Letters From The Loft

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When I got to the auto supply section, it still seemed like a piece of cake.  There were different sizes of carriers to choose from, but all except the smallest had cautionary labels saying they could only be taken on highways with no overpasses or low flying aircraft, so my choice was simple: I opted for the smallest.  On the box was the message, "mounting brackets included. Consult your merchant's application manual."

Still no problem, I thought.  The auto supply section was lousy with application books, those dog-eared, grease-smeared volumes that hang by a chain from the shelves and purport to tell you what size product goes with your particular car model.  So I started leafing through the first book.

Thirty minutes later, I could have told you what our van required in the way of oil filters, air filters, distributors, batteries, floor mats, tires, seat covers, light bulbs, fuzzy dice, and air fresheners.  But no luck on rooftop carriers.  Just then, though, I spotted an intrepid sales clerk who had bravely ventured this far into the recesses of the store, enabling me to flag him down personally instead of using one of the nearby flare guns provided for customer convenience.

 He was very helpful.  He assured me that no more research was needed.  Shucks, he said (Warning Sign #2), those rooftop carrier gizmos just strap on top of your car.  No book learnin' required for that. And could I tell him where housewares was located?

So I bought it.  It came in a box that was half the size of the actual carrier, so I knew that, unless it expanded upon contact with air, there would be some assembly required, presumably to attach the top and bottom halves.  And how much trouble could that be?

I'm sure that pesky chunk of ice prompted the same question from the captain of the Titanic.

When I got home and opened the box on my driveway, I discovered Warning Sign #3.  Nestled in one of the fiberglass shells was a sack of hardware that could have held together the USS Enterprise.  I immediately started sorting through this amazing collection of nuts, bolts, screws, washers, hinges, handles, brackets, grommets, flanges, rivets and other exotic examples of metal tooling, so it took me a minute to notice that Sue, who was perusing the assembly instructions, had turned ghostly pale.

I took the instructions from her before her case of the vapors got any more pronounced. What I was holding in my hand resembled nothing less than the technical plans to the Death Star.  It was obvious that absolutely no pre-assembly had occurred here; the list of components consisted of a periodic table of the elements.

Ideally, it would take me and the Army Corps of Engineers to put this thing together, but all I had for help was my wife, and I would have lost her if I hadn't lied by telling her that it wasn't as complicated as it looked.  She saved our marriage by pretending to believe me, and we spent the next three hours trying every permutation of the supplied parts.  Let me tell you, no one should have to experience twice in one year the misery of Christmas Eve toy assembly.