[fundytides]

My first experience with a pit was when I got my first car in the late 50's and went to our local country garage for service work and oil changes. The pit was dark and greasy with a slippery set of wooden stairs at one end. One of the hired mechanics lived upstairs over the office and his 2-3 yr old son often escaped from his mother to come downstairs. If Daddy was in the pit, the kid would run over, sit on his rear and slide down the stairs. Mother was not pleased! This pit also was used for alignments and had 2 recesses for the front wheels to drop into to position the car for alignment. When the pit was used for other purposes the recesses were filled with short pieces of greasy boards. One day I drove my 49 Meteor (CAN. Ford) in for a lube job and stopped the car just as the front wheels were on the boards. The front end slid sideways and the left side went into the pit. After I climbed across the seat and got out the passengers door, the garage owner called a guy up the road that operated a wrecker and he came and lifted the car out. No harm, no foul! My next experience with a pit was in the early sixties when I went to work for Ford dealership. They had a frame alignment pit and did a lot of work on large transport trucks. One day the mechanic, using a torch to work on a large truck, started a fire in the pit. Unfortunately the fire was between him and the only pit exit. Fe yelled "Fire" and I grabbed the nearest fire extinguisher and was luckily able to extinguish the fire. The only hiccup was that one other other mechanics had hung the cord for a trouble light around the extinguisher and when I grabbed the extinguisher and ran there was lots of sparks and a blown breaker. New rule in the shop: don't hang things on fire extinguishers. After that I was never a fan of pits. I think they are a death-trap.