Cars & Beer
Three dreams were remembered. the brake pad dream preceded the other dream involving cars, and I think the beer dream followed both. I had a grasp of the second car dream and the beer dream upon awakening, but when I got out of bed the beer dream disappeared entirely, not to return until I was lying down again in the early evening, whence it reappeared spontaneously. The brake pad resurfaced soon after I got up.
Brake Pads
Begin: I was driving my car, a small imported sedan or convertible, and noticed the brakes were starting to make that distinctive grinding noise that used to inform you you were out of brake pad in the early days of disk brakes. I stopped and disassembled the calipers and found this to be true. One of the pads was worn down to the backing plate and another was close.
I went into a nearby foreign car parts store and asked for the price of
replacement pads. I was told $75 which I declared was outrageous. I went to
a similar store nearby and was told $85. I decided it was necessary to
re-assemble the brakes and drive very gently home, being unwilling to pay
those prices. The only alternative was a very long walk both ways. I do
not remember putting the thing back together or the trip home, but when
there I found my local general auto parts store had pads for $16. I also
wondered why I had disassembled the calipers. This is not generally
necessary to replace disk pads, although it was in the very early days
of such brakes. The friction material was bonded to square steel backing
plates, and I believe they could have been removed without such effort.
End.
In the Garage
Begin: I was in a large open garage-like structure. A young man, quite a bit younger than myself, was looking over the instructions to a soup-up conversion for his little sedan. It included conversion to an unusual automatic transmission from the original stick shift. A sort of constant speed affair. He was reading to his girlfriend that the shift lever would now select automatic, neutral, and some other functions instead of shifting gears. He was a little upset at this.
I spoke up and mentioned that all conversions of this sort did that these days, and that it worked well enough. I then went on to mention some of my experiences with cars in the days when they were so much simpler and had more character. I told of the Lotus 12 I had driven for a while and other such barely streetable vehicles that went exceedingly fast.
Leaving them, I was walking across this garage-like area headed for my office, when I noticed a woman leave a box on the floor. I saw it contained small bottles of chemicals and reached in to examine them in case I could use any of them. The first jar I picked up was the largest. It was unmarked but had a rubber lid stretched and banded over it, much as would allow a hypodermic needle to go through, but would prevent contamination or escape of the contents. Suspecting there might be bacterial contamination of such a thing, I dropped it back and washed my hands in a nearby sink.
Continuing on, I headed up a narrow stairwell to the offices on the upper
floor. A woman working in production control, shipping, or some other area
passed me on the way down, and paused to gripe bitterly about the situation,
the way the country was being run, and especially that the company had
given the inspection team from (Teledyne ?) a key to the big duplicating
machine in her area. Continuing up the stairs, I woke up.
End.
I do not know if there ever was a Lotus 12. I know the Lotus 11 was a "G Modified" race car with the engine in the front, and the Lotus 13 had the engine in the back. The 12 may have been some other kind of car, but I was definitely thinking of a "G Modified".
2023 Update: There are problems with the Lotus numbering because the Internet was not yet available to Google stuff like that. The Lotus 11 was definitely the "G Modified" two seater. The Lotus 12 was a single seat, open wheeled formula 1 or 2 car, definitely not streetable. The Lotus 13 never existed, though a few people called late model 11s "13".
Beer Tank
Begin: A company party was getting under way within a large industrial compound. The company was a manufacturer or user of medium to large chemical processing plumbing. In the area where the party was taking place there were racks of reaction vessels and other such gear as most people would associate with oil refineries. I remember some tanks with multiple outlets about 20 feet long and 5 feet in diameter painted yellow.
I was in charge of the beer, which was put up in a piece of plumbing similar to the ones in storage except for being much smaller and of brightly clean stainless steel, holding about 20 gallons.
I had to tend to bringing in dry ice and getting it set up in a vat of water to cool the beer container, but when I was ready for it, I found it had disappeared. I looked around through some of the nearby racks of equipment, but could not find it. I asked other people to help, but they didn't seem too concerned yet.
I finally wandered out into the parking lot, and spotted a camper wagon
that drew my attention. Peeking into it I found it held the beer container.
Wondering why they had not just driven away rather than return to the party,
I was planning how to make sure the thieves were arrested while I recovered
the tank. I think I was phoning the police and trying to figure how to
lure the vehicles owners without arousing their suspicion when I woke up.
End.