Benton Courier - SHEARON: Rule one: Have a coat hanger

I miss wire coat hangers. In my continuing attempts to hook up a radio antenna to my new-to-me 1987 pickup, I got some advice from a guy who used to install radios for a living.
I had been stymied for weeks because I couldn’t figure out how to get the antenna cable from the outside of the cab to the inside of the cab.
My friend, Jamie Hoofman, looked under the hood and showed me two places where the cable could pass through the firewall. The most likely spot involved cutting a hole in a rubber grommet and snaking the wire through there.
On a recent sunny day off, I armed myself with tools and my Swiss Army knife and decided to get the job done.
I opened the hood, cut a slit in the grommet and fed the cable through. It went in with no problem.
The problem was, it went in up behind the air conditioning ducts and I couldn’t get to it.
I tried coaxing the wire a bit, but with no luck. I went into the house to get a wire coat hanger, figuring I could tape it to the cable and maneuver it down below the ducts.
Turns out that the dozens of wire coat hangers we had went to a local thrift shop inside some donated clothes. Darn.
I looked at the second possible location and determined that it would have the same drawback of having the cable come out behind the duct work, plus the cable on my bargain-basement antenna wasn’t long enough to route it that way.
I had dismissed a suggestion weeks earlier from an on-line owners group that I route the cable through the grommet on the door facing. There was a wire running through it and the grommet was too snug around the wire to fit another cable.
Then Jamie’s words came to me, and I realized that if I cut a hole in the grommet next to the cable, there would be plenty of room.
I ended up just pulling the grommet out and pushing it to one side while I worked to give me more room.
The cable snaked right in — and disappeared behind the air conditioning fan.
For the umpteenth time, I wished I had a wire coat hanger.
I considered the situation. I knew the cable was behind the fan, mere inches from where I could reach it.
Then I noticed the fan was held on by only three screws. I got the fan out in short order and could see daylight coming from the outside of the truck through the door facing. I could also see the cable, but couldn’t reach it.
I again looked for a coat hanger. No luck.
As these things go — with hundreds of dollars worth of tools at my disposal and all the wisdom of the Internet — a long, pliable stick from my yard ended up being the solution. I poked it from the inside out, tied a string to the end of it and pulled the end of the string through to the outside. I tied the string to the cable, pulled it back inside. After a bad couple of moments when it got stuck, I gave it a sharp pull and the cable snapped down to where I could get it.
I pushed it into the back of the radio, found a country music station, and I’ve been riding in style ever since.
I think I’ll ride over to the bargain store and see if they have any wire coat hangers. I need one for my toolbox.

Robert Shearon is news editor of the Courier. His column appears periodically.
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