Ghetto documentation & car talk

[J.David Moriaty]

March 18, 1963

[As the weather warmed we left the newly washed but screenless windows  
open, both sashes, double hung.  As I sat typing at night large moths 
fluttered in and Fuzzy, Hersh's great neutered male Siamese leapt in 
graceful arcs, the apex often six feet above the floor, and came down 
with an miraculously uninjured moth which he would release to catch 
again until he finally broke his toy; then he would chomp it down and 
wait for a new one]

"Fishing around under my bed yesterday and what should I find but a 
great northern flicker. Thought it was a kid's toy at first (made in 
Japan) but it turned out to be real enough. Dead enough, too. At least 
a couple days. Fuzzy is usually pretty good about not strewing around 
the things he catches. Usually takes them to his food dish and devours 
them there.

[For some perverse reason, Hersh located Fuzzy's catbox right in front 
of the bathroom space heater just as we bought an entire flat of 
Woodbury soap at Sage member discount store. My brain was thus rewired 
so I still smell hot catshit in the presence of Woodbury soap.]

"Poor Hersh's VW broke its crankshaft while he was driving back from 
his folk-dance festival in Denton this weekend. Not knowing what the 
noise meant, he proceeded to ignore it and drove 80 miles [home]. Don't 
ask me how an engine can do that...when we looked at it, the fan pulley 
was following an eccentric orbit of about 1/2 in. out of round. A 1961 
VW at that [remember, this is early 1962]."

To chide my engineer father for worrying about my 1950 Ford Custom 
sport coupe, which I bought from a guy everyone referred to as Ignorant 
Asshole, in trade for a used $5 Pickett slide rule, a pair of cowboy 
boots I found by the Brack Hall dumpster, and $20; the letter ends with 
this dexadrine rant:

[As you noticed the Ford] would experience an unstable condition at 
about 60 mph characterized by a twisting motion about its lateral axis, 
which would build like any driven oscillation that is underdamped  
until I would have to apply the brakes to keep the car on the road.

"It has always been controllable by simply applying the brakes and 
usually [only] occurred under heavy loading conditions, but, as you 
noted, is nevertheless a nuisance.

"This condition was apparently due to three factors: the loose steering 
(which initiated the motion) the loose sway-bar and insufficient 
damping of the rear springs, which would only become critical when the 
springs were loaded sufficiently to overcome the inherent self-damping 
factor of leaf springs..."

[not to mention the zooty two-color naugahyde seat that Ignorant 
Asshole got from a junk Ford, but cross-threaded the anchor bolts 
reinstalling it so the seat not only rocked back and forth, but, when 
you took a left, also trundled across the car and slammed into the 
passenger side door. When I left for Europe, Gilbert bought my Ford and 
totaled it in a destruction derby, winning $35]

"[After working on it] we loaded up with six people and equipment [beer 
and ice] and took it out Hamilton Pool road, and the system is quite 
stable and actually corners. Apparently the elimination of two of the 
three factors has yielded a system capable of effectively overdamping 
any oscillations about the lateral axis caused by the first."
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Dave