I have a major dislike for Murphy of Murphy’s law.

I have a major dislike for Murphy of Murphy’s law.

Actually it is a much stronger emotion than that but sometimes he makes me laugh at myself, not that that makes me like him .

Case in point, a couple of years ago I found one of those inside door handle clip tools on eBay made by KD tools that any early Mopar guy just has to have, of course it was too much money but you know how it is.

Fast forward to this week, I am back in the shop slowly making some progress on the wagon and you of course all know about you have to do this before you can do that but then you have to do this first, right? I am fitting the front fenders and grill assembly (clip) on to the body and the Dakota stub frame and I need to fabricate a rad support mount, but with no hood or doors for reference I do not know at what height to mount it.

OK, so it was time to put the doors back on anyway, they are heavy and I am not as young or as strong as I once was, so out came the floor jack, that turned into a dismal failure, couldn't keep it balanced by myself. Plan B was to hang the door from the engine crane and that worked out good. (and the doors back on turned out to be a major psychological achievement, feels good.)

Before I took the body off the frame I was impressed with how well the doors opened and closed on the ‘56, best I have ever seen, until yours truly had a brain fart and tried to lift the body off the frame with out taking two missed bolts out of the floor, the good news was that with the body flexing the hidden bondo, that was stuffed into the rocker panels with blue latex gloves as backers, popped right out with vigor. So I was concerned that the doors might not fit but they fit great.

Anyway back to the KD tool that I have never used and is still in the box, when the door balanced on the jack started to tip once, I grabbed for the door handle to steady it and the door handle came right off into my hand. Damn Murphy!

Sorry. But really, you can't blame Murphy, all he did was stated the facts we already knew, and got famous (infamous?) for it.

What I can't figure out is how we get the idea that we can take a 70 + year old vehicle, add 25 year old parts to it, then expect it to go as easy as we had the crazy vision of it being. And then on top of that, we get angry because we had some hard times making this stuff all fit together. And then, when we get together and swap horror stories about the stuff that went wrong, and everything he had to change to make it work. Then we tell everyone "The challenge is what makes it fun!"

To make matters even worse, some of us fools keep doing a different version of the same crazy stuff time after time, and expect it to get easier every time, which it doesn't. I keep hearing that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. That can't be identifying us, we keep doing the same crazy stuff and expect it to turn out better each time....

Hang in there, overcoming the challenge is what makes it fun. If it was easy, everyone could do it, and they are not. Gene

Murphy was an optimist.

^ Also known as O'Toole's Corollary (sometimes Commentary)

...Murphy is a chick in disguise....

That's good , thanks.