Recently, my son or daughter came home from their publicly-funded elementary school. In their little hand was a note from their teacher. “Your kid can’t stop talking about pushrods,” it read. “Parents need to teach their children that the only true engine layout is dual overhead camshaft.” I was aghast, and so were the other members of my political pressure group.
It was decided that at the next PTA meeting, we would make an example of this teacher and their ludicrous progressive agenda. Dressed in my best NAPA promotional t-shirt and hat, I stood proudly up from the crowd like some kind of Norman Rockwell shit, and said the immortal words passed down to me by past generations of brave white men: “this is more of a comment than a question.”
For the next 35 seconds, until the school board’s skinny yet oddly strong security guards overwhelmed me, I was able to hold court on my beliefs. Pumping losses aren’t the only measurement of powertrain efficiency that matters, I pleaded. Teachers can’t take sides like this: there are plenty of small-displacement pushrod engines that are beloved by their owners. If anything, they should be teaching the controversy.
As I was led out of the auditorium by the goon squad, I looked back into the crowd. The other members of Parents Against Timing Chain Tensioners sat there in the pile, refusing to make eye contact with me. Had I just been a sacrificial pawn, a radical who had simply gone “too far” in their quest to gain greater political favour with the establishment? I would find out soon enough just how far they were willing to go.
Later that night, the teacher in question had been murdered. Red touch-up spraypaint graffiti, in the exact shade of my 1996 Firebird, had read “ADVANCE IGNITION TIMING, NOT SOCIETY.” The investigating detectives found a handgun, the handle smeared with waterpump sealant, in the tank of my bathroom toilet. Worst of all: my enemies had planted, underneath my very mattress, a crusty exploded-parts diagram of a Ford 4.6L modular head.
It wasn’t until I reached jail that it all made sense to me. The breakroom TV, tuned to 24-hour cable news, aired endlessly a story on the head of GM Powertrain providing the school board with free textbooks as way of apology for “my” actions. Only a company with the resources of General Motors could invent both a variable-opening in-block cam with a huge base circle and a crime so heinous.
