WIT STOP

Unlike Us, Doc Holliday and Big Nose Kate Never Had to Take Their Vehicles to a Mechanic

I just read a book by Jane Candia Coleman. The book is called Doc Holliday's Woman, and it's about Mary Katherine Harony, alias Kate Elder, also known as "Big Nose Kate."

Kate was a rough and tumble gal who could hold her own in a high-stakes card game, cuss like a rustler, handle a pistol or a shotgun like a hired killer and flatten the nose of any unthinking desperado who challenged her. That's no surprise. You can't go around calling a woman "Big Nose Kate" and expect her to accept it like a demure little debutante. She was tough because she traveled with a tough guy, Doc Holliday.

They spent time all over Arizona Prescott, Globe, Tucson, Fort Huachuca, Bisbee and, of course, a fateful stay in Tombstone. Kate was looking for a quaint little place surrounded with a white picket fence. Doc was searching for a place that wasn't surrounded by sheriff's deputies trying to arrest him for murder or mayhem.

They traveled by stage or buckboard. It wasn't comfortable. The roads weren't paved, and the vehicles weren't equipped with hydraulic shockabsorbers. Those wagons vibrated and shook. They croaked and creaked, bounced and buckled, rumbled and clattered. But they had one advantage over today's automobiles: You didn't have to describe unwanted noises to your local buckboard repairman before the warranty ran out. Which brings me to my sad tale.

I just took my expensive modern-day, motor-driven buckboard to the shop because I'd heard a mysterious noise. Things didn't go well.

The mechanic approached me wiping his greasy hands on a greasier rag and said,"Hi, my name's Earl. What's the problem?"

I said, "The car makes a funny noise when I start it."

"What kind of noise?" he wanted to know.

"It's hard to explain," I said.

"Hey, I can't fix it if I don't know what's wrong."

I said, "Here, I'll start it. You can listen for yourself."

I started the car. It went vroom-vroom-vroom, and then purred beautifully.

"It's not making the sound now," I said.

He shrugged. It was his way of repeating, "Hey, I can't fix it if I don't know what's wrong." "Here, listen," I said. "It goes kind of like vroom-vroom-shusha-shush."

He said, "Hey, that's pretty good. Do that again."

I said, "Vroom-vroom-shush-ashush."

He chuckled. "Hey Charlie, come listen to this."

Charlie, another mechanic, came over and they both looked at me.

So again I said, "Vroom-vroomshush-a-shush."

Earl said, "This guy does car noises."

Charlie said, "That's really good. Can you do a carburetor with a faulty intake valve?"

I said, "I'm not a professional car noise impersonator. I'm trying to tell you what's wrong with my car."

Charlie turned to go back to the Buick he was working on, but I heard him whisper to Earl as he left, "I hate customers with an attitude."

I said to Earl, "Can you fix it?"

He said, "I don't know. Let's see what we can do."

He went to get one of those immense books that auto mechanics always have on hand and said, "Let's have it again."

I repeated, "Vroom-vroomshush-a-shush." I was getting pretty good at it by now.

He leafed through the pages of the book. Then he said, "Could you spell that for me?" "Spell it?" I said.

He said, "I can't look it up in the repair manual if I don't know how to spell it."

"It's a noise,"

I said. "Shush-a-shush."

"Shush,"

He said. "Would that be with a 'u' or double 'o'?"

"I have no idea," I said. "It's just a noise my car makes."

Then I got an idea to try a different approach. I said, "It sounds a little bit like when you take a piece of cheese..."

Earl interrupted. "What kind of cheese?"

I said, "I don't know. It doesn't matter."

Earl said, "The more I know about the problem, the better I can fix it."

"Okay. Parmesan cheese, all right? It sounds a little bit like when you rub that along a cheese grater."

"Oh," Earl said. He seemed to understand that. "What kind of car is it?"

I was pleased we were getting somewhere. I told him the model and year of the car.

He shook his head and said, "There's no cheese grater in those cars."

I realized this was hopeless. I'd fill my car up with gas and take it somewhere else, somewhere where they understood "layman."

A young kid filled my tank and cleaned my windshield. I paid him and started the car. The kid knocked on my window. I rolled it down and he said to me, "You hear that shoosh-a-shoosh noise your car is making when you start it? You ought to get that fixed. It could cause trouble. I drove off, longing for the happy, carefree life of Big Nose Kate and Doc Holliday being chased by revengeminded outlaws or justice-seeking posses, but not caring one whit whether their wagon went shoosh-a-shoosh or it didn't.