The Bronco

     In all my treasure hunting I have done many things to turn trash into treasure and one was The Bronco.  I had a very early Volvo station wagon when I first got my mining camp in Hachita NM, c.2003, and I traded the Volvo for The Ford Bronco.  The Volvo was something crazy like a 1973, and Volvos first try at fuel injection.  Later, after the kinks got worked out of The Bronco, I used it as a mining truck to go to-and-from a claim I had in the Hatchet Mountains of NM.  It seemed sturdy enough.  I gave it all the TLC I could afford.  I took it to Tucson on runs four times and that was like 1600 miles so I thought it was OK.  Finally I go to leave NM the first time, because the religious and cartel activities by freaks and law enforcement were just getting to be too much.  I almost got to the top of the big loooooonnnnngg hill outside El Paso before Van Horn.  Then disaster.  Boom.  
     I was towing a small trailer, headed for Florida.  I had two cats with me.  You talk about adventure, I thought I had enough gas money to get where I was going, and sincerely hoped so, or I was going to have to find a flea market in TX LA AL FL somewhere on the way.  This is the way it is with me.  I hardly ever get what what I want, but I always get what I need. So have some sympathy, eh?
     I met a Spanish man with a tow truck and his son in Van Horn who helped me beyond belief and to whom I will always be indebted.  I had to walk to the top of that long hill and borrow a truckers phone to get help initially, there were pull offs there because many vehicles overheat coming up that damned thing, especially trux.

       I got The Bronco back to Hachita becoming more indebted to friends, took the Oldsmobile Delta88 off the blocks I had just put it up on, got it ready to go, took the tires off The Bronco and stashed them, and left again.  My hair was sticking straight out like a fro.  My eyes were wide, and if anybody had the misfortune to look closely they would have seen steam coming out of my ears, little wisps, hardly noticeable but definitely there.
     I got to my destination in Florida in the Oldsmobile by being able to put twenty dollars of gas in the tank outside Tallahassee before a check had hit the bank, then got the twenty back in after I got to Perry before the check hit, lucky boy.  I then took The Oldsmobile another couple thousand miles visiting mom and her side in upstate NY and helping her through some surgery, then back to Florida for work as long as it lasted, and four years beyond that of nothing but hard core in your face I GOTTA HIT treasure hunting activites.   A really real treasure hunt.  I lived at the back of a wood shop on a canal where I was learning about making billiards cues from real exotic woods.  It was OK, a high point.  I have remarked more than once that considering my activities in Tampa it is fortunate pirates are tolerated there.  You just can't be too greedy.  I do love Tampa a lot.
     I had to give up the car in Seffner where I ultimately landed, because car insurance was 6 times as much as it was in NM.  I sold it for 400 and drove it onto the guys dolly.  I am sure it is still running somewhere.  There in Seffner, near Plant City, I mixed right in with all the other aliens, got scruffy, got a bike, and learned to use the bus systems, which was very cool.  Except for the time I am almost to my destination near Tampa Stadium and this big black dude somewhere behind me yells out real loud while pulling the bell  "Hey man stop the bus let me off here!"  The driver is another black dude but Haitian.  He hollers "No Mon I Cannot Stop The Bus Just For You!"  Guy behind me starts in again "Ohhhhhh you stopped the bus the other day for the pretty spanish ladies, but you ain't gonna stop the bus for the old nigga..."
     True, much too true.  If firearms had been brandished I was right in the path.  I got where I was going and was glad things were winding down for me there in TAMPAFL.
     I carried my detector on my bike and though some thought I was a nut, that was OK, I was not real talkative during these times, and just let them think whatever they wanted.  Judge me all you want but keep the verdict to yourself, thats only polite manners, right?  And of course the repectable types wanted to avoid me and my kind at all costs, so it was pretty cool anonymity and I rode a lot at night.  I saw so many ghosts it would freak you out, like kaleidoscopic schisms in the fabric of things, odd reflections, moving energies still.  And I know I will be among them one day soon, so I try to get what I can while I am here again.
     I wanted to be avoided, and though I never experienced violence I saw it around, and stayed ready.  Usually carried a mini shovel with a sharpened blade too, and other stuff.  It is a zoo out there, and don't be having to wait on the zookeepers if you need help right now, no, you better be ready always.  If you live to call the cops you are already too late, you've been beat up!  I find these things very fundamental but when I bring them up it creates anger in some places.  Like the police really being a long term anti-gun plan by royalty.  I try to report what I observe, or at least what I think I observe.
      I rode a bike for the last four years in Tampa, but not entirely, I chipped with 2 partners who I had treasure hunted with before and we kicked butt and took names as far as high value salvage was concerned.  I wrote for Lost Treasure Magazine after 2013, and didnt leave FL until Jan 2015.  While there I did well enough to get a truck, and get out of Florida again with a small load of rare agate, and back to what was now a huge mess in NM.  It is tooo toooooo toooooo amazing what the elements here do to stuff outside.  And the critters. I used to worry about walmart bags blowing around, not anymore, they keep the coyotes away at night, kind of (Noise), and disintegrate so fast its a non-issue.  Rolands world.  Its not pretty at all.
     One part of the mess in Hachita was clearing the bus of a 5 year old packrat nest, unpleasantness squared baby, and first I had to KILL the thing.  Looked like a miniature wooly mammoth. God.  Good thing predation comes natural to my kind.  Finally got it with a glueboard and it woke me up, the racket it made, and then WHAM and then I was really getting somewhere.  A bobcat came around the bus after that a couple times, pretty sure it was hunting those things, it was totally cool, the bobcat I mean.  Awesome in fact.
     Another part of the mess was The Bronco. Like Linus and his blankie, I again began trying to make the Bronco work, which entailed towing it around where ever I went.   With my earnings from Florida and other places I was able to secure 2 acres near Deming, actually considered part of Deming.  Over two or three years I moved here, put up a large metal building I salvaged, and a small shed with a shingle roof which is pretty good but looks like hell because I covered it in sheets of scrap metal.  Have a small RV with a permanent tag. It has not been the best of times by any means, the world government has actively attacked commerce of anything they do not control using fraud and the televised media.  I am a sitting duck for army experiments being done on some people because they write bad things or whatever. That means the losers are bailing probably, or getting ready to unleash some world government techno-military on us, which is a done deal, really.
     4 years after getting back from Florida I finally found a motor for The Bronco.  The Bronco and my two F150s 1984 1994 have slowly been moved here and the tools and the other stuff needed to work.  At the Deming flea market I traded an AZ Indian pot for The Ranger and 100 bux.  The Ranger has even the same shop manuals as The Bronco, and it was a fleet vehicle retired from Silver City with an auction title somebody bunged up.  Lots of miles, and maybe even some salt, but a tool box bed which should sell pretty quickly, and good maintenance over its life.  It also has all the stuff The Bronco does not, like manual roll up windows which are interchangeable with The Broncos defunct electric windows, because the doors are interchangeable, and it has a carb and real fuel pump, not the souped up electrical vacuum stuff of The Bronco which has now begun to deteriorate badly.  Also The Ranger runs, The Bronco didn't.  A big deal.
    The Ranger is 1983 and The Bronco 1984.  Lots of interchaneable parts, and double everything.  I put up a pole hoist, got the motor out of the Bronco, and messed it all up because I tried to take the tranny out with motor, duh bill.  It hung there for awhile, stuck, a pendulum tick tick ticking the moments away, swinging listlessly in the wind.  I am re-reading Samuel R. Delaney.  Boy are you guys in for it now.  
     I finally admitted I had done it wrong and I had to loosen the tranny before the motor would come out.  The day came where the motor swung loose and I was able to take the hoist down for the next step over by the Ranger.  I removed all the parts off the motor from The Bronco, to save and to sell, and had the oil pan bolts all removed but had to take off the timing cover to take off the oil pan.  This was a good piece of aluminum I hadnt seen, so it worked out.  I did all that while the motor was on blocks outside the engine well.  At least I didnt hit my head or skin my knuckles.
     When The Bronco gave out on me in May 2010, there near Van Horn TX it had clunked real loudly then just stopped.  I got off the road and tried to start it.  It turned but didnt sound good.  The cats had a big place in back of The Bronco I had made for them so at least that was not a worry, it was shut off from my doors and I could come and go.  They let me know they were not happy, of course.  I looked underneath, No leaks, nothing overheated that I could see or feel, but lots of water in the oil, latte.  And that was that for The Bronco.  I tried to change the head gasket in Van Horn and was stranded there for ten days and it was just ugly ugly ugly.  Many Thanks to Ron and his Dad and their garage.  I read since then that those particular Bronco motors had parts from places with problems, and many of them experienced failures, cracked heads and blocks, metal fatigue problems.
      In order for me to get the oil pan off The Broncos motor which was up on blocks I had to tump the motor over and it actually worked perfectly and the oil pan flew off without even hitting the ground, no damage.  Thats when, 10 years later, I got to see what really happened to The Bronco.  My efforts to fix it in van horn had been entirely in vain, it was not a head gasket but a destroyed something that fell out of the motor into the oil pan cruncha cruncha, worst possible.  This was not visible from the top, everything above appeared ok, as both Ron, a certified schooled mechanic, and myself looked it over well before doing the work.
     The Ranger is fundamentally different in many ways concerning quality of parts, and I am hoping the motor from it is not one of the problem types.  I dont think it is.  Once the motors are switched, then The Bronco will live again with a better heart and circulation.  I plan to use it locally, as an economical exploration vehicle, which I could run on alcohol if I had too.  Really, I will be glad when its all done.  Then I will be able to call it a successful treasure hunt too.