A tribute to Hal Copple

[Tommy]

Those of us who have been on this forum long enough remember the wonderful stories told by Hal Copple of his experiences in The Great Stroker. I enjoy writing but I would never compare myself to Hal's great talent. Still, I thought of him after I spontaneously wrote a short story today. It is not about a Cobra but it does involve one of my cars and I hope some of you enjoy it.

Mano a Mano with an Exhaust System
By Tommy

Few will note or remember (or have the least interest in) the epic struggle that took place on a cold February day in a garage in east central Alabama. Like the epic battle between Alexander the Great and King Darius III at Gaugamela, this also involved a determined attacker and a strong, well entrenched foe. Only this time the attacker was a seventy five year old amateur mechanic and his foe was a two and one half inch diameter steel exhaust system.


The two foes had skirmished for days with the old man making slow progress at the expense of great losses in time, money and body aches. Evidence of both his progress and its cost was apparent in the piles of old and new exhaust pieces that had been either discarded or deemed unusable. The exhaust system’s strategy seemed less about winning than not losing. It wanted to make the cost of victory so high the old man would falter and turn the job over to another incompetent muffler shop as he had done decades before.


The weeks of struggle had revealed the strengths each was using to achieve its advantage. The exhaust system held the high ground, forcing the old man to expose his weakest elements - a pair of injured shoulders on a body with very limited endurance. The exhaust system also used its rigidity and stubbornness to great effect. But the old man also had his strengths.


Stubbornness comes down to resisting change and making those who would cause change pay a high cost. The old man countered that with persistence - the determination to keep coming back after every failure with a new and different approach. The new approaches revealed the old man’s other strengths - tools and intelligence. His garage was festooned with tools and he knew how to use them both as they were intended and in other “off label” ways. And while the old man was not as mentally sharp as he had once been, he was still noticeably smarter than the steel (which had never had an original idea of its own).


So, armed with tools to cut, grind, bend and weld steel, and a willingness to do whatever it took to get those damn crooked pipes snaked around the underside of the car and hook together, the old man mated the final two pieces of pipe on that cold February day. The exhaust system acted like it didn’t care that it had lost and the old man had won. But deep down they both knew he won . . . and it cared.