"Never Give Money to an Ozark" This is an old saying in the politics of show me. First you'll need some back ground about hilly terrrain and rocky soil. Today in the days of John Ashcroft this saying may finally get it's due. One of the things that goes with rocky soil and hilly terrain is bogs. If you we're thinkng of the kind of dry promontory where you could site an outhouse or a mountain graveyard that is different. This is the requiem which comes just after the battle. Long after the first skirmishes which presage the front comes the requiem. It seems that a young man fresh from mowing lawns with his father's power mowers and looking at go karts built with Maytag gasoline washing machine engines was ready to learn the rest of politics. He had a friend whose father owned a lumberyard that burned down from spontaneous combustion left in a corner of a huge wooden shed by workmen milling rough lumber. The door at the end of the shed was left open and a little rain created wet sawdust. Insurance covered some of the loss after lightning was ruled out as a cause. Because arson could not be totally ruled out do to the focus of the fire origin payment was hesitatingly made. Years had passed and the workmen who worked in those sheds were without work and the new lumberyard away from the railroad yard to avoid tramps and cinders from locomotives was much smaller. All mill work was imported from a larger factory yard sixty miles to the West. But, I am almost digressing. The son of the owner took the young man with some experience in keeping gasoline engines running to see the first view of requiem. Now it so happens in some combat that the aftermath ends with forces so mixed up that small pockets are taken prisoner. This is the significance of aftermath. Here at this first requiem in very low rolling countryside very near a meandering stream draglines and harvesting equipment were the outer markers. Penetrating deeper a house with a billboard for an auction could be reached. There was almost a rallying point among kitchen appliances in the form of a 1937 Ford V-8 "60" coupe. The door hinges had rotted out of the body or been torn off and were welded to give some closure. The two young men tried a bid. The refugee in charge said no. That item was not for sale. No one knew why it would not run. it just sort of sshowed up one day. They wandered down by the swale where it was more encumbered by bushes. Here they found more exotic finds. A Chrysler straight 8!! Seems an officer had been wounded and crawled off. Yet there was no conclusion that day. They were free and wandered off backing their newer convertible skillfully out the drieway past the relics. The next attempt was one at bonding. Avoiding the orphanage, the young man borowed his father's Navy car and journeyed to a yard his friend had only mentioned. The terrain was lower. It was more bumpy than rolling hills. There were trees and not just bushes. The river was off a ways. Here in a clearing he found a joy to behold. Lobbyists were holding some less popular family forms. Here were four door sedans of low priced status and only the big three. To the South, the edge of the clearing was guarded by oddball tractors-Cockshutt, Mineapolis-Moline and Co-op. One even had an Oldsmobile engine replacing the industrial Chrysler six. (the Co-op) The lobbyists were a delight. Both were green almost matching the grass. The big ten ton 1933 Chevrolet truck with dual wheels had a big A-frame just like on Army tank retrievers. It could stack cars two high as the space was full to the brim. Then it was dangerous to walk between the rows as weight might shift if disrurbed. It also made it near impossible to remove any big parts even with the other lobbyist- a 1950 Chevrolet fourdorr sedan with the trunk lid removed and a set of welding and cutting torches set up right in it. It had welded on dual wheels with snow tires and chains to get around the wet bog. Gosh! It was almost as cool as "Black Jack" Pershings locomoble with dual wheels the now not so young man saw at Aberdeen decades later in a museum. Here in the serene clearing it was possible to extract a transmission from one of the 1939 Ford sedans. This was the key to one of the committees. The bill had failed in the engine room as having no tax authority but that had not kept it from embarassing farmers daily with it's robustness. Typically one of the lobbyists would have just cut it out of the car with the flash of acetylene flame. That would have left the bellhousing ruined and the torque tube detached from the rear by a jagged slice. The young man had brought something unknown to politics, wrenches. He requested a hearing and was allowed to extract the bill from committee to be used in a road version if possible by intelligent means. It was his first lesson in avoiding scrap. He was now a scavenger. In this case it was a hostile form also as the Chevrolets had held off as the Ford was stripped of it's maybe useful part. Let him have his fantasy. There would be time to close the gap later. Years passed and the young man was almost ready to take a wife. He had met and drank with some lovely ladies each bringing a secret of the requiem just passed. The setting was Jewish. Now this time the young man went up where he had heard that weddings lasted for a week. He was in a Polish community. He wanted to pickup a spare rear end as the older model of Ford with closed driveline was becoming very scarce and was gone in the big city areas where he now would be frequenting. His Ford had a very powerful Chevrolet OHV to match the survivor floor shift 1939 ford transmission he had earlier saved from destruction. The lobbyists could count one addition to their number. This time it was in the depth of winter when the young man had come a blizzard was blowing up just as it had when he had obtained the Chevrolet lying "burned out" next to the bean elevator. He called at the farm house. The farmer asked why some one would be on these wind swept hills in these conditions. The answer, "Ineed a spare" confirmed that the young man was indeed shell shocked form the high powered Jewish princesses he had been meeting in his intellectual pursuits. Brahms and Beethoven and Bach scorned the tuned exhaust that was optimum to the young man. "Go ahead" said the old Polish farmer,"They are all down on the ground I doubt you can lift one enough to get a rear end out from under one." He knew that every part had it's signs of failure you could just not pinpoint. A good mechanic knew the weakness of the designers. He knew when their idea of life had expired even thouhg htere was no loud noise or outcry or worse yet lack of power to the wheels. Take the Model-T trailer he shouted in scorn. There were no Chevrolet lobbyists here. This place was very poor. This was research. Climbing the hills in deep snow with the blizzard clutching at him the young man searched in vain for what he needed. It had to be a 1942-48 car with the running gear under it and in a place away from other cars where he could get the doors open to remove the floor boards and to lift the back to pull out the assembly. finally he found what he needed. He returned to where the famer had pointed out the trailer built on a Model T torque tube and rear end. It had skinny spoked wheels that could cut throuhg the snow drifts as the young man pushed it up the hills to the target car. He had heard stories about the wizardry of the Polish artillery general with George Washington. He had thrown his bumper jack, bought at Western-Auto to replace the missing one in his car, onto the trailer. Within about two hours the axle was out and nxt to the trailer. Now was the lift that determined if he was a man or boy and if Polish and Jewish teachers had given him the key. Lifting one corner of the axle and long torque tube he knew that was all his strength. Leting it flop over onto the triler the trailer leaped a bit on it's springs and turned a bit. This was maybe the last move. Now grapsing the side still hanging on the ground the young man put his back into it as slowly as he could and the trailer swung around like a cart!! No progrees was made and it had hurt. finaly on the last lift of three he was able to get the brake drum up on the cart as he felt a fire tear into his spine. Limping and pushing the cart he got to the farmers house. the blizzard was screaming as he banged on the back door. No one could hear him. He went around to look in a window and saw someone. He banged on the window and when the farmer got up pointed to the door then went to it. Soon the farmer came and openned the door. A negotitaion on the price ensued. Now we come to the moral of the story. "Don't bite off more than you can chew." Could have been the phrse that set this fable in motion. How was the young man to get the part home. He could put wheels on it and tow it with the torque tube roped to the bumper guards. He did not have his friends lumber yard truck to put it on and anyhow how would he lift it there even with two men. Because he only wanted the center section he now negotitated to leave the axles and axle housings and the torque tube and driveshaft and used wrenches to disassemble as far as possible and a cold chisel to cut a rivet attaching the driveshaft. Tossing the part into a wood box in his trunk he drove off. Years later when the young man heard that Shawn Eckerd a body guard and security consultant for Tanya Harding had been caught in the Ozarks living with his grandmother the young man knew the moral of the story, It rolled in from the Missouri Compromise and bloody Kansas, as it looked up walking on car bodies of Mercurys in a junkyard in Oak Ridge, Tennessee to avoid stepping on copperheads. "Never give money to an Ozark!"