Day 58--afternoon

Sarah was lamenting the fact that she has nothing to do and no money.  We were in the middle of filling out a job application for her to work at Kroger, when our pastor called, asking if Noah wanted to make some money.  He said his son works at a car dealership in Pekin, and they sold a car with some "detailing" on it that had to be removed by 7:00.  Noah was working with Brad, but I thought maybe Sarah could start it and then Noah could meet her there when he could.  I thought I'd drive her over there and check out the job, maybe stay with her until Noah arrived.  I texted Noah and asked if  he could get off early and come to Pekin.  On the way there, Sarah and I were talking about  what "detailing" is, and I said, "It's probably a pinstripe or something that will have to be peeled off."  We were picturing a little sports car or something like that. Seemed like a gift from God, since we had just been talking about finding a job for her.  When we arrived, the pastor's son took us to this monstrosity:

Even the roof was covered, not only with "detailing" but also dirt and bird poop, and there was no way to remove the decal but to climb up there and sit on it.  The pastor's son told us that an auto body had agreed  to strip it for $200, but they had returned it that morning, saying they couldn't do it. We were given very little instruction and a pathetic little plastic scraper tool:

Obviously, I wasn't going to leave Sarah in that overwhelming, seemingly impossible situation, so I climbed on the hood, and she took up a position on the driver's side, and we started picking.  The tool was useless, so we just scratched and picked with our fingers.  Unfortunately, I had just clipped my nails the day before.  It was loud and stinky in the shop.  Noah called after we'd been picking for an hour and our fingers were starting to cramp.  He said he couldn't leave early.  I yelled the bad news over to Sarah, but then added, "We can do it!  We don't need no MAN!"  I saw the employee doing maintenance on the car next to us smirk.

We'd managed to scratch off about 2 square inches, and I was secretly feeling hopeless.  Sarah said quietly, "Do we get paid even if we can't finish, or will they pay us something for making progress?"  I said, "I don't know.  Just keep working."  I prayed for help and ideas about how to get it done.  After we'd been working for at least an hour and half, the pastor's son came to check on us.  He asked how it was going.  Sarah said eagerly, "We're making PROGRESS!"   He said, "Do you want to use the heat gun?  One of our detailers was working on it earlier, and that seemed to work."  I resisted the impulse to slap him in the face and said, "Yes, please, we would like to use the heat gun."   I had no idea what a heat gun was, but if it worked, I wanted it.  I also asked if he had any Goo Gone, and he produced a bottle of some kind of adhesive remover that produced toxic fumes.

The heat gun was a game changer.  It took us at least another hour to figure out a process of melting the plastic decal with the gun and then using the adhesive remover to scrape the glue underneath with an ice scraper we found in the shop.  It was still pretty tedious, and the results weren't pretty, but at least we were actually making visible progress.  After another hour or so of that, I was heating a spot on the passenger side with the gun in my right hand and absently started picking at an edge with my left hand.  It started peeling rather easily.  I dropped the gun, grabbed the little part I'd started peeling with both hands, and gently eased it off in a big strip.  I was so excited I squealed like a little girl.  Finally, after many hours of trial and error, we had hit upon a process that really worked.  It was a delicate balance of applying just the right amount of heat in the right area, scratching up a little piece to pull (we quickly started referring to those as "leads") and then pulling slowly until it broke. Over and over and over again.

Our fingers were still cramped and now also raw from pulling the sticky strips, and burned from the heat gun. My back was sore from being hunched over on the roof.  I hadn't eaten anything all day and had to pee, but had no idea where a bathroom was and didn't want to take time to find it, because now we were finally making serious progress and starting to have hope.  Sarah had worked for hours in these conditions without complaining much, and we had some much-needed bonding moments, like coming up with the name of our business (Heifer Auto Body) and the time I said, "Why didn't he offer us the heat gun from the beginning?  I wanted to slap the beard right off his face!  Can you just imagine watching his beard fly off and float right over the McDonald's roof?" and the term "shrinking a lead" became a part of our vocabulary.  She would work hard to scratch up a lead, and then if I got the heat gun too close to it, it would shrivel up like a shrinky-dink and glue itself back down, and Sarah would yell, "Don't shrink my lead!"

She learned important lessons about working hard, being resourceful, persevering, and following through.  While we were scratching and heating and peeling, we were talking about her working at Kroger.  She said, "I have an advantage because you made me go grocery shopping with you all the time, so I know where stuff is.  All my classmates' moms did the grocery shopping while they were in school."  I said, "Someday you'll appreciate the education I gave you."  She surprised me by saying, "I already do.  I was bored in geometry class, because you had already taught me how to do all that."

Around 4:00, Mike called and asked if we wanted him to stop by on his way home from work.  I said YES!  The guy working on the car next to us left, and the boss told us we could change the radio station to whatever we wanted.  I turned it to a Christian station.  Mike arrived and helped with the final heating and peeling, and we were finished by 6:30.  The pastor's son bought us a pizza and thanked us profusely and was impressed with our work.  I told him, "Tell your auto body shop that a middle-aged woman and a teenage girl did what they couldn't do."  He said, "Oh, I definitely will!  And if I have more work like this in the future, I'll call you."

We swept up and I went to turn the radio back to the station the other guy had it on, but it wouldn't change back.  I messed with it a long time and just couldn't get it.  The pastor's son said not to worry about it, so I just left it where it was and said, "Maybe the guy will become a Christian from listening to it."  The pastor's son agreed and said to pray for the guy and I did.

We got home from a strange afternoon and were greeted by a huge cardboard Elvis that our neighbor had brought over for me to use in my imaginary travels.  So I took a shower and washed off all the adhesive remover, glue, bits of decal, bird poop, and general filth, so I'd be ready to visit the King of Rock at Graceland.