I’m 76 years old and I’ve only traded one car and sold one truck, for next to nothing.
When my wife, Donna, and I get done with a car it goes to the junk yard or, in rare cases, when there’s a little bit of life left, to charity. The fact is, I don’t want anybody in my yard who would interested in buying one of my cars.
Donna and I have owned a lot of used cars, including two state surplus cars we bought at auction, drove more than 100,000 miles each, and then gave one of them away and junked the other one.
Donna didn’t like those cars, they were just too vanilla, and she got one of our sons, Mark, to gussy up one of them, got him to saw a hole in the top and installed a sunroof he bought at a junkyard.
When I got out of college in 1966 we drove the car Donna’s Dad gave her when she was in high school, a 1949 Chevrolet with a hole in the floorboard of the back seat. That was back in the day before seat belts and Donna would tell our boys, “Sit up straight and don’t wiggle or you’re going to fall though the floorboard.” Or words to that effect.
After we got rid of that car I bought a use-to-be-blue Chevrolet Corvair from Brother Dave. Older folks may remember that that’s the car made famous in Ralph Nader’s book, “Unsafe At Any Speed.”
It was a death trap, according to Nader.
The best thing about that Corvair was that it started when you turned the key. The top was caved in a little and rusting — it had been rolled. The heater didn’t work. Or the air conditioner. The passenger side door wouldn’t open. The seats were ripped open and cotton was coming out.
I drove it back and forth to work at The Charlotte News, and when I had to go out on assignment.
One day I met Charlotte City Councilman Fred Alexander to show him a problem I was going to write about, a problem I hoped he would try to fix. We went in my car.
Fred had to get in on the driver’s side, of course, and when he slid across to the passenger side he got cotton all over his suit. It was a hot day and, like I said, there was no air. We both rode with our windows down. When we were finished I asked him, “What do you think of my car, Fred. I paid a dollar for it.”
Fred looked at it, thought for a moment, and said, “It’s worth a dollar.”
Coming Monday: The Rule Maker