Jonathan's 1978 Jeep CJ-5 Project: Eating a burger inside a giant cow skull, the daring journey, a leathery crazy old woman, and hot wirin' a forklift pt II

I then untied from the dock and pushed off to head out to three points. The freeway was as wild as it ever was, the truck would start bobbing at a resonant frequency, so I'd have to slow down to get it to stop, yadda yadda. You don't want to hear about the technical handling of the vehicle, just know it is a feel you have to develop. Oh yeah and tons and tons of assholes blew by me at like a gazillion mi/hr. So I stopped for fuel on Ajo/Kinney, west Tucson outskirts. I was filling up my tank again and leathery old woman by a motor home was blabbing to me "This here is the best, we don't have to stop at hotels, eat out.."

"I get to bring my pants with me" her husband chimed in.

I told her about the engine and how sketchy the truck was and gave them permission to pass me down the road. The decor of their motorhome was weird Mexican blankets and ugh I bet the cushions of everything had that foam-rot smell. She was wearing a blue farm dress and had a bonnet on. Anyways, off to Three Points, AZ.

Three points. What are the points? Drugs, illegal aliens, despair? The only word that comes to my mind out there is despair. Maybe desparation, but same idea, same derivative. Ok, so there was a really scary abandoned market I wanted to take a picture of, but I didn't. It was scary though, reallll scary. So I pulled up to the guy's house, which was by a totally scary house. The guy there was a total extreme right winger. Don't worry, I came prepared with my NRA hat. This hat is totally rad. It is black, has "NRA" in yellow, a yellow rimmed bill, and an American flag on the left side. He totally ate it up. Anywho, he has like three jeeps that are in limbo and one large collection of parts. I was buying some seats from him to correct a mistake I made the day before. I sold some guy the seats that came with the jeep for $85, but I realized if you buy new seats, you do not get the "risers" with them. The seat risers are the steel frame that a seat bolts onto. Anyways they are like $135 new. This guy was selling them for $35. So far I have made $50 profit off the seats, I will offload the actual seats I just bought to some poor sap. These bucket seats are made out of really scary fiber glass and are meant to have a slip cushion over them. I haven't checked if the risers even work yet, I am assuming they will, or that I at least have enough material to make them fit. Anywho, he was a solid dude and told me if I think of anything else I might need to give him a call. We talked about the Dana 300 vs the 20 and talked about engines and jeep stuff. I threw some straps over the seats and headed off to my dad's ranch. I also snapped some photos of the guy's neighbor's house--they do not give it the justice it is due. We are talking weird loose soil, a tree stump with a weird mass of gore on it with flies chanting, a screen door, you walk up to it and look through the yellowed dusty glass and shout "Hello...?" And then, you pull the screen door, it creaks, you hear an AM radio in the background ""got a large barge with a radio antenna on it, charge up a discharge", the static then creeps up and squelches. The wind chimes on the creepy porch chant. Then an old grizzled man comes from behind you and says "Whaddya want?!?!?" Fortunately, I didn't have to go in that house. I think the right-winger guy would've saved me, after all, we are bros who will be potentially be making some future transactions.

Ok, so I took the back way to my dad's ranch. It was a tip from my mom on how to get there, although I think I scoped the path out for her years ago. So I got to the ranch and parked, unloaded the engine hoist by hand, for security I put it by the "Bee Tree." I call it the bee tree since it is a tree with a bee hive in it, hence "Bee Tree." I think it was too windy out there for the bees to get me. You know how you can sandblast stuff? I was being pollen and sand blasted. The sand would cut through the skin and the pollen would embed in the cavities. Ok, so To the task at hand. Hotwire a forktruck.

I hotwired this forktruck. Ironically, I hotwired it with my truck key. I fished around under the dash and jumped ignition switch terminals until she cranked over, sparks flew and I got blasted. I then sprayed a gratuitous amount of ether in the the air intake and jumped it again, it lurched forward and fired up. I had to push in the clutch to put it into neutral and had to put it in the right gear. After a bit of driving I realized I put it into super-high gear. The clutch was horrible, the pedal was covered in oil and it was crazy hard to push. When you'd try to push it, it would just slip-slide around and you would slip off of it and lurch forward. Anyways, I navigated over the the truck and hooked up the engine and hoisted it out and then drove around looking for somewhere to put it. I found a spot, snapped a bunch of photos, and then covered it with a tarp I had. I then put steel, wires, hoses, and stuff on the tarp to hold it down.