DIRTY STUFF
ANDY was fond of the lunatic soup. Partial, you could say, to a glass or three of the cold local amber, often rapidly followed by three or four more, with an inner warming glow spreading like a bushfire from the first double nips of his Bundy Rum chasers. Saturday arvo was always Andy’s drink-to-me session at the Regency pub. It was an easy three short clicks through the back streets to where he parked the Cusso, shared house with his wife and looked after the dog, from where he’d front up to his working week at dawn to saw frames for houses and develop a thirst. He never drank during the week; only got on the grog of a Saturday. Sunday? That was saved for the Cusso.
We all reckoned he loved that car more than his faithful wedded wife. Well, it was, after all, not your usual Jap-crap buzzbox. Made in 1955, this immaculate Ford Customline was not short on grunt. The original 272 Y-block V8 had been pulled and swapped for a 292-incher out of a truck, cammed and fitted with a genuine Weiand inlet manifold that breathed through triple twin-barrel Holleys, subdued for the road by a neat progressive linkage. So Andy could mostly drive economically through only the centre pair of throats – until the foot went down past halfway and the other four throats roared in, bellowing the flames out through dual pipes, fed through stock cast-iron manifolds; one off a truck, the other from a sedan. Ford made them that way: the truck had a right-side exhaust, the sedan a lefty, incredibly adding a front crossover pipe to link both manifolds together. So if you wanted dual pipes, you just bought another manifold and built up the mufflers and pipes from there.
The Y-block, Henry’s first try at overhead valves after 20 years of V8 flatheads, began in ’54 as a 239ci bent-eight. Moulded from Ford’s easy-cut metal – cast iron – these first fragile mills ran through to an engineering peak in 1957 when the factory produced a blown 312. The 292 was to end the Y-block dynasty just five years later.
Andy knew all this, and resisted his mates who kept telling him to toss his ancient 292 and drop in something sensible, like a 351 with a slushbox. Nope, he said. I like my Y-block. And the three-on-the-tree cogbox.
Sunday was car-clean day. But it wasn’t Sunday already. The day was Saturday, in the arvo, and the sky was bleeding water. Usually, Andy got a lift to the pub and walked, after a fashion, the three backstreet clicks home. This day, it didn’t quite work out. The usual lift wasn’t there and it was too bloody wet to walk.
“I’ll take the Cusso,” he said. “I’ll just have a few and drive real careful. The cops are never going to catch me.”
The short session turned into a long session. Lots of goodmate laughter, top stuff on the telly, excellent cold beer and smiles from the barmaids.
“It’s only three kays back to the house and you never see a copper. I’ll have another Bundy and Coke, thanks. I’ll wander off, after that. What’s on the telly, Freddie?”
He should have left the Cusso where it was: out the back, safe in that park. He should have said: “Stuff all this rain,” and walked. Mistake number one.
Mistake number two was when he reversed into the lane that ran from the back of the pub, turned the wheel for home and the red mist somehow floated in through the open window. It
IT WAS THEN THAT HE REALISED HE WAS GOING MAYBE 50 KAYS TOO FAST. THE HOUSE WAS A WALL SLIDING PAST AT A VERY ODD ANGLE AND THE DOG HAD SUDDENLY RUN TO HIDE IN THE CACTUS GARDEN
was really, really easy to spin the skinny back wheels, and the Cusso was everywhere as he put in the boot and those six Holley throats sucked at the good stuff.
The Y-block lit up like it was alive. Second cog and the 292 was roaring. Third cog and he was still feeling downhill wheelspin as the corners rushed up and the Cusso was sideways. He felt like God, controlling all that in massive slides, and now he was through the last lefty, straightening up as he accelerated into his street – and there wasn’t a copper between him and his driveway.
The red mist was real and he knew he could easily beat Skaife on the Mountain. He sized up the tight left turn to slip through the front gate, managed that and aimed past the side of the house to where he could slide straight into the two-bay garage.
It was then that he realised he was going maybe 50 kays too fast. The house was a wall sliding past at a very odd angle, the dog had suddenly run to hide in the cactus garden and there, directly beyond the flying-duck bonnet mascot, was an arriving chook house. There wasn’t time for anything and Andy buried the Cusso into a pile of hysterical white leghorns and exploding wire netting before he finally stopped.
He sat there, disbelieving, while the body of a chook slid down the wet windscreen. Later, his missus counted 16 dead, and Andy – well, it’s a long haul now to fix up the Cusso.