We Got Spahk

This past week, I've been itching to write. I jotted a few things down here, typed up a few lines on my ipad mini there. But nothing came out of me that said, "don't stop! Someone will want to read this." I counted the days since my last blog post: six. I asked myself, "Did I live a day worth writing about today?" 

For six days, I'd answered 'no' to that question by not writing when I felt the urge to. So, I thought, something's gotta change. And since I don't see anyone following me around with a pen, I'd better get to it.

Friday morning, I ate my cereal quickly and hopped in the car with Jeana when she left to take Lei to preschool. She dropped me off at Marilyn's house, with whom I make soap and frozen pizzas and run errands and whatever else she feels like doing on a whim. Her husband Ricky dedicated his morning to helping me find a car, as my own search has been slow and unrewarding, mostly due to my passivity and denial that one won't just turn up in the driveway one day (yes, I'm realizing how much I really take for granted my handy, generous mechanic of a father).

We arrived at Ricky's friend's car lot, who was willing to give me a deal on a Honda Civic he thought was running just fine despite its cosmetic quarks. We test drove it up Haleakala Highway-- the big test: It ran great! We stopped back at Rick and Marilyn's house for a moment before starting it up again and-- nada. "No spahk" was Rick's catchphrase that day, with his Haliimaile-born pidgin. "Noo sparhk. Buhmuh."

To distract ourselves from the hunk of metal blocking the driveway, we turned around to face the '88 Nissan Pathfinder he had laying around (Ricky buys cars from auctions and fixes them up-- a common side-job on the island, and elsewhere I imagine). We replaced the starter in that car, and wouldn't you know it: "Nooo spahk. Buhhmuh."

We tried this and that, this again and that again on this car and that one. By 3 that afternoon, we had returned to my Honda with a new distributor in hand. Looking down at the old one under the hood, I was worried about not knowing how to line it up right, considering I didn't know what a distributor looked like until that morning. We both hesitated a moment, until Rick smiled:

"We ain't no scaredycats. The one thing I ain't is a scaredycat. Too many people have fee-uh, ya know what I mean? We might not get it right, but we ain't gunna have fee-uh."

That said, the old distributor came right off. We rigged the fresh-out-the-box toy where we thought it might go. I'm not sure how much Rick knew what he was doing-- "I've never had luck with distributors," he said once and again. I certainly didn't know what I was doing. But we did it anyway. One 4pm lunch--and a fight with some plastic piece that has something to do with connecting wires--later, we cranked the key and-- "Ha. Noo spahk." 

Wow, was all we could say, over and over, totally defeated for the day. "Well we got some hands-on experience," we tried to redeem one another. "Rough day," we joked. It wasn't really funny, but we laughed anyway. We cleaned up, with a bit more tinkering in between sighs and jokes. When we were ready to start pushing the Civic to get it out of the driveway, that smile of Rick's returned. "What if it starts!" he said, smirking. One foot out the car door, he cranks it: Vroom. 

"What!" was all I could say.

We had spahk. In fact, we had more than spahk. That thing got us all the way up Piiholo Road--2,000 feet of elevation packed into 3 miles of windy mountain turns.

When I walked in the door that night, I said I'd be in the office the next day, "since I didn't work today. Today I was a mechanic." 

Ha. Hardly.

I didn't buy the Civic. I don't know if we really fixed anything, or if we got lucky when it ran for us that night. But we didn't have fee-uh, and I did have a day worth writing about.