Chapter 32

Day Thirty-two - Thursday - Day one of our new life

The phone was ringing. I didn't even realize we had hooked it up.

The phone was still ringing.

I slipped out of bed looking at the clock, five-thirty.

"Hello."

"Steve, I'm glad you're up. This is Gene and I really need your help. I heard you were not going on a honeymoon, so I knew you were going to be in town."

"Gene, it's five thirty in the morning. Couldn't this wait till, oh, I don't know, maybe seven?"

"No, no, it can't wait Steve, I've been up all night waiting to call you and I couldn't wait another minute."

"Okay, what's up?"

"Last night my whole team was practicing out at the Lakeland track. Two of them got tangled up and damn near killed each other. Their cars are both gone, destroyed. I have to have two frames today to get in Sunday's race. I'll make it worth your while, I promise."

"Can't you use the new stainless steel frame?"

"NASCAR isn't done testing it, and they won't let me race the car that's built on the new frame until they are done."

"Okay, I'll be over about eight and we'll work on getting you fixed up. It might be really late tonight to get two done."

"Whatever it takes, Steve, whatever it takes."

When I went back to the bedroom, Sue was sitting up with a concerned look on her face. The clock on the headboard now said quarter to six.

I explained what the deal was as I crawled into bed to give her a kiss this first morning of our marriage, the first morning of our new life.

She said, "I guess we better get going. It's going to be a great way to start our new life, our marriage, our partnership."

I started coffee, we showered, and dressed in our coveralls. I went outside and turned on the light, then came back for a cup. Sue was busily making sandwiches from the leftover sandwich stuff the caterer had left over from the day before. I asked her how many she was going to make. She said she would probably eat two, and she knew I would need at least four, as it was going to be a long day.

She smiled at me saying, "Besides, if we don't leave to go get lunch, we'll pick up at least a half hour."

I nodded agreement and went out to get the cooler I had bought for beer. I filled it up with ice from our new ice-making refrigerator and put a bunch of Diet Coke in it. I didn't particularly care for Diet Coke, but it was what we had.

Sue had a big thermos, filled it up from the coffee pot, and then started another pot. She went out to the patio to join our friends who were gathering. I put the cooler and the thermos in the pickup, then came back to join the group.

When they heard what the deal was, they understood why we were early and ready to get going. I gave out some extra keys we had, giving one to each household, telling them to enjoy the coffee as we needed to hit the road early.

We drove to the storage place to swap trucks. I checked the supplies on the big truck before we left for Gene's. On the way there, we stopped at a Burger King for a couple of sausage, egg, and cheese biscuit sandwiches to give us some energy to get started.

When we arrived at Gene's at seven-fifteen, he came out to greet us and thank us for doing this for him. He congratulated us again on our wedding and complimented us for the great party we had.

He had already trucked over two sets of tubes and plates. We tacked up the blueprint and set up all the equipment, including dual arc welders.

In well-practiced moves we measured, cut, and bent pipe for a solid hour and ten minutes. We re-measured making sure each piece was marked correctly. Two cars cut and bent.

Next we began tacking the front and rear sections then jointly doing the center cage, and then finally setting everything up on stands and tacking the parts together. That took a little over an hour. We measured and gauged, measured again, then assured we were correct, we both started welding. This time we were completely done with the welding in a little less than an hour.

Because Sue's welds were getting smoother, we were done cleaning up welds and drilling holes in another hour.

Four and a half-hours for the first one, a new record time for us. As soon as we stood back and looked at the frame, before we could re-measure and gauge one last time, Gene had his guys pushing the frame to his other shop.