It was a verrrry long time ago…and it didn’t even happen in America —so I think I am safe in recanting this story.

I had been hired as a day laborer for a few days to tear out an old concrete driveway. Had to sledgehammer everything, and break the chunks down into manageable sizes; then wheelbarrow all the chunks to a dumpster, and deposit them. It was backbreaking work, but I needed the job and the $$. I was working with another, older guy.

At the conclusion of the job, and before I/we got paid, I asked the contractor for the job (who had come back to inspect our work & to collect tools) if he could give me a ride downtown, to which he agreed.

On the way downtown, he told me he wasn't going to pay me, because the other guy I had been working with told him that I wasn’t a very good worker, and that I had actually taken a break, etc.

I was incensed. I had worked very hard for the money, and was anticipating it.

When we arrived downtown, the guy parked the pickup truck we were riding in in a parking lot. He barely said goodbye; he was glad to see me go —as a teenager, I didn’t have the gumption to have put up much of an argument. He left the parking lot.

I hung around for a few minutes, until I was sure that he was gone.

I then opened the hood of the truck, and removed the coil wire (from the distributor to the ignition coil.) The truck could never ever ever ever ever ever start without that wire. I threw that wire so far away (and so well hidden) that it would never have been found.

Perhaps the guy came back…tried to start the truck…Ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh. Maybe he lifted the hood. Possibly he spotted the missing coil wire. Potentially he could have been smart enough to replace the missing coil wire with one of the spark plug wires, but he still would have been running on only 5 of 6 cylinders — not a very good running engine at all.

But I like to think that he had no idea what was wrong…and ended up paying for a tow to a car shop … and ended up paying for a new set of spark plug wires to be installed —about what he owed me for wages.

I guess I/we will never know. But I think he learned a lesson.