Perhaps you've seen a pickup truck with the above written on it. Well, something happened to me the other day that made me think of that. Is it worth telling? Maybe not, but it felt good to do it and think about it.

A good many years ago we had a 1963 red Chevrolet Super Sport. My wife owned it when we married and we kept it for many years. In those days I worked on the cars myself a good bit to save money...sparkplugs, oil change, little jobs like that. There came a point when I needed to check something out on the front end and it was hard to do without a lift or such. I thought there must be a place around town where you could find a place where that was possible, a place where the car might park somewhat above you with the front part sticking out just enough so you could check on it from below.

The search wasn't easy, but I found Chesapeake Ave. in Harrisonburg to have what I needed. ChesAve's an unusual street, dead ending at one end into the Rocking R lot and at the other into Bruce St. Hardly two blocks long with a closed down train station, Monger's Lumber (say it like a native) and various shipping/train interests were along it. Coal came in here, as did lumber and various building supplies. It's an old location and even feed and similar farm supplies were shipped in and out here, as well as in other places in town.

There was a place right near where ChesAve hits Bruce that had a small, paved "U" shaped pull off which allowed hi-lift and other vehicles to work there. They'd pull around where the train tracks ended and roll into and out of box cars, etc. when working there. The space where this work was done ended at a concrete wall parallel to and about 3 feet above the tracks. It was accessible by a car since box cars seldom need to be up against the butt-end of the tracks. In fact, a car with a careful driver could pull up just so the front end might overhang the space beyond the concrete wall from the blacktop loading area there, and the car's overhang allowed just the sort of access to its front end that I wanted. I think it was about 1975-85 that I might have found and used this spot for that purpose and hadn't been back to use it since.

Recently I had the oil changed on our 1995 LHS at WalMart, as I'm wont to do, (a Pogo character long ago should chime in about now, "that'd be one of my won'ts, too! Don't ask if you don't know.) Since the gods degreed that cars should no longer have places to hook grease guns to grease important places like tie rods, springs, and other front end areas, I asked was there anyway to grease those areas because some squeaking can be heard, although I can't see why in a car only 12 years old.

Mechanic (loosely used term at WalMart) said they don't grease where there're no fittings at WalMart, but I might could spray some WD-40 down in there myself. I tried that out in a few days, but couldn't reach everywhere I'd like without crawling under the car in some empty parking lot. There was a time in my life when I would do that, but at 72 I have more dignity and both cars are squeakier because of it.

Needless to say (but that won't stop me from saying), I thought of that special place on Chesapeake Ave. and began plotting how I could get back there to grease again. Trying not to waste trips driving around hunting that place or making a special trip to find it, a day or two ago I was going somewhere nearby and thought I'd make the effort. WD-40 was placed behind the driver's seat ever since I'd used it from above earlier.

Getting to ChesAve is not simple to describe, as you might have noticed earlier, and it's not easy to visualize how to get there when you've not been on it in maybe 10 years, although it lies mere blocks from your house downtown. After a few wrong turns, my trip along ChesAve brought back old memories as I drove along it: in the 70s Monger's Lumber and Rocking R were about the only hardware stores in town. We had no superstore then, much less Lowe's, Home Depot, Ace Hardware, etc. Harrisonburg had probably 15,000 then, not pushing 60,000 in town and 100,000 with Rockingham County, too. There were no large grocery stores either, and one old building I passed had become our first "box" store for groceries although it didn't last too long.

Anyway, I found the place I've described, placed a handy 3 ft. stick beside my front tire, opened the door, got out and looked 2 or 3 times and managed to avoid the embarassment of dropping the front tires over that concrete wall. Reaching up under to spray WD-40 was almost as easy as having a lift and the spray did the trick. The old LHS seems to have no squeaks up front anymore and I got to travel back in time to "make it so", as Star Trek commander Jean-Luc Picard used to say (Patrick Stewart).