Seems like ever since I was a small fellow rust has been like a brother to me, even my bicycle rusted back down in Louisiana. When I got to really noticing dang near every tractor, car and truck in town that was more than 6 months old was rusty. Folks said it was from the salt air coming in off the ocean. There was this place called Ziebart set up over inthe next town, and for a couple hundred dollar they sprayed some kind of sticky stuff inside all the car panels and claimed it prevented rust for at least 5 years. Wouldn't you know that Ziebart company left town about 5 years after they opened up their store. So much for their guarantee.
When farming didn't look to be my future, I got hired on over at the railroad, and bid my way up to fireman on a Diesel locomotive. It was a Union job, about as necessary as teats on a borhog, but since my sister LaMona was married into arailroad family and kept her husband real happy when he was home I was on the board. I tell you there's a lot of country to look at riding the cab of a diesel as a fireman, and more dang junkyards than I could count keeping my boots on. Me and the engineer was climbing into the cab one morning and I noticed the rails were rusty. That train had sat there overnight and the dang rails rusted right under it except for exactly where the wheels were. That definitely impressed me as strange. Might just be where the saying rust never sleeps comes from, but I ain't sure. The engineer I was on with told me if I thought it was bad I should have been around back in steam days when boilers rusted right through from heat and water acting against one another.
I tell you once I got to paying attention to rust some of them bridges we rode over like to scared me out of my overalls. Rust looked like fall leaves on some of that steel, and a fellow from the road gang told me he could jam a jackbar right throught he steel on some bridges.
Then I came up North for a while, and it was just as bad there if not worse. Then it came on Huntley Brinkley about acid rain coming from out west, they said the acid got up into the clouds from allthe coalburning generators making electric for california and Los Vegas, and the rain that fell along the Eastern Seaboard was like vinegar and made steel rust faster. When the fireman job went belly up in a new contract I was out of work for a while so I went driving truck, and onto my third wife, and didn't think about rust too much, well at least not when I was home. When you're driving along you have time to think, but you also gotta be on the lookout.
One day I'm sitting in the choke & puke over by Albany and a bunch of fellows were cleaning the hood and equipment back in the kitchen. They had quite a setup, truck sat out back, it was a stepvan like a bread truck with achimney out the top and a hose out the back door. The hose was steam, and they used that to soften up the caked on grease in the kitchen so they could scrape it, and then paint some kind of chemical gloop, then steam it again. When they finished them hoods were all clean and almost as shiney as when they were brand new. I didn't think on it too much at the time.
Bout a month or three later I'm back at the house with wife number three, and she's telling me how her mother's brother just bought a new pickup and he don't want it rusting out in a year like they all do. Well right there I said he oughta move to Arizona cause nothing rusts there, but the paint does come off if you park in a sandstorm. No sale on the Arizona thing, has to stay where he's working as a sawmill mechanic cause the only trade he knows is sawmill. Well I forget how the subject changed, but it did and a few days later I'm loaded and down the road I'm going. I was hauling drywall then, and let me tell you taht stuff makes a driver earn his money in hilly country, felt like I was rowing that truck with the shifter I did. That's when it hit me, just as I was dropping speed coming up out of a valley.
That dang resturant hood grease would be just perfect to keep rust from finding metal, after all they had to fight it loose fromthe hoods and that metal wall covering. I made myself a mental note, and soon as I stopped to grab a bowl of chili I called home to get that fellow's number so I could tell him about kitchen grease. First thing he up and tells me is how I'm insane, and he's telling me on my dang dime in the payphone. It was way back before the celular thing was invented. Fine, I'm nuts, thanks for yor time, and back in the truck I am.
I get back home a couple months later and danged if he didn't give the idea a try. He used brand new Wesson thogh, and it didn't hang on more than a month when the fall rain came. Then he got to thinking, and stopped by the Greek place in town and got a few gallons of their used fryer graese, and it was a lot stickier. Of course he did a little experimenting on the farm wagon and manure spreader before putting it onthe brand new truck. Then he got the idea he should mix some roof coating from Agway in with the oil and heat it up a little and then spray it on the truck soit would spread better and hang on better too. That worked out pretty dang well till spring and sumemr came along. He had the only manure spreaderin the county that smelled like fishfry. The stuff he sprayed onthe truck stayed stuck for 4 years till the wife divorced me for never being home and for all I know might still be on the truck.
As I recall he said he mixed it about half and half oil and Agway roof coating. If I ever get a new truck I'm going to try it myself.
