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When I was an older teen my buddies and I all had managed to "acquire" junker cars of various states of runnable condition. Bottom line, we spent a lot of time tinkering with our motors to keep them from stalling somewhere inconvenient. Like most teen males of the 1970s, much of our self image was around the fact that we had driver's licenses and our own set of wheels, however we managed to pay for them.
So, it was that the prior was the first thing that came to my mind as I got most of the way through this chapter, and I felt I understood what was going on. That was, until I saw Alpha's face at the top of page 162...