Bucky pulled his smoke-belching, engine-rattling, broken windowed, rusted-out old hulk into Snooky’s Garage. Snooky wondered why he did that. Buy gas, sure. Wasn’t anything to fix on the car. Wasn’t anything could be fixed on the car. The best Snooky could do was to drive it off a cliff. Bucky could do that himself and think to get out before it went over.

“Mornin’, Bucky. What you need back here? I got some bald tires you can have. I have some used oil I’ll let you have. That’s about it”, Snooky told him.

“Nah, tires is fine. Don’t put oil in noways. No, there’s something wrong with this old car a mine”.

Snooky couldn’t think of a thing to say to that.

“So, Bucky, what’s the problem?”

“I was noticin’ that it was a bit quieter than usual. I think somethin’ changed. I ain’t been able to figure it. Thought you might take a listen”.

“Sure, Bucky, I can do that”, Snooky replied. What he was supposed to not hear was beyond him. In this old piece of junk you could hear everything. You could hear the lifters, the exhaust, the belts and everything else.

Snooky and Bucky stood listening to the car run. Snooky heard what he expected to hear. He told Bucky that.

“No, Snook, there’s somethin’ missin’ besides the engine. Listen again”.

Snooky listened as best he could and didn’t hear anything quiet. He thought it through and concluded that Bucky getting deaf was the problem. Snooky couldn’t do anything about that so-

“Say, Bucky, why don’t you just turn the radio up a bit. That way you won’t not hear whatever it is you aren’t hearing”, Snooky finally suggested.

“That’s it! The radio. It ain’t workin’. Dang! Snooky, I always said you was the best around. What I owe you?”

“Uh, you want me to put in a radio?”, Snooky asked.

“No, ‘course not. I ain’t put a dime into this car yet. Best car I ever had. Well, maybe you could give one a them tires you was talkin’ ‘bout”.