Krantz Chronicle Stuck in the mud

Krantz’ chronicles can only be read here in Worldkustom. Today about bare legs and gasoline hands. 

Monday, 30th of March, 2015.

 

Stuck in the mud.

Out driving around in Västernorrland recently arrived from three months of sun. Lincoln Mark Fiken’s soccer field of a hood flows from one side to the other over a wide string of snow. People have stopped plowing. 

– The spring equinox was yesterday so that’s it.

The chromed rims are plugged with snow and all kinds of slush spray the bottom of the car, overpowering my recorded radio shows from Florida. It sounds weird when the meteorologist promise 80 degrees and an ocean smooth as a mirror all weekend.

Here I am, sitting upright in the middle of winter with an unsatisfying defroster. My overall is so dirty I don’t want to lean back on the seat and my gasoline-hands are as big as medicine balls. .  The left one holds the wheel cautiously between thumb and index finger. The right one rests steady on the thigh, black on top of fresh oil with a rag in its grip.

Gasoline-hands?

– You know the thing when the hands are drenched in fuel for a longer while and it feels like the extensions of the arms are gigantic, numb, fully bloomed, pulsating dandelions.

Behind me is a new Peeuegot with the dimmers on in my rear-view mirror.
– Darnit, just pass me you Fittipaldi. Darn racer drivers to be out training just as I’m testing out my new project.

The car slides by me and I give the rally-phantom an angry stare. It’s an old lady from my village who’s going to the store. I can’t really put a finger on the feeling there.

Stefan Eriksson can put a finger on it. Stefan Eriksson from Skinnskatteberg with Chevrolet and Amazon. He sits in his 121 with double Weber 45’s. Everything shakes. When he starts it in the parking lot the alarm goes off on the car next to him.

The exhaustion is almost entirely recycled and the B20 chews like crazy on the discs so that the window handle thumps down on the floor at every stop light. Stefan puts the petal to the metal. Four open funnels hits the inner fender and the brawl makes all six graders looking out their classroom window. Stefan isn’t 18. He’s 31. Shifting from second to third gear it hits him.

– Help, am I stuck here?

Is this the way it’s goanna be, me and my Amazon in thirty years year 2045 when I’m sixty? Will it be me and that old Chevy?

-Stefan. Welcome to the future. Krantzen is there and yes, you’re stuck. I’m attaching your future.

The snowfall takes on strength. Have turn the battleship and is drifting back home. The project has run for four miles since the last finishing touches and on Thursday it’s planned to run for 497 miles more to Bilsport Motor and Performance show in Jönköping. And that’s when the motor decides to break down on me, on my way uphill. The snow angrily blows crosswise under the open hood where I establish that the fuel filter looks like a hourglass. Not to the shape but by to the content.

I bang it against the inner fender, blow backwards, try to put it back in put slips with the screwdriver into stiff hands.

The black gets accompanied by red. The hair hanging down my face and my clogs taking in melted snow water.

Throws together the tools and crash in the front seat, prays to God and turn the key with an itching thought in the back of my head, that I should have bought a new battery.

– God thinks I should have learnt the lesson by now. There are younger people to put your hope into which maybe is not as hopeless. Stefan in Skinnskatteberg for example.

I get a ride back home from the old lady who’s on her way back from the store. Before sitting down, I insisted on taking off my overall. I’m hunched down in my white undies and black dandelion hands in her red passenger seat. I don’t feel stupid. I feel like a maniac on the loose, running from the looney bin for advanced crazies.

She drives me home. The old lady is younger than me, by-the-way.

– Finally home I was standing in the snowdrift with the overall on the arm, trying to deliver a normal smile.

Your legs are tanned, she says amused.

– I can’t really put the finger on that feeling there.