An Explosion Under the Car

I knew Jess Moon for 50 plus years. I met him when I was dating his daughter, Margaret, who I later married. Meeting a father whose daughter you are dating can be a daunting occurrence. Well, I met Jess and you just don’t meet Jess… you meet Jess AND Hazel. Those two were as one… Jess and Hazel… Hazel and Jess. This is the way I knew them for years and years. They made me feel comfortable and at ease. And over those years I began to collect stories about Jess and his infamous temper, and this is one of my favorites. It took a while to understand this temper. It was never directed toward the person, but toward himself. So I never really took it very seriously.

The story I would like to tell was when I was helping Jess work on a car. Because I didn’t know too much about fixing cars, I was hoping to learn from Jess. One day we had jacked up one of his cars to work on it… there was just enough room to crawl underneath… it was a real tight fit. We were lying side by side under the car while Jess was fixing something near the front of the car. My main job was just to hand him the tools that he needed and to hold the flashlight. Suddenly, a big blob of oil dropped on his forehead. Well, all hell broke loose. If you knew Jess, you knew that he didn’t like greasy or sticky things on his hands or anywhere for that matter. So this sent him off and he grabbed the hammer that was close by and started beating on the tire with a lot of accompanying profanity. At the same time, I was trying not to laugh and trying to get out from under the car (because something in you was worried about where the next blow might land). I finally squeezed out and was leaning on the car silently laughing my head off while Jess continued to beat the hell out of the tire. I went into the house with tears of laughter. A few minutes later I went back under the car and we continued to fix it with nothing said about what had happened.

Larry Brown