Broadsword Calling Danny Boy: on Alistair MacLean. Louis Shalako.

"Broadsword calling Danny Boy."

Louis Shalako

 

On Alistair MacLean.

I was just watching the 1979 film of Alistair MacLean’s Bear Island.

It has been said that the quality of his work was uneven. You could say that about any writer, if one compares the first thing they ever wrote against the last thing they ever wrote, along with some of the really great stuff when they were at their peak. Of course their work was variable, and so is mine and so is yours.

Author John Creasy wrote something like six hundred books, and there are a few in there, which I have read, where one wonders how it actually got published in the first place. Truth was, he was grinding them out relentlessly, at the dining room table, and trying to feed a family, when the going rate for a novel might have been a measly twenty-five pounds.

(How in the hell do you even do that? - ed.)

There is a big difference between six hundred books and twenty or thirty, that difference is the luxury of time.

I wanted to talk about Alistair MacLean due to the number of films that were adapted from his works.

First, a little background.

“In 1941, at the age of 19, MacLean was called up to fight in the Second World War with the Royal Navy, serving with the ranks of ordinary seaman, able seaman, and leading torpedo operator. He was first assigned to PS Bournemouth Queen, a converted excursion ship fitted for antiaircraft guns, on duty off the coasts of England and Scotland. Beginning in 1943, he served on HMS Royalist, a Dido-class light cruiser. There, he saw action in 1943 in the Atlantic theatre, on two Arctic convoys and escorting aircraft carrier groups in operations against Tirpitz, and other targets off the Norwegian coast. He took part in Convoy PQ 17 on Royalist. In 1944, Royalist and he served in the Mediterranean theatre, as part of the invasion of southern France and in helping to sink blockade runners off Crete and bombard Milos in the Aegean.” (Wiki)

Where Eagles Dare consistently ranks among the top five war adventure films of all times, and that’s pretty good company to be keeping for any writer. The Guns of Navarone is an acknowledged classic, one I have viewed many times. Force 10 from Navarone, another classic film.

Alistair at about twenty.

In terms of comparisons, River of Death is quite terrible, at least in the film version. And I have read the book, in fact I used to check for new titles at our local mall book shop, way back in the days when we had time, money, and plenty of hair on the old noggin…a leather jacket and a seventeen-hair mustache, if you really want to know.

Fear is the Key, this film has one of the best car chase scenes ever. What might have been described in the book is fully brought to life in this one. MacLean loved sending things over cliffs, for example vehicles in Where Eagles Dare and Guns of Navarone, as well as Bear Island. There are probably others, and this is one reason why they’re called action-adventure stories. Oh, yeah. In Breakheart Pass, a train goes over a cliff.

He wasn't exactly messing around, when it came time for things to go off of cliffs.

H.M.S. Ulysses, his first novel, was based on his wartime experience in the Royal Navy.

This accounts for some of the naval themes, arctic themes, for example Night without End. There are lots of ships in his novels, Golden Rendezvous for example.

The list of actors that have appeared in the films is impressive. Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood, Donald Sutherland, Vanessa Redgrave, Harrison Ford, Robert Shaw, Rock Hudson, Charles Bronson, Christopher Lee, Patrick McGoohan, Carl Weathers, Lloyd Bridges, Anthony Hopkins, Jack Hawkins, Robert Morley, Edward Fox, Franco Nero, the list, ladies and gentlemen, goes on and on and on. Barry Newman, Ben Kingsley, John Vernon. Richard Harris and Anne Turkel, Burgess Meredith and David Janssen, John Carradine.

Robert Vaughn and Donald Pleasance and Michael Dudikoff in River of Death, just to name a few more. And I know I’ve left a few out—I had to, there’s just too many films and too many names.

Gregory Peck, David Niven, Richard Widmark, Ed Lauter, Ben Johnson, Charles Durning, Richard Crenna. Gia Scala and Irene Papas. As I said, this is a very long list.

Throw in a hundred more character actors, whose faces you might recognize, and whose names may be vaguely familiar, and you start to get the idea of just how successful Alistair MacLean actually was. Patrick Wymark and Michael Hordern, in Where Eagles Dare, for example, these actors each have very long lists of credits, starring and supporting roles, in film and theatre. Barbara Bach and Michael Byrne in Force 10 from Navarone is (or are), just one more example, then there were Mary Ure and Ingrid Pitt. Jill Ireland.

These are just a few of the ‘vapid females’ (essentially, Bond Girls), in what are called stories ‘of good Englishmen and bad Germans’. Which would appear to be an entire genre in itself, at least when a good writer gets hold of it.

It’s different for everybody of course, but when I read these books and saw the films for the first time, I was a young man, impressionable, an inveterate reader above all else. I soaked it all up like a sponge.

These are the stories that make a young man’s fancy turn towards writing a few stories of his own someday…

The books that kind of stick to your ribs, like soul food for the adventurous home-boy.

When I fantasize about my own humble bookshelves, which I do from time to time, (if only we had money!), this would be one box set I might be willing to pay money for—just for the purposes of study, scholarship, and maybe even stealing a few ideas here and there as a writer myself. Maybe even just learning a little something at the knee of a master. Or maybe it’s just some kind of an escape.

It always was, an escape.

There is nothing wrong with a little escapism, at the time we probably needed it, and there are times when we still do.

In which case, we will always have someplace to go.

I have written a critique of Where Eagles Dare, and you can read it at the link below. I describe it as ‘a series of plot holes flying in close formation’, and yet I still enjoy the film, just as much as I did the book, such a very long time ago.

MacLean figured out how to make it work for him, and perhaps that is the real lesson here. I have no idea of who the reader is, I have no idea if the lesson is relevant to you, although plenty of folks write, and plenty more dream about it just as I did. I can only hope you enjoyed reading this story.

No, ladies and gentlemen, it turns out the lesson was for me.

And why not.

I’ve always needed plenty of stimulation.

END

Plenty of stimulation.

Alistair MacLean. (Wiki)

When Eight Bells Toll.

The Golden Rendezvous.

Fear is the Key.

Night Without End.

Breakheart Pass.

Where Eagles Dare: A Series of Plot Holes Flying in Close Formation.

Why I Love Louis L’Amour.

On Agatha Christie.

Louis Shalako has books and stories, ebooks and audiobooks, available from Google Play.

 

Thank you for reading. The blog is acting rather wonky today, and trying to get the text all in the same shade of black has defeated me.

#Louis

 

 

 

 

 

Why I Love Louis L'Amour. Louis Shalako.

He loved the stories.

Louis Shalako

Why I Love Louis L’Amour.

 

I love Louis L’Amour books and stories. I like the highly-romanticized version of the American West, which is only half myth. Some of it might even be real. And a lot of the rest is bullshit—

We’ll talk about that some other time.

I suppose it’s the action, the adventure, the escape into a world where the moral questions are easy enough.

It’s good versus evil, no mistaking that.

One must assume the characters are engaging, the women beautiful, the villains are clearly the villains. The landscapes in the background speak for themselves.

Louis L’Amour is one of the few authors that can regularly bring a tear to my eye. This is when the male character arrives in town, immediately goes for the most beautiful girl in town, and often noting that he’s going to have to buy a cow—for the milk, right, like when they marry, settle down, and have lots and lots of children. That’s pure romance, and even men like a little romance once in a while.

This is the character with a bag of peach pits and cherry pits and apple seeds to plant when he gets his own spread…a hard worker, someone with a dream, a story to tell, and not afraid of a fight.

Coming from an interesting background, not without its hardships, L’Amour had one hell of a resume.

From Wikipedia:

“Louis Dearborn LaMoore was born in Jamestown, North Dakota, on March 22, 1908, the seventh child of Emily Dearborn and veterinarian, local politician, and farm equipment broker Louis Charles LaMoore (who had changed the French spelling of the name L'Amour). His mother had Irish ancestry, while his father was of French-Canadian descent. His father had arrived in Dakota Territory in 1882. Although the area around Jamestown was mostly farm land, cowboys and livestock often traveled through Jamestown on their way to or from ranches in Montana and the markets to the east. Louis played Cowboys and Indians in the family barn, which served as his father's veterinary hospital, and spent much of his free time at the local library, the Alfred E. Dickey Free Library, particularly reading the works of 19th-century British historical boys' author G. A. Henty. L'Amour once said, (Henty's works) enabled me to go into school with a great deal of knowledge that even my teachers didn't have about wars and politics.

After a series of bank failures devastated the economy of the upper Midwest, Dr. LaMoore and Emily took to the road. Removing Louis and his adopted brother John from school, they headed south in the winter of 1923. Over the next seven or eight years, they skinned cattle in west Texas, baled hay in the Pecos Valley of New Mexico, worked in the mines of Arizona, California and Nevada, and in the sawmills and lumber camps of the Pacific Northwest. It was in colorful places like these that Louis met a wide variety of people, upon whom he later modeled the characters in his novels, many of them actual Old West personalities who had survived into the 1920s and 1930s.

Making his way as a mine assessment worker, professional boxer, and merchant seaman, Louis traveled the country and the world, sometimes with his family, sometimes not. He visited all of the western states plus England, Japan, China, Borneo, the Dutch East Indies, Arabia, Egypt, and Panama, finally moving with his parents to Choctaw, Oklahoma in the early 1930s. There, he changed his name to the original French spelling L'Amour and settled down to try to make something of himself as a writer.”

Something has been said about the Social Darwinism of some of his later books. It’s not unlikely he would be a conservative, a Republican. It went with the terrain. These were hardy, independent, self-reliant people who had overcome all odds, (those who didn’t die young), which is a recurrent theme of his stories after all. The fact that they’re not preachy or beat the reader over the head with it, is what helps to make them readable in the first place. I doubt if he had much sympathy for the truly criminal or the irresponsible or the just plain no-accounts.

Louis was not a lazy man and neither am I.

One of his more popular titles is the book and film entitled Shalako.

In a kind of tribute to a writer of what was, essentially, pulp, my name is Louis Shalako. If a name has any power, and I believe that it does, this is a great name and a wonderful homage to Louis L’Amour. Louis is of course French, and the Zuni Shalako is a celebration of the winter solstice, a time of rebirth, renewal, and consequently, great magic.

It is also a tribute to myself.

It’s very symbolic, but in a sense, I have remade myself. I wanted to make a few changes and so I did. All I ever really wanted to do, was to write pulp—genre fiction, ladies and gentlemen. I doubt if L’Amour set out to sell 200 million copies, that’s a ludicrous proposition. What he said, was that he would ‘try to make something of himself as a writer’. You have to admit, the gentleman was very successful. And imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

It’s interesting that his father Anglicized the name but Louis changed it back.

L’Amour means love in French. This is pure deduction, but this is why the man changed it back. Louis loved the world he saw around him, the people, the places, and the times he lived in. He love the land and its history. It was his own form of tribute, far more so than LaMoore, if we think about it.

In that sense, he is a kind of inspiration to us all.

As a very wise man once said, love your customer.

And if you don't love something, you're going to hate everything, and that is no way to be, which is just plain miserable.

***

A bizarre anecdote. My uncle Ed ordered a sign to go out in front of the family business. When the sign arrived, it read E.S. Ambrose, Monuments. Authorized dealer for Rock of Ages. (A brand-name of the time, from a big quarry up in Quebec. He sold tombstones.) The correct spelling was Ambroise. About as French as you can get, right. But Sarnia was an English speaking town in Ontario. Ed being Ed, instead of boxing it up and sending it back, (at his own expense no doubt), he decided to live with it, although he’d probably still have the correct name on his driver’s license and stuff like that.

I'll need three tombstones...

END

 

Louis L'Amour. (Wiki)

A Lesson For Us All. Zach Neal.

The Zuni Shalako.

John Wayne as Reactionary.

Shalako. The film.

Louis Shalako has books and stories on Amazon.

Thank you for reading.

On Wartime Housing. Louis Shalako.

730 square feet.

Louis Shalako

The new federal government of Canada is promoting home-building, and one aspect of the plan is pre-approved home designs.

There have been references to ‘war-time’ housing, which was built in large numbers and all across this country after WW II. Large numbers of service men and women were coming home from Europe and other theatres, and they needed two things. They needed housing, and they needed employment.

A large housing program served both needs, bearing in mind circumstances are different in the modern context. We have both a housing shortage, and a labour shortage. Funny thing is, there's no real shortage of money. Just look at the homes people are buying now, more importantly, look at the mega-homes that are being built.

By eliminating the basement, and putting the furnace, hot water tank, laundry tubs on the ground floor, you simply bump out the side of the kitchen and add a few more squares. You also save a big chunk of up-front money.

Young people could, in fact, afford a small starter home. The design, #50-13, seen above, stands at 730 sq. feet. My two-bedroom apartment is roughly equivalent. With pre-fabrication, the components relatively small, (for highway trucking), the longest elevation at 30', you could pump these out like so many hot rolls. You could sell these at $299,000.00, with the feds splitting the 10 % down payment, and a mortgage amortized over 25 years, at some rational rate. I’ll go three and a half percent compounded monthly.

All the interest has to do is to cover the costs of the program. Developers make their money by actually building the homes in a speedy and efficient manner. The faster you can build them, the better, and if you build it, they will come.

We have to start the conversation somewhere, after all.

All prospective owners would be subject to means testing. Essentially, are you poor enough to both need the program, but also, can you pay your own way insofar as you must—a very specific demographic group, largely consisting of what we might call ‘mature renters’, a group who might like to get out from under the stern eye of the landlord and maybe build a little wealth of their own, for, essentially, the exact same money.

The basic idea is that people could buy a house, on their own land, for $1,000.00 a month, of course on top of that would be municipal taxes, electricity, heat, water, and insurance and maintenance costs. The entire kit fits on a flatbed or inside a standard semi-trailer.

The kit might include all structural elements, and basic amenities like the furnace, hot water tank, bathtub, shower, fridge and stove, pipe for plumbing and rolls of wire and boxes of electrical components, bundles of shingles, stacks of drywall board, all of it packed into one or two long trailers. You can use the stock colours or upgrade at your own expense, however these are in no way ‘custom builds’. These buildings do not require marble floors and bronze countertops, and zirconium-encrusted platinum toilets a la the bourgeoisie.

We're building homes, not status symbols, or stroking the egos of the unrepentant hedonist.

Those people already have money, they already have their McMansions, if they have over-leveraged their credit portfolio, that is their problem and they can suffer the consequences of their own greed and ignorance, their lack of foresight. For all I care, let them rot or let them sell the his and hers Harleys to make next month's payment...but I digress.

Assuming services are on site to hook up to, the basic assembly is rather quick, finishing takes longer, and in some narratives, in the old 1 ½ story housing, the upstairs bedrooms might not have been finished, the basement, almost certainly not. Garages, privacy fences, decks and hot tubs can come later.

Actual plan from the era.

At any time, after the first five years, you could buy out the balance and own it free and clear. This allows for people to resell at a profit and pay off their debt to the Crown and the taxpayers. The initial covenant does not extend to the second buyer. They will pay something a little closer to a going rate.

After five years, the first owner has built up some minimal equity, been ‘forgiven’ the federal contribution to the down payment, and with a relatively stable housing market, the ‘going rate’ for a property of this nature probably has increased a nominal ten percent in value. Simply put, your new home value is at least, (and probably more than) $330,000.00. With payments, offset by interest, over five years, you probably have thirty grand, perhaps a little more of your own equity. If you sold right now, you have paid all monthly costs, but at least you get some if not all of your money back in terms of that $60,000.00 difference in home value.

(Thirty grand of your own and the increase in value combined. - ed.)

You ain’t going to get that in the rental market, are you—and now, perhaps, with a little in savings, with your personal circumstances now different, you might even go looking for something a little more up-market.

Okay, so the government and the taxpayers are not too interested in funding large-scale, tract housing with a bunch of ‘tiny homes’, eight by ten and with a hot-plate beside the door and a tiny chemical toilet in a box under the bed.

We are talking real homes, on perhaps a fairly narrow frontage, in order to maximize the impact of municipal services, including water, sewer, utilities like gas and power. I would suggest forty-five feet with no more than eighty or one hundred feet of depth. This allows for a one-car garage to be built at a later date, and a substantial yard with garden, play areas, etc. It’s a green space.

(The secondary or pass-on covenant, which is passed on to the next buyer, deals with issues like second dwellings, over-sized garages and other obnoxious uses. Human nature being what it is, this will have to be backed up by municipal zoning and ‘covenant’ enforcement bylaws. The financials are free market terms at this point. We would also like to see pure speculators kept out or penalized on subsequent sales. Call it 'capital gains' or something like that. Under the terms of this covenant, the owner must live in the dwelling. Buying one and then renting or leasing it out would be strictly prohibited.)

It is private property after five years. It is yours, free and clear, admittedly with a mortgage on it. In that sense, the right to private property and capitalistic concerns are acknowledged.

I don’t like concrete pads sitting right at grade level. I prefer a two-foot crawl space, this would be well insulated, but it also gives heating ducts and plumbing somewhere to go. It is not a living space and should not be treated as such.

What you want is a proper foundation below the frost line, a wooden deck with floor joists and the like. Construction is ‘stick-built’, but major components are done in a factory. With a floor plan of 30’ x 24’, that floor/deck is essentially three ‘panels’ of rectangular shape, each of which can fit on a semi-trailer. They’re all framed up, all you have to do is to drop them on the foundations and fasten them together. A note here. Some of the original designs were literally sitting on concrete blocks; which may, or may not have been set on footings below the frost line. However, in terms of the front wall or elevation, in terms of the factory-built model, the wall is all framed up, sheathed, insulated, electrical roughed in with coils of sufficient length sort of taped securely. Once the four walls are standing, trusses in place, plywood on the roof, windows and doors in, the wire can be pulled out, routed through the ceiling space to an electrical box in the utility area of the kitchen. Essentially, heat and plumbing are down and under, electrical goes up and over and back down, in my concept. A few bags of insulation for the ceilings, and voila! And it is time to move onto trimming and finishing out, perhaps carpet on plywood for the first few years, but it is a snug and viable home for those who qualify.

There is a new apartment building in town, and there are laundry facilities in each apartment. It’s a compact installation—each unit also has a separate meter for water and electricity, very much a trend in new apartment construction in this country. The rent is one thing, the monthly costs are another. In that sense, it is similar, and yet you own the end result.

To try and improve this design is to make it bigger, which seems fair enough. There would have to be a series of designs, all of them under $500,000.00, including a building lot and all service hookups. When you see the new builds in town here in Sarnia, Ontario, semi-detached and starting at $569,000.00, with a garage, a basement, a second floor, it shows what is possible using some imagination.

Another quick note, virtually none of these buildings are wheelchair or mobility accessible, which would require a single-floor design, with large doorways, ramps for access and much larger bathrooms, specially-designed kitchens for example.

Try putting one of these on its own lot and see what happens.

END

 

A Rational Plan forAffordable Housing.

Wartime Housing Report.

Approved Housing Designs for Ontario Region.

The Floor Plan of an Accessory Dwelling Unit.

What is an Accessible Home.

Here's one on a fair sized lot, $389,000.00

Louis Shalako has books and stories available from Amazon.

See his works onArtPal.

Thank you for reading.

 

 

 

On The Green Berets, and John Wayne as Reactionary. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako

Here’s a funny thing. John Wayne wasn’t acting. In the early days, he might have had to do some acting in order to become the role. Those were all westerns, and Mr. Wayne could ride a horse, he was from Texas. He enjoyed the outdoors, shooting, hunting and fishing for example. 

(If you ever see me on a horse, you can assume I am not only acting, but way out of my depth.)

It wasn’t a great leap of the imagination, when it came time for him to get in front of the camera. The man didn’t even have to change his shirt or pull on a set of cowboy boots. He was already dressed for the role, when he came walking in that front door. Once who John Wayne was, or became what he believed himself to be, once all of that had been defined, all he had to do was keep on keeping on. After that, all he ever did was to play himself.

Writers were tasked with writing a film, (or screenplay), and that much is true. It is also true that almost anyone might have been cast in some of the roles. The actual premise went a little something like this: what would John Wayne do, when confronted with a given situation. What would John Wayne do if he was a senior officer in the Green Berets. There is no acting here. The political and social commentary is all John Wayne, ladies and gentlemen.

A sort of cultural anachronism, the rah-rah patriotism, the Battle Hymn of the Republic kind of film. I reckon everyone in this film was a Republican, even David Janssen.

A film so bad, it's taken me three days to watch it and I actually like crummy old war movies. The Green Berets is a reactionary movie in the fullest sense. John Wayne was trying to project, or to correct a narrative, this at a time when there were student protests, journalists were investigating, that 24-hour news cycle was just coming on, with film literally flown home for the evening broadcasts. (It took about 48 hours to get a film back to the U.S., priority jet flight.) Congressional and Senate committees were inquiring into the conduct of the war. There was bad news all around from Vietnam. You can bet the pollsters were all over it, and politicians listen to the pollsters, don't they. Even the Viet Cong are Republicans in this film.

It's interesting to see Batjac Productions stock actors regurgitated all through the film. Most of them appeared in many a western produced by Batjac. I'm recognizing face after face. It strikes me that your politics had better be correct or you would never work with Mr. Wayne. He simply wouldn’t have you, no matter how suitable or how good you were in a role. That is, in a word, reactionary.

Over the years, many people have blamed micromanagement from the White House for the U.S. defeat. They’ve had fifty years to figure it out, and yet they still haven’t. Some have blamed Communist infiltration, paid demonstrators, (sound familiar?), professional agitators poisoning the minds of students. Some have blamed the news media for the loss of the war. The news media do not have the power to deploy battalions and institute military plans. Some have blamed General Westmoreland for fighting WW II tactics and strategies in unsuitable terrain and social conditions. Some have blamed Robert MacNamara’s focus on body counts, and some have blamed the corruption and incompetence of South Vietnamese political and military leadership. (Also, a capitalist leadership. But we'll try and ignore that. - ed.) It is also true that a strategic bombing offensive isn't very effective against mud, hills and villages of straw huts, and when the major city and port of the enemy are off limits. 

Very few acknowledge the fact that the war was unwinnable before the U.S. ever got involved. 

The Japanese found that out. The French found that out at Dien Bien Phu. The Chinese have found out, both before, and since, that time period. The lessons were there, they were simply ignored. The lessons are still being ignored.

Ho Chi Minh, a key figure in Vietnamese history, attended the 1919 Versailles Peace Conference in Paris, hoping to seek recognition and support for Vietnamese independence from France. He used the platform to deliver an eight-point petition demanding equal rights and autonomy for Indochina. While he hoped to meet with President Woodrow Wilson, he was ultimately unsuccessful and did not secure the support he sought. (AI overview)

One of the more obvious lessons here. A motivated and ideologically-pure entity will prevail over a decadent and hedonistic entity by virtue of discipline and energy.

Communism was scary shit to the America of the time, and that still holds true today, even though true communism has never been successful. The idea of Marxist-Leninist communism is essentially dead. In that sense, it is the word that holds power and not the reality. This is why so many Americans foam at the mouth at the word socialism.

More from our AI overview:

However, at the time of the Versailles Conference, Hồ Chí Minh was committed to a socialist program. While the conference was ongoing, Nguyễn Ái Quốc was already delivering speeches on the prospects of Bolshevism in Asia and was attempting to persuade French socialists to join Lenin's Communist International.

That is also one of the lessons, and it is also why when reactionaries talk about socialism, they also point to places like Venezuela, China, North Korea. Which may have communist or socialist overtones, but are anything but benevolent to the common people.

They are authoritarian dictatorships, extractive, exploitative, and anything but benign. They are not only corrupt, from the top down in the usual fashion, but also incompetent. They are, in fact, the antithesis of socialism.

***

Nietzsche believed that a man's belief about himself is not a fixed entity, but rather a product of his own creation and interpretation of his existence. He argued that individuals must "become who they are" by cultivating their unique virtues and facing the challenges of life head-on. This process involves self-discovery, self-reflection, and a constant striving for self-mastery. (AI overview)

In a sense, John Wayne was self-invented. Whether we agree with his political or social views or not, that was one hell of an achievement, ladies and gentlemen. I'm in the process of doing something very much like that myself.

It's crazy enough, it might just work.

Others have done it before.

END

The Green Berets. A John Wayne film and more.

John Wayne.

Batjac Productions. (Wiki)

Battle Hymn of the Republic, sung, ironically enough, by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Louis Shalako has books and stories on Google Play.

See his works on Fine Art America.

Thank you for reading.

 

 

 

Zen, and the Manly Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance. Louis Shalako.

 

Borrowed image, for the purposes of training and other scholarly purposes.

Louis Shalako

Zen, and the Manly Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance.

It really does something for the male psyche to take something apart and put it back together again. And it works better than it did before.

There is the challenge of manual dexterity, there is the psychological component. It is a mental challenge as much as anything, a test of character.

And I do want to ride that bike. I could live without creaks and groans from the bottom end, and the chain skipping, right about when I need full power to get across a busy street.

Okay, so I had already disassembled the hub of the front wheel of the Trek 3700, 2.5” oversize frame mountain bike, cleaned everything, greased it with wheel bearing lubricant, and reassembled it.

#men

I had the rear wheel of the mountain bike on the table, the shaft and the bearings and the gears removed. With a dab of grease on the end of a small screwdriver, I had set eight out of nine 3/16" ball bearings into the race when the ninth went a little too far, now it's stuck in the middle of the hollow part of the wheel hub. The grease acts as a kind of glue, which has its advantages and its disadvantages. I had a hell of a time getting that out. I gave it up for a while, sat in the living room, and let the dull roar from the lower back simmer down. I’ve done this job before, in fact I have changed a bent shaft after dropping off a curb at a relatively low speed.

The front wheel has shocks, the rear wheel does not.

I might have been a little rough with it.

The problem was no clearance for that last ball, and yet I have counted those little steel balls several times. So, I used the tip of the screwdriver and shoved the balls in their race a bit to the left and a bit to the right. Having finally recovered aforesaid ball, I managed to get that one in. Now it's time to flip the wheel and try the other side, which is easier because it's just like both sides of the front wheel—no inset, deep in a hollow of the gear-set, where I can't see a damned thing. Nine balls in there, nicely set in nice, fresh wheel bearing lubricant, to use a technical term. Carefully sliding the gears on their shaft in from the right side, the tip of the threaded axle shaft came out the left side without disturbing the embedded balls on that side. Now, all I had to do was to screw in the left side cone and the bearings at least are complete. Tomorrow, I will put that back on the bike and install the front and rear brake pads. And I am at peace.

***

So. The front brakes were good—maybe even a little too good. The rear brakes were shit, which means you are depending on those front brakes. Ergo, I swapped the front pads for the rear pads and vice versa. There are some little adjustment screws on the cables, and I could mess with them as well.

I'm toying with the idea of pulling the main crank and cleaning that out. That one will take a good-sized cold chisel and a hammer, as I don’t have a gear puller. A little WD-40 soaking overnight might help, otherwise we might just leave that one for another day.

***

The black plastic gears described in the text are upper left. Then there are the two plates that hold them together.

This is the derailleur of my Trek mountain bike. I have pulled (19), which is a black plastic gear, with two flanged washers, and a stainless steel insert. I sprayed them with WD-40 and began cleaning, in fact scraping with a small screwdriver. This minor assembly is held in position by a hex-drive, countersunk machine bolt. Number 17 will be essentially the same, bear in mind that the chain went behind 19, it is 'in front' of 17. As far as the scraping went, there were something like fourteen years of dirt and grease on those gears, or, for about as long as have I owned this bike; or ever since I got into this three-floor walk-up in the central city. At some point I will drag the bike down three flights and give it a go in the real world. In the meantime, it's an interesting project. Not so much mechanical aptitude, but psychological attitude. It's a mental challenge. I do a little bit every day, watch Youtube tutorials when necessary, and the job will get done. In that sense, the story took a few days to write. First I had to get the hands dirty and figure this shit out…

#zen

So, if you think about it, 17 comes out using the same countersunk machine bolt or screw.

The metal pressed part, 18, will actually rotate out of the way in order to pull the gear.

Okay, I've pulled gear 17 and will proceed to clean that up and put it back in.

#bicycles

It's the upper gear in the derailleur.

***

I had to take it apart and put it together at least three or four times, and yet there is really only one way to get the chain through the derailleur. I even mentioned in a previous paragraph, the chain goes 'behind' the lower black plastic gear, and 'in front' of the upper gear. (It's not like I didn't know that.) I had the bike upside down, and of course the thing is spring loaded, you've got the chain off the front sprockets, and it's in the retracted position. I'm half bent over and my glasses are hanging off the nose. I have the little gear in one hand, the machine screw in the other hand, along with the hex key, and I was using my extreme manual dexterity, all five fingers and very large hands, just to align the front and back parts of the assembly, all the while squeezing the gear in and not losing the inside washer for the tenth time. You have to do all of this while pulling outwards and extending the derailleur…a third hand is what you need, in other words. Now all you got to do is get the screw through the hole...

The author's machine

So, I did the front wheel one day, the rear wheel the next. I did the bottom gear on the derailleur one day, and the upper gear the next.

I reckon before taking that down and trying it out, we’ll go over it in terms of lubricating the chain, anywhere there is a rotating part, a bearing, a bushing, anything that pivots. It cannot help but to be better than it was before.

One thing at a time, right.

 

END

 

Louis has books and stories available from Google Play.

See his works on ArtPal.

Here he is on Bluesky.

 

How to Silence Common Bike Noises.

How to Grease Your Bearings.

 

Thank you for reading.