The Curfew-Mobile Is No More

Regular readers may recall my description of the current car I'm driving, a 1987 Honda Accord. At that time, I stated that the car had a messed-up headlight. That would probably classify as an understatement. In reality, it was actually MISSING a headlight. The headlight was in the trunk. It still worked -- I knew this because I had plugged it in and checked it. The only problem is that the accident it was in before I bought it had mangled the headlight bracket to the point where the headlight could NOT be attached. So, I've been driving with one headlight since the beginning of August. Such a condition made it imperative that I make it home before dark, thus earning the car the nickname "The Curfew-Mobile".

Cut to this past Sunday afternoon. I went to my dad's house, seeking his assistance in laying the curfew to rest, once and for all. My dad is retired now, and spends his days doing this or that home improvement project. So, to begin with, he needed to take a look at the good headlight, for comparison. As the '87 Accord is the kind of vehicle that has the flip-up headlights, he had to remove the outer housing from the good one. Now, with anyone else, that may have driven me into a panic. But my dad is THE MAN when it comes to cars or anything else mechanical, so "in Dad, I trust".

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Once he saw how a good headlight bracket is supposed to look, he set about straightening the afore-mentioned mangled one. As I have said for years, my dad has every tool known to mankind, and some that aren't. In this case, that worked out to my benefit. Using a variety of tools, he got the bracket straightened out enough so that the headlight could be attached. After that, he rigged up some wiring to hold the headlight in place (as the damaged side would not have the housing to hold it steady). He used the coolest tool to twist and tighten the wire. It looked somewhat like a pair of wire cutters, but it had a piece in the center that I didn't understand, and a knob at the end of that piece. Anyway, with this tool, he got hold of both ends of the wire, then grabbed that knob and pulled... and as he pulled, the tool automatically twisted the wire! That was the coolest thing I'd seen in a long time. Later, my dad (normally a relatively humble guy) said, "Forget McKee, call me MacGuyver!" I couldn't agree more.

(And lest you think I had my dad do this work for nothing, I did some stuff on his computer, including figuring out a problem he was having with his Internet service. I also installed the Firefox browser on his computer, and set him up with Google as his home page. He really liked Firefox and Google, so those were major brownie points for me!)

So there you have it. I am no longer bound by curfew. The bad news is, my car no longer has a nickname. The good news is, I can stay out even after the street lights come on.

Wanna play?