urban legends

We've all heard them:  stories of improbable deals, incredible finds, lucky strikes or big scores.  How often have we actually come close enough to one of them to actually be in a position to do something about it?  How about now?  Let me tell you the story…

I did a bad thing yesterday.  I went to a house in Newcastle and bought two Honda Shadows.  Yeah, I know, that’s ridiculous.  The very idea that a dyed-in-the-wool old Harley guy like me would actually go out and buy not one, but two Hondas at the same time is hard to fathom.  But it happened, and that’s another story for another time.  It’s what I found when I went to pick them up that is the stuff of legend.

See, there is this guy, we’ll call him Larry, because that’s his name.  Larry was renting a room from a friend of his named Hugh.  As things happen, Hugh died suddenly just last month.  I don’t know anything about the family situation, other than that Larry got a sudden eviction notice just last week that forced him to be gone by this weekend.  That’s what caused him to place the ad in Craigslist with the two Hondas at the improbably low price that resulted in me showing up at Hugh’s house yesterday morning.  After an intense dickering session that mostly consisted of me walking around in circles trying to convince myself I really wanted to do this, the deal was struck, and I began to load two motorcycles into the back of my pickup along with the usual pile of stuff that accumulates when you own a motorcycle.  As the project continued, I noticed more and more just what was in that double garage besides my two new bikes.

Hugh, it turns out, was a car guy.  When I looked up the address on Zillow and accessed the street view option from Google Earth, the street view of Hugh’s house, taken whenever, shows a top fuel dragster under a tarp in the driveway, so he was a real car guy.  By the time I showed up, the dragster was long gone, of course, but I saw why it had been relegated to storage in the driveway.

The first thing that leaped out at me was the two street rods.  Both appear to be fiberglass bodied ’32 Ford roadster types with the full fenders and running boards and an open hood showing the large V-8 engine and headers.  That was the red one, nearest the doorway.  The black one in the background was facing the other way, so I couldn't see if it had an engine under the hood.  The red rod was half covered in empty cardboard boxes, old blankets, and junk.  Sitting on the rear was a brand new fancy aluminum spacer for a large four barrel carb, along with a couple of gaskets, obviously brand new, just sittin’ there.  Down on the floor alongside was a brand new very large aluminum distributor for some big block engine, just sittin’ there.  A little ways from that was a new crankshaft wrapped in plastic, just sittin’ there on the floor.  Over on the bench I saw what appeared to be a complete rocker arm setup for a big block Ford, just kinda piled haphazardly on top of a bunch of stuff on the bench.

In between the back of the car and that workbench was a pile of what appeared to be brand new name brand hot rod components that was probably 12 feet long and about 8 feet wide and floor to ceiling high.  Most of it was in boxes, some with tantalizing hand-written labels like “Corvette fans”, others closed and packed.  On the wall opposite the pile was a typical car guy setup:  three rollaway toolboxes jammed full of every kind of mechanic’s tool you could imagine.  On the floor on the other side of the red rod was a new looking cherry picker engine hoist, just sittin’ there.  I saw at least one air compressor.  Everywhere I looked was more cool stuff, but I had to get out of there, so I left.

When I walk out into my own garage I see what happens when a man, over many years, has a hobby or an interest and spends time and money on that interest and accumulates the tools of the trade needed to work that hobby, and the spare parts that go along with it.  As an Ebay guy, I stand in a room like that one in Newcastle and look around, and all I see is inventory, bright flashing dollar signs popping out of boxes and dripping from the ceiling.  In the end, all of our toys become someone else’s inventory.  You go to the swap meet, and that’s what you’re looking at spread out all over those tables and on the floor:  a man’s life, reduced to inventory.  Hopefully, when we’re gone, and our inventory has been dissipated out into the community, we can only hope two things.  One is that some of those cool things that we thought highly enough of to collect and hold on to will wind up in the hands of someone who will actually put them to use as they were intended, if not just for the pleasure of owning them as well.  The other thing is that we will be remembered for more than just our possessions, for while our possessions do describe us, they take as much meaning from our ownership and use of them as we do from them, and when they are dispersed that meaning drops off and they become simple things again, a hammer, rather than my hammer or his hammer.  It is only in the memory of people that things become permanently connected to a person, like Eric Clapton’s guitar, or that very cool old National Steel banjo that is displayed behind glass at the first restaurant you come to on the way down into Naches on Highway 410 to Yakama.  That’s why tools I have inherited from my father are more valuable to me than tools I bought myself.

So here is the essence of this Urban Legend:  In a double car garage in a house in Newcastle at this very moment, a man’s life is about to become inventory for someone.  The difficulty lies in the fact that we don’t know who to ask.  The two tenants were on their way out the door, and did not have any contact information to whom could be placed an inquiry about all the stuff in the garage.  Hugh apparently lived alone, and they did not know of any immediate family in the area.

I’m not a car guy, so I wouldn’t know where to start on this pile, but I do get the strong feeling that this is indeed a legendary pile, that is about to change hands one way or the other, and I don’t have any way to find an opening, other than to park out front and wait for someone to show up.  Tomorrow would be a very good day to do just that, but I won’t be there.  I do, however, have one thing you will usually never hear as part of an Urban Legend.  I have the address of the house in Newcastle on my phone.  Obviously, I would not publish that kind of information, but if any of you car guys see this and get fired up by the idea, get in touch with me.  What would be really cool is to hear the rest of the story some day, about the guy who saw an opportunity dangling in front of him and went for it.  But mostly I just want to know what all was in that pile… :-{)}