Eight Minute Oil Change

Transcript

Another time that my father went on vacation with us, we had gone to New Mexico and we had this old white, passenger van like that they used to make conversion vans out of, well, we had gone and we somehow cracked another block. So we’re going in this van, we’ve cracked a block.

Two reasons why we didn’t have repairs done in the cities that we were visiting. Number one, again, money was super tight, and number two, because you were a tourist, the location that we would go to, tended to just rake you over the coals if they could even get parts. So a lot of times you would have to wait seven to 10 days for parts because this is, this was back in the eighties.

So we cracked a block and my father. As ingenious as he was realized we could drive , I’m gonna say about 30 minutes, before enough oil mixed in with the water that the vehicle would no longer drive anymore. And so what his solution was, was to stop at every Walmart we passed; buy several cases of oil; and do oil changes on the side of the road all the way home.

We had it down to eight minutes. We could do the oil change with the three of us in eight minutes, so that would’ve made me a teenager. If there was only three of us left in the family. We would get out. Everybody had their role. We were like a pit crew. get that oil changed and we made it home then he could to get the vehicle repaired at his own time.

But it was crazy. It was like he had this vacation curse, so I felt really sorry for him. And it was hard. It was hard, you know, traveling that way to see how, difficult it was. But they persevered and it taught us as kids to persevere because they were a very resilient family.

So I recommend that no matter what life throws at you, you’re gonna make it through.