased with your acquisitions, Ricky?”

Sitting with the men again around Mr Moses’ small kitchen table with a glass of his iced tea in my hand, I’m intent on Dad’s face as he digests what he reads in the instruction booklet for the King car kit. He isn’t smiling. That can be interpreted at least three ways. Good, bad, and poker faced. I have no idea what Dad’s thinking.

“A bit too soon to ask, Mr Moses. I don’t understand yet, exactly what I’ve gotten hold of. First impression is, it’s a major project, not light assembly. Instructions aren’t too confusing at first glance. I see some good features. One obvious thing IS immediately apparent.”

“And that is, Ricky?”

“In case there’s a collision with another car, I want to be in the OTHER car. What’s so funny, I’m serious!”

Dad and Moses are having those fits called paroxysms of laughter.

“It’s ridiculously tiny. Like a kiddie car. If I wanted to pick up girls, I’d only get little kids who think they should have a turn to drive it. Johnny has a pussy wagon, this is just a finger car. That’s the only thing I’ll get from the bigger girls I invite for a ride.”

Now the guffaws shake the table so bad, I daren’t set my glass down.

There’s real potential for repurposing the kit, is the upside. I don’t share it. I don’t want Dad and Moses to laugh themselves to death.

So if I share my ideas with you, well, you figure it out. I don’t need to witness your laughing at me.

The scooter is reparable with parts from the car kit. New tires, a new motor, and whatever may be needed to adapt it is in the kit. The motor is small for the scooter but sprocket ratios compensate for low power, at the expense of speed. Don’t want or need speed, and don’t need to travel long distances where speed is an important time saver. A trip to the A&W, to town, or the drive-in movie is the extent of maximum range desired. My idea? Put the cart before the horse. An articulated vehicle, hinged in the middle.

I’ll build a tricycle with the kit car, as a convertible topped cab in front of the scooter, resembling pushing a teardrop trailer. The cab doesn’t need controls, no steering wheel. The front wheels don’t steer. The seat will be made to recline and lay down using the entire length of the car. No mechanicals in the motor box, it’s now part of the cabin. The front wheels are fixed straight ahead and individually electric motor powered for traction. The generator is in the scooter’s motor box. The rear wheel is also electric, so all wheel drive and reversible by a switch. The chain sprocket drive provided has no reverse. The scooter swivels on the cab by a torque multiplying pivoting linkage system that provides mechanical advantage via a steering wheel. Now laugh. I repurposed everything.

How does my concept steering work? A little pressure, a minor deflection to the center of a connecting string, drags a heavier load than the force applied to move it, closer to it’s anchor point, and it moves a greater distance than the amount deflected.

The rear only needs to swivel a few degrees, twenty at most, to turn the entire unit around.

How did I determine twenty degrees is enough? Johnny told me he gets to steer his ship. The captain or watch officer gives orders to the helmsman, the fellow steering. Frequently it’s STANDARD rudder. Right or left standard rudder means, put the helm over for twenty degrees of rudder in the required direction. Turns big ships, why wouldn’t twenty degrees turn my little contraption?

If just my imagining it created it, folks would be taking MY name in vain.

Takes more than dreams and I’m short on everything except dreams. Short on free time, money, and energy, so this project gets postponed awhile. Gives me more time to think, dream, invent, and repurpose.

Dad’s ready to go. We’ve got crab pots to haul. We’re going.

I know better than to suggest Dad leave the gun behind, so once we’re headed down river, I offer an option to shooting at people.

“Your skiff is a heavy solid built work boat. How much damage do you think it would absorb ramming another boat of equal size and weight?” I’m seeding the idea.

“Are you suspecting another crabber is robbing our pots? I can’t believe that. This is someone or a group, ignorant of how serious a crime this is and naive about what will happen to them when they’re caught. Eventually they’ll be caught and surprised and shocked at the severity of the consequences. Stupid kids most likely, and unlikely to ever grow up.”

“Why do you say they’re unlikely to grow up? They’re so stupid it’s unlikely they’ll change or they won’t live long enough to mature?”

Dad ignored the question, which is equivalent to taking the fifth.

[For readers unfamiliar with the phrase ‘Taking the Fifth’? It refers to the fifth amendment of the U. S. Constitution, in which it restricts government and prohibits forcing someone to testify against themself or a spouse. Under the fifth amendment, citizens have protection and the right not to answer self incriminating questions. Taking the fifth is a legal refusal to answer questions put by a lawman, judge, or prosecutor, and may not be interpreted as indicative of guilt or a tacit confession. The courts can’t view or use it that way.]

{People make up their own minds, ignoring instructions. Ricky is thinking, his father didn’t answer his loaded question because his Dad already has plans to commit murder. A tacit confession}

The first dozen pots we haul are all empty except one, but we stack that one on deck with the rest. The thieves missed it but won’t next time. May as well take it home to regroup. Rounding a bend, we can plainly see in the center of a line of three of our color coded pot buoys, a stained dilapidated shrimp-boat. Three men on deck, one shaking a crab pot into a big basket held by another, the third idly watching. Not the shrimper’s pot. Ours.