END OF SUMMER... September (Part 90f)

After my first warm up on the track I told Eric I was concerned about how the car had handled. I asked him to take the car out for the last warm up. When he came in he said he couldn’t see any problem. By then I’d pretty much decided to have him drive the car the whole night but hadn’t told him. Rick came over to tell Eric that he thought his car was better with the change and thanked him for the suggestion. By then it was time for the first race. I handed Eric my helmet and told him to go win us a race. He didn’t want to but I told him it was only fair what with all the time he’d put in on the car. Reluctantly, he climbed in.

He started third but barely qualified (seventh). What it did was to confirm that my motor wasn’t really competitive. Eric apologized saying that he should’ve done better. At least we didn’t have to go in the last chance race. For the feature we had the pole position. It didn’t last long. The faster cars behind Eric were using him as a cue ball right from the start. He got spun out by one of them and when he tried to restart the motor he couldn’t so we ended up parked in the infield. As I watched from the pits I set my mind on getting a new, more powerful motor for the following season.

Eric, again was apologetic but I told him that it wasn’t his fault and that it was obvious that we were underpowered. When I said that he smiled and said he’d wanted to say that all along but knew I was running the car on a “shoestring“ and didn’t want to discourage me. We went over to Rick’s pit and watched his crew get him ready for his feature event. Once out on the track we stood with them to watch the race. It was really exciting as it turned out that he and Jim’s cousin battled for the lead with Rick winning in the end. It was his first feature win and his crew went wild. After Rick pulled into his pit stall he found Eric and thanked him profusely for suggesting the gear change. He insisted that we join his crew in celebrating and we didn’t refuse.

I paid for it, in spades, on Sunday morning. With the sailing season over I could no longer use that as an excuse to avoid going to church or to take my grandfather to the hospital to visit my grandmother. I was ”hurting“ all morning but, by the time I arrived back home in the early afternoon I was starting to feel better. As I turned the corner approaching my parking place I saw Lil’s pick up truck as well as a car that I didn’t recognize. I asked Elle if she’d talked with Lil but she said she hadn’t because she had a visitor. It wasn’t because she didn’t want to know what was happening. I changed my clothes and got a bite to eat. While sitting at the table I saw Lil and a man carrying boxes to the car. Elle tried to urge me to go over and offer to help but, as I’ve written, I’d avoided Lil since that morning she offered to ”pay“ me for working on her home. Elle didn’t know that and I wasn’t about to tell her and the reason why. I tried to come up with an excuse but when Elle spied the two of them trying to lift a chair into the back of the truck she almost pushed me out the door.

The man was Lil’s father. Finding that out I felt better in that I was sure Lil wouldn’t reference our last conversation. What they were doing was to pretty much clean out the unit taking anything that wasn’t attached. When I helped carry out Andy’s reclining chair I got the distinct impression that Lil had taken a very aggressive approach against Andy. I took the opportunity to ask about the damage to the patio room and her answer spoke volumes... ”It’s not my worry!“

Once I got involved with helping Elle came over as well. She and Lil talked while Lil’s father and I finished carrying out the remaining boxes. We were just about done when Dora and Jim showed up. Lil told her father to go on ahead while she said her ”good byes“. Before left she said still wanted to come back to go through the things in the shed. She said there probably wasn’t much that was of value but she wanted to get going. As she drove away I couldn’t help but think of what Andy would do when Jim told him what she’d done, especially in taking his favorite chair. As I stated earlier, I had mixed emotions about Lil leaving. I was also thinking about what new neighbors would be like. Lil, Andy and their kids had been fairly good and the ”peeks“ that Lil’s liberal approach to modesty had afforded me would certainly be missed. Only time would tell. 

Elle had received a phone call wanting her to come in and teach for a few days during the week. We’d both put off discussing how we were going to handle baby sitting when she did get a call. The last time I’d seen and talked with Jan, the nurse who was staying at my grandfather’s house, she’d mentioned that her sister had changed jobs and was now working full time at a start up electronics company. She’d been made a second shift supervisor but was looking for something to do during the day that didn’t have her on her feet. I don’t know what made me think of her that night but, on a whim, I told Elle about her. We called Jan and asked her to have her sister give us a call. At that point all we could do was hope.

To be continued...