Sep 27, 2014
RAY: Many years ago when our erstwhile mechanic Crusty was a young man and still courting the girls, he decided to take one of his dates out for a little ride in the country one evening, to park by the lake and do a little smooching.
They park his car, and go off for a little tramp in the woods. They come back an hour later, and to his horror, he sees that he has left his headlights on, and they are a mere shadow of their former selves.
Crusty runs to the car, turns off his headlights, tries to start the car, and gets, unfortunately, an "urrrurrr-urrrurrr."
He knows that if he doesn't get her home on time, the old man will be waiting there with the shotgun. Again.
TOM: Oh, I thought he was going to say, "Hon, I guess we're going to have to spend the night here."
RAY: No such luck. Crusty has to come up with something quick, and the car is parked in such a location that he could never hope to push it out of there. He opens the trunk to get his tool kit, and he's got a gallon of Filippo Berrio Extra Virgin Olive Oil, a large tube of Preparation H, family size, a pair of pliers, and jumper cables, but alas, no one to jump to. And yet, in about five minutes, he has the car running. How does he do it?
RAY: What he did have was an old car, one of those cars where you could take out the spark plugs with a pair of pliers.
TOM: Oh, man!
RAY: And he takes out two of them. If it's a six-cylinder car, he takes out two plugs, like number one and number six, which is halfway through the firing order. And now, he's got a four-cylinder car, and he's got better than that. He's got two less cylinders to compress the mixture in. So, he turns the key, and now with the available energy in the battery, it cranks up. Admittedly, it sounds like a Gatling gun when it starts, but he can run it long enough to charge up the battery and put the plugs back in.
TOM: This was brilliant!
RAY: Do we have a winner this week?
TOM: The winner is Robert Cantabrega from Lebanon, New Hampshire. Congratulations!
