Be Blessed,
Ron Grubb
“Sorry, dude. There’s no way we can get this thing running today,” the old man said through clinched teeth. He chewed on his ubiquitous cigar, his words escaping like steam from a tea pot.
“This car has sat so long, the gas has turned to varnish in both carburetors. There’s no way this motor will run without rebuilding these carbs—and Lord knows I haven’t stocked that rebuild kit for years. You do realize these things are antiques?”
Barry dropped his head between slumped shoulders. The sixteen-year-old looked like a Pentecostal preacher praying for help. Aware that the car’s fresh paint job could be easily damaged, he suspended his gas-soaked hands over the engine bay. He had invested hundreds of hours in the 1957 T-bird he’d inherited from his grandfather on his sixteenth birthday. Now, if he could just get it to run.
He slowly extricated himself from under the hood and slid to the ground, melancholy and exhausted. He pressed his aching back against the front fender, arms folded over his head. “Dangit! Just when I thought I’d be driving it this weekend…now this!”
Like a bird dog on point, the old mechanic suddenly turned his head and stared into the distance. “Be quiet! There! Did you hear that?”
“What!” Barry blurted out, throwing both hands in the air. “What? What the heck’s there to listen too, the dumb thing won’t even start!”
“Just shut up and listen…”
Climbing to his feet, the youngster scowled toward Herb. “OK…so what am I supposed to be listenin’ too?”
“There! Didja hear it?” The village’s long-time mechanic whispered reverently under his breath.
Barry followed him out of the clapboard building, past its bi-fold doors and into the final shadows of a spent day. Wiping his hands in slow motion on a grease-soaked shop rag, he rotated his crew-cut head from side to side like a prison searchlight. “I don’t hear nuthin.”
Even in the fading light he could tell the old man was smiling because the glow of his cigar slowly swung upward. “There…hear that? That’s Roberts in his 48’ Anglia and he definitely has the headers open!” Both men leaned into the fading light and were rewarded by the thumping sound of the race car’s high compression engine. Its erratic idle churned in rhythmic pulses as though willing its driver to stab the throttle. “Ba..blap, blap…ba blap, blap.”
Suddenly, it fell silent. The two quietly agreed he must have shut it down—or maybe something was broke? They waited motionless, mechanical yogi’s in meditation. Soon a second crack of RPMs echoed off the Hocking Hills and returned to their wanting ears as though carried on angel’s wings into the quiet village of Sugar Grove.
“Yep!” the old man declared, “That’s Roberts for sure; I’d recognize that sound anywhere. And I know what he’s up to; he’s working on that injection system.” Once again, in the distance, the Banshee cry of a willing engine confirmed the old man’s imaginings. “Ooooh, yea!” now in full grin, Herb pointed toward the distant trees, “He just launched it again right over there; he’s on Pumping Station Road, just past Macgregor’s house.”
The young man and the old mentor turned to one another and winced as the high pitch of the racing engine scaled above human hearing, urging every dog in the lazy village into full song.
Roberts didn’t know Barry had tuned in to the whine of his engine, just as Barry was equally naïve that God is tuned into his life. We tend to only hear what we’re listening for, and God is listening to this tired, frustrated and confused kid.
“In my distress I called to the Lord; I cried to my God for help. From his temple he heard my voice; my cry came before him, into his ears.” Psalm 18:6 NIV
Read Ron’s column, Simple Faith, each Saturday on the Faith Page (page 3) of the Lancaster Eagle Gazette, or visit www.lancastereaglegazette.com.