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Zero and Pauly, two hulking French-Canadians, felt pretty good about the pick-up job they just did. No "incident" with the car's owner, no fights. The light rain made the air pleasantly cool. It also kept a lot of people home and indoors. So, traffic was virtually nonexistant as they drove through the next town.
"Hey, Pauly. look back there and tell me if you think we hooked that car up the right way." Zero wasn't sure, but from the side view mirror, it looked like the '64 Impala was leaning and sort of trailing sideways behind the tow truck. Pauly looked back at the moment the Impala snapped loose from the tow chains.
"Aw, Hell...Zero...Stop the truck!" Pauly was leaping out of the truck before Zero had a chance to stop.
The hill wasn't too steep. Steep enough, though, to allow the Impala to start rolling away from them, slowly first. Zero and Pauly looked at each other, then back at the car. It was picking up speed. They ran to the car and tried to stop it. Pauly grabbed the front bumper. Zero had the antenna. It was no use. The car was moving too fast down the hill now. The two just had to let it roll away.
"Pauly, you bonehead! You said you knew how to hook up a car to these things."
Pauly standing there in disbelief of what he was looking at, turned to Zero. "The antenna? What the heck were you thinking? The antenna! How you gonna stop a runaway car with holding onto the antenna? You moron!
The yellow Impala was moving pretty fast downhill now. It swerved a little to the left, then to the right. It swerved hard to the right, cutting across the other lane, barely missing a car parked at the side of the road. It bumped over the curb and into the parking lot of the Channing's Insurance Company, finally coming to a stop in the "employee of the month" parking space.
"Zero. Look at your watch. What time is it?" Pauly wasn't sure whether to go into shock or to drop to his knees and praise God.
"It's ten past eight," replied Zero, then he tapped his watch and held it to his ear. "Ticking. Yep, ten past eight - a.m."
Pauly took a slow, deep cleansing breath then motioned with his hands a direction for Zero to get the truck over to the parking lot. "We are the luckiest sons-of-greenbeans there ever was."
[This message has been edited by kuhlenberg (edited 29 January 2000).]
[This message has been edited by kuhlenberg (edited 30 January 2000).]
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