The Nine Wrecks on a Rented Rack

The rack

There is a kind of portable frame rack that small shops use when they do not have room or money for a full bench.

It has a short tower on wheels, a hydraulic ram, chains, and clamps that grip the car at the pinch welds or the frame rails.

It is slower than a bench. You have to anchor it, and you have to measure more often, because it does not hold the whole car true the way a bench does.

But it straightens a frame, and men have been fixing wrecks with them for fifty years.

I called the collision supply man we buy our paint from. He has a warehouse up near Columbus and he knows everybody.

When I told him what had happened, he was quiet on the phone for a minute.

“I’ve got a rental unit,” he said. “It’s not new, but it’s sound. Four hundred fifty a week. I can have my boy run it down tomorrow afternoon.”

“I’ll take it,” I said. “And I need a tram gauge and the dimension sheets for every one of these cars.” I read him the list off my estimates, year and make and model, all nine.

“You doing the pulls yourself?” he asked.

“Lu’s talking me through them,” I said.

He did not ask anything else. He just said he would throw in a few extra chains and that I should call him if anything did not look right.

Saturday

The rental came down on a trailer Saturday afternoon in bright, warm sunshine.

The supply man’s son was a big quiet kid who backed it right up to the second bay like he had done it a thousand times.

Wes came in on his day off without being asked. He helped me roll the tower off the trailer and walk it inside, and we stood looking at it in the empty square where the old machine had been.

“I’ve never pulled a frame,” Wes said. “I’ve watched Lu do it a hundred times. But I’ve never pulled one.”

“Neither have I, by myself,” I said. “But I’ve stood on the other side of that chain more times than I can count. Lu always ran the pulls. I held, I measured, I watched the gauges.”

Wes nodded slowly. He put his hand on the tower like he was meeting a horse. “Tell me what to hold,” he said.

We spent Saturday afternoon setting it up. Lu had me on speakerphone, propped on the shelf above the workbench, and he walked us through the anchor points and the chain angles from his chair at home.

“Don’t trust the clamps until you’ve seen them bite,” he kept saying. “Look at the teeth. If they’re not in the metal, they’re not holding. And never stand in line with a chain under load. Ever.”

By the time the sun went down behind the ridge, the rack was set, the chains were sorted, and the first car was rolled into the bay.

I drove home and slept better than I had any right to.

Sunday

We went to church Sunday morning like always. Lu could not sit the whole service yet, so I went by myself and he watched it on the computer from his chair.

Orval was in his pew, three rows up on the left, where he has sat for forty years.

He had on his good brown sport coat. He did not turn around, but I know he knew I was there.

We sang “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.” I could not get through the second verse. I stood there holding the hymnal with my mouth closed, and the woman next to me put her hand on my arm and did not ask.

After the service, Orval went out the side door. I did not follow him.

I had nothing to say to him that belonged in a churchyard, and I had a shop to open in the morning.