The Bra Strap Dilemma

 

THE BRA STRAP DILEMMA

As a young man back in those early days I pondered the Bra Stap Dilemma. It is very similar to dissimilar automobile parts. You are probably wondering right about now, what the heck is the similarity to such dissimilar things. Maybe an example will clear up the confusion.

My brother Gerald had a 1953 Mercury at one time. The radio on that old Mercury could pull in WSM Nashville Tennessee or the Louisiana Hayride. On a cloudless night, we could listen to radio stations in Texas. When he finally got rid of the Mercury, I wished we had kept the radio. Anyway , back to the example.

One day or maybe it was one night, I can’t rightly remember the starter quit working. We even  tried to stick a screwdriver between the leads of the solenoid and it was deader than a door nail or was that a doorknob. Anyway, we could not cruise around the countryside with a dead starter. Sos we parked it.

 

I got this brilliant idea; well come to find out it was not really brilliant, it just seemed to be at the time. There was an old 1950 Chevrolet that had died upon what we called the old road. I took some tools in a tow sack and walked up on the old road by the trash pile. I breaks out my tools, climb under the old, abandoned Chevy and commenced to get the starter off. After an hour, I climbed out from under the old Chevrolet with  dirty greasy starter.  All my knuckles were bloodied because starters don’t wat to be removed easily. The manufacture hides the bolts to where you have to be a double-jointed ventriloquist  to slide a wrench over and between the engine block to loosen the bolts. I had grease and dirt all over my clothes, but I wore a smile as I carried the starter down the road to Gerald’s parked Mercury.

Both Gerald and I were impressed with my ingenuity. Gerald clumb out from under the Mercury with bleeding knuckles and holding the dead starter. I handed him the Chevy starter, and he went under the Mercury once more. After about 10 minutes , I heard Gerald making strange noises including some guttural grunts and some loud by dams. Respecting delicate ears, I will not recount the actual words he muttered.

It seems that Chevrolet starters have a different mounting system for a starter than Ford designed for the Mercury. The mounting holes on the Chevy starter were about two inches off from the Mercury starter. We were pissed big time and swore to only buy Chryslers in the future.  A trip to the junkyard solved the problem and we were back on the road again listening to that fabulous Mercury radio.

Years later, I worked at a GMC dealership. Well GM makes Chevrolets and Cadillacs. One day a Cardillac owner came in to buy a starter. When I told him the list price for the starter, I thought he was going to pass out. He called his wife and told her to bring some more money down to the dealership. After he left with his starter, I opened the box on a Chevy starter and compared it to a Cardillac starter. They were identical except for the part numbers and the price. The Chevy starter was half the cost of the Cadillac starter. It brought back memories of the old 53 Merc.

Anyway, I got sidetracked a little. Back to the Bra Strap story.

The similarity to automobile parts is that different Bra manufacturers design the strap holders completely different. It seems that no two bra straps fasten the same way. Some have hooks, some have clasps some have hooks and clasps, and some have a hook up like a tie down strap where you have to thread one end over and under and then pull the slack to tighten the Bra. (so, I’ve heard). Anyway, the subject came up one day in our Future Farmers of America  (FFA) class, so the teacher suggested that we take a sheet of plywood and make a class project . Before too long we had at least a dozen bra straps mounted on the plywood. We examined the different hook ups on the Bra straps and practiced releasing the different configurations just in case someday some poor girl had passed out, and first aid technique required removing the bra strap to allow her to breath better.

Well, the plywood with the different bra straps stayed up for quite a while until the Home Ed teacher somehow became aware  and she and the principle came to our FFA class and demanded we take it down. I felt sorry for next year’s class. I guess they eventually learned the ropes by trial and error. But my classmates never reported any future difficulties with the delicate matter.

I later wrote a song to the tune of Are you Lonesome Tonight)

My song started with the following lyrics:

Are you lonesome tonight?

Does your bra fit too tight

I can fix that problem for you

And so on.

I had another Bra strap incident just recently.

We made a dump run  dump and decided to swing by the bank and  deposit one of Anita’s Business Account checks. The check was made out to “Bed of Roses Machine Quilting.” I wanted to deposit it into our joint checking account. I knew the bank would want to first have it deposited into her business account and then we could transfer the money to our checking account. My name was not on her business account so I told Anita that she would need her drivers license to show that the business account belonged to her. So, she took her drive’s license out of her purse and showed it to me. Since we were almost at the bank, I told her just to hold on to her license. We parked in the bank parking lot, and I told her we would both have to go into the bank. I then asked if she had her license handy. She looked down at her hand and said “Just a minute ago, I had it in my hand, but it is not there now. Well, we proceeded to search her purse, then we got out of the pickup and searched the floorboards and in between and under the seats. The driver’s license had literally disappeared within a period of 5 minutes. It was not in the pickup although we found a quarter, a dime and two pennies and an old gum wrapper.

I said , “Well, let’s try to deposit the check anyway and when we get you a new license, we can transfer the money into our checking account. Well, the band went ahead and deposited the check into the business account, but the teller had trouble transferring the money to the checking account. After a few calls to the main branch, the money was finally transferred into our checking account after about 35 minutes or so.

I told Anita the only thing I could think of with her driver’s license was that her window was partially down and maybe she had dropped it out the window because it dam sure was not in the pickup.  So, it was early in the day, DMV was within a mile. I drove there, stood in line for 21 minutes to be told that they did not handle driver’s license only motor vehicle registrations and titles. It seems driver’s license business was handled in the Sheriff’s office. So’s we goes to the Sheriff’s office. Everybody and their third cousins were in line. I finally got to the counter and the girl said that Anita would have to fill out a form to get her driver’s license replaced. She gave me the form. I helped Anita fill out the form. By that time , the line had gotten longer with more third cousins getting in line.   I told Anita that we would come back another day when all the illegals were not getting their driver’s license. We left with the form and went home.

When I got home, I needed a drink, so I poured a shot of 100 proof and tried to relax. I checked the fine print on the form for replacing a driver’s license and it required an identification card to turn in the form and get a replacement license. Anita’s driver’s license was her ID because she had earlier lost her purse with her military ID. I poured another drink and decided to deal with it later.

I was sipping my drink when Anita came to the table and showed me her driver’s license.  I sputtered and sputtered a little more and finally, I asked her: Where the hell did you find your license. Well, I swear this is the truth.

She pulled her bra strap aside and said she had felt something stuck. She found her driver’s license down in her bra by the boobies. I felt like a booby for not searching there; I just never imagined that it got from being in her hand into the booby territory and I poured another drink and just accepted it, didn’t even try to figure it out.