Missed Connections

Hey, You!  Yeah, you, the guy in the MGB GT cruising down Park Avenue about 11:30 this morning!  I wanted to talk to you.  I had a story for you.

You pulled a U-turn without warning into the curbside spot outside Panera Bread, and, by the time I took a left and tried to find a way around the block in that labyrinthine mess that is the Renton Landing, you had already bought a sandwich and left.

I wanted to tell you about my friend, who had accumulated over the years a 1976 MGB, along with the usual pile of parts, spares and stuff that accumulates around British sports cars.  Any old sports car, especially the British ones, brings with it a shared responsibility to keep it up and running like any old classic automobile.  The common problems with SU carburetors, electric overdrive transmissions, Lucas Prince of Darkness wiring systems and the overcomplicated way British engineers liked to do things also pushes the owners into groups of like-minded individuals commiserating and kvetching and sharing parts and know-how, which is why I figured if you didn’t want a look at this pile, you might know someone who would.

I wanted to tell you how I went out there last week and wandered around the back yard and in the shop, and gazed at the piles of bodies and fenders and wheels and tires, and how there was part of an old horse trailer out there, inside of which were drivelines and grilles and bumpers and seats and tops and door panels and this and that kind of related stuff.  How in the shop there was more interesting stuff, including some engines under the bench, and a stack of transmissions, with rear ends out in the yard.

I could have told you that most of the pile appeared to be MG stuff, but there was some Triumph goodies in there, too, and even some Chevrolet stuff in the pile, the surface of which was all I saw, the rest being buried under stuff.

I wanted to say that the car has a title, but has not been licensed since 1998, and somewhere along the line someone replaced the power train with a Nissan engine and a five-speed transmission, which probably would be considered an upgrade among all but the most diehard aficionados of the marque.

I could have told you that all she wants is for everything to go away, including the horse trailer itself and all the junk tires, and that a guy could probably get the whole pile including the car for a very nominal sum and a crew to come out and turn that part of the back yard back into something you can mow.

I was gonna tell you that I have pictures, if you were interested.

But none of that is going to happen.  You got away.  Now you’ll never know how close you came to a score.  Maybe you should be relieved.  Maybe not.  Maybe next time.  Drive careful in that old beauty.  There’s only so many of them left out there.  Next one I see, I’ve got a story for them.  :-{)}

Speed Traps

I went for a motorcycle ride on a Tuesday in October.  It was a beautiful fall day- bright sunshine, crisp clean air, leaves still on the trees and not the road; in short, a perfect riding day.  The two of us used the back roads as much as possible as we circumnavigated Mount Rainier in the widershins direction, counter-clockwise.  The only downers we encountered were police vehicles, lots of them, all doing the same thing: raising revenue in the name of traffic safety.

To understand how pervasive this practice has become, we must consider the implications of the speed traps, where they are set up and why and how they operate.  In order to protect the officers who take on the risk of traffic stops, it is necessary to factor in the weather, the location, and the likelihood that enough speeders will drive by that location to make economic sense to the police departments.

So, on that Tuesday, the weather was perfect for a speed trap.  The first location we stumbled on was just past Orting on the Orville road cutoff to Kapowsin and Electron, where a county Sheriff SUV was parked on a wide spot in the road headed back the way we came, just far enough around the bend that the oncoming speeders would not see the cop until it was too late, and the radar had them in its sights.  That’s rule number one for a successful speed trap: hide in plain sight.

Just past the cop the road widened out for quite a ways, leaving plenty of room on the side for them to pull over their victims safely, which illuminates rule number two:  have a convenient wide spot to pull them over.  That is why, even though we blew past the cop at approximately 10 over the posted 45mph zone, he ignored us, as did his backup who was waiting a little further along in a yard off the road to our right.  We were headed into a winding narrow stretch of the road with no shoulders to speak of, leaving the police rigs exposed to traffic if they pulled someone over.  Whew, missed the hook that time!

The old unwritten rule used to be: Six you’re fine, seven you’re mine, referring to the number of miles above the speed limit that they caught you doing.  I’ve recently read a post from a police officer online that said that the new rule is: twelve you’re fine, thirteen you’re mine, which explains most of California and large stretches of I-5 through Seattle.  I know from unfortunate experience that seven over on a photo-op ticketing camera is worth $125, where 15 over is more like $265 in this state, so that also helps explain the rules.  Follow the money…

There is also an interesting phenomenon apparent these days, in that entrepreneurial Law firms have adopted a new business model in reaction to the increasing prevalence of speeding tickets.  It goes like this, at least at Heidi Hunt’s law offices, which I have used:  If you get a radar speeding ticket, just send us your paperwork and $250 for the first instance, $200 for any subsequent tickets, and we will guarantee dismissal of your ticket.  If we do not win the case, we will pay your fine out of the money you sent us.  Furthermore, in most local courts, if you are represented by an attorney you are not required to show up in court for your own contested hearing, we’ll be there for you. 

The way it works out, the lawyers send in discovery requests for the officer, the maintenance records on the radar gun, the car, anything that might help the case, which also lets the jurisdiction know that there is a lawyer involved.  Typically, and I have not heard one single instance where it worked out otherwise, the prosecutors fail to respond to the discovery and the officer fails to show up at the hearing, so the attorney moves to suppress the evidence and the judge tosses the ticket.  The fact that this happens every time is further evidence that the police are being used to extract revenue on the false pretense of highway safety, that the fact that it would cost more to prosecute the offender than it would return in revenue is the deciding factor in the case.  That is what passes for justice these days.

So if you get a ticket, and send the money to the lawyers, you are almost guaranteed to get a call from a young attorney informing you that your case has been won.  You’re still out the same amount of money, more or less, but your driving record stays clean, and the City, County or State is denied the revenue.  The downside of this is that, in order to meet their budget assumptions for “other” revenue, they have to send the police out to issue even more tickets!  I mentioned this to the Renton police Captain in charge of traffic, and he made it clear that they were well aware of those law firms and how they work.

The second speed trap we encountered on the road around the Mountain was in beautiful downtown Greenwater.  We had pulled in to the Greenwater store for a water and candy bar break.  As I stood outside the store on the covered porch, I saw a new SUV pull up on the side of the road across from the parking lot.  The rig was completely unmarked, and even the lights were hidden.  The only clue that it was a WSP rig was the heavy duty push bar attached to the front bumper.

That particular stretch of road, if you haven’t been on it, is perfect for a speed trap.  Not only does it have plenty of parking space on both sides, but it is on Highway 410, where the speed limit is 55 mph all the way from Enumclaw through the Federation Forest, then drops to 35 as you come around the corner and into Greenwater itself.  Most people have drifted down to the low 50s by then, meaning they are doing at least 15 over, good money for little effort on the cops’ parts.  Then the road curves again on the way out and the speed limit goes back up to 55, meaning the pigeons are coming in fast from both directions.

Within seconds, the officer nailed his first victim, pulling a dangerous U-turn in the middle of the street to chase them down into the gas station parking lot.  While we watched, he wrote them up quickly, then immediately nabbed another one going the other direction, with another unsafe U-turn across two lanes of speeding vehicles.  We chose that moment to depart, while he was tied up, and got the hell out of town, with one eye out for confederates and the other on the speedometer.

Why, you might ask, would you not just ride the speed limit all the time, and not have to worry about speeding tickets?  We followed a line of cars doing just that out of Greenwater, about a dozen of them bunched up behind a single motorcycle who was scrupulously keeping at the limit, until they got so close behind him that he pulled over at a wide spot on the road and let everybody get by.  The speed naturally went right up to the usual real limit, which is about 10 over the posted one.  If you can’t keep up with traffic on a motorcycle you are risking your life, and forcing others to risk theirs as they desperately get around you any way they can.

And so to anyone who defends speeding tickets as a way to control traffic and reduce average speeds, I say, “Who do you think you’re fooling?  If that old saying - the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again when you already know how it is going to work out - applies to speeding tickets, how can you stand there with your bare face hanging out and try to pretend it’s not all about the money?”  If all you wanted was to slow people down, why not put up a big sign that says, “Speed Trap ahead, slow down!” and station an empty marked patrol car in the parking lot?  No money in that, eh?

Another fact that supports my contention that speeding tickets are about revenue generation is the number of private companies that have figured out a way to milk this public cow for all it’s worth.  Every school zone or intersection photo-op ticket machine that you see out there gets something like $3500 a month rent off the top, plus 20% of any excess revenue generated at each location.  For a school zone at $125 a pop, that means they have to write 28 tickets a month before the City sees a nickel, yet the City of Renton website claims that 11,990 tickets were written from 2008, when they started the program, until the end of the study, at one location alone!  Do the math.  That’s a cool $1.5 million.  Most of it went to American Traffic Solutions, Inc., out of Phoenix, AZ.

They also hasten to assure us, the general public from whom this revenue has been generated, that any ticket you get in a speeding zone or for running a red light at an intersection will not go on your driving record.  Gee, thanks, that’s nice to hear.  Now tell me the answer to this, if you can:

How many kids have been run over by cars in those school zones you are so zealously protecting?  Are you sure you’re not a solution in search of a problem?  How many of the people to whom you issued those tickets would have been the one to run over the occasional child?

It seems to me that society begins to break down when we find it necessary to punish people, not for what they did, but for what might have happened, but did not.  That decay accelerates when we outsource the revenue extraction to private companies, and pay them on a piecework basis, thus giving them incentive to steal money from as many people as possible.

And when we take our force of police officers, who are sworn to protect and defend the public from criminals, and assign them to do much of the direct revenue extraction personally, how do you think those officers will be regarded by that same public?  Just how dumb do you think we are?

I could go on and on about this issue, and there is much more to be said, like why the City of Renton abruptly removed the hugely money-making photo-enforcement camera from in front of Renton High School, but started the summer school cameras in front of some, but not all of the elementary schools a full hour before school started all last summer.  Think about why an obscure little Christian school along Carr Road between Valley Medical Center and Benson has a 20 mph flashing light that slows traffic on a major 4 lane road twice a day at a location that you never, ever see a kid on the street.

I think any rational person looking at this situation would conclude that there is a problem or problems that need to be addressed.  The question is, “Who is going to step up and take this on for the benefit of all the neighbors who have paid those tickets, and will pay those tickets in the future?”  Is that you?  We’d sure be grateful if you did.  :-{)}

The Washington Redskins

The world of sports gives us many different ways for individuals to compete, to strive to be the best, to attack the other guy and declare victory over the defeated foe.  The games are kind of fun, too, but the real conflict happens on the radio and the tv set as the various commentators, talking heads (by the way, have you noticed that Joe Buck’s head is larger than his shoulders?), gasbags, signal callers, color commentators and play-by-play guys in the press box and on the sidelines and in studios carry on for days about stupid inconsequentiae or take something obvious and turn it into a cause.  A good example of this is the current controversy to force the Washington Redskins football team to change their name.

You’d think it would be crystal clear to the most cretinously accelerated slob from the suburbs that, if the Natives tell you the Redskin name as applied in supposed homage to the noble savages is offensive, it’s offensive!  Duh!  What more do you need to hear?  You can’t deny anyone’s perception, they own it!

People being people, they get set in their ways and don’t like for things to change.  I like to think there’s always a way to solve a problem if you can just agree on what it is.  In that light, I believe I have stumbled upon a possible solution to the controversy:  They can rename the team the Washington Redskin Potatoes!  Talk about having your French fries and eating them!  Think about the possibilities!  The fans could gather in the stadium and root for their team!  The club mascot would be Spud, and the dancing girls would be the Yammers!  The logo would be a big laughing tuber!  Fans could smuggle in potatos in their pockets to throw at the ref when he blows a call, or at the receiver when he drops a pass.  The stadium could sell Rally Fries, Bangers and Mash, Shake and Bake Russets, and Cleveland Hash Browns.  During the off-season the field could be converted to a P-patch!  When they played the Rams or the Bears it would be considered a food fight!  Back to back games with the Dolphins and the Broncos would be Surf and Turf!

See how easy it is to solve problems when you put your heads together?   Don’t thank me, thank you!  We should do this again soon!  :-{)}

Inertia

Inertia:  The tendency for an object at rest to stay at rest, and an object in motion to stay in motion.

For purposes of this discussion, a body at rest can be approximated for a fat ass sitting on the couch sucking down beers and watching football.  And as we know from our study of physical principles, a body at rest will remain so until acted upon by external forces, such as a spouse.  Furthermore, a careful review of mathematical theory will show that the amount of such force is directly proportional to the volume with which said force is delivered, plus the sum of the number of times it was previously delivered, without effect.

Thus, we can say that force times volume times repetition equals mass plus n, where mass equals scale weight plus 1.2 times the number of beers consumed previous to the final application of said force that results in motion, and n equals the amount of energy expended in leveraging the motionless body to a standing position.

But wait, it’s not that simple!  A body at rest can also be put into motion by internal forces, as well!  This is a bit more complicated, because the internal forces can be generated by multiple sources, and can also combine with external forces to provoke motion that would otherwise have been unobtainable.

Through much data gathering and analysis, we have been able to define most of the important internal forces and weigh their value in combination with external forces.  This list is as follows, ranked in order of importance:

1.       Need to pee – This internal force has a geometric progression included where time plus number of beers consumed equals stress that always results in motion of one sort or another.

2.       Out of Beer – This condition is modified by the next force, which is:

3.       Presence of commercial – this factor can reduce the force needed to achieve motion by half, and is only modified if the commercial is one that has not been seen before (rare), or involves scantily clad women or Richard Sherman’s Mother.

4:       A noise sounding like spouse coming – This factor, in combination with any of all of the above forces, will automatically result in motion.  The speed of said motion is affected by the location of said spouse, proximity to refrigerator and location of bathroom.

When all forces are balanced, a symmetrical motion is observed, as where spouse appears in the doorway just as body rolls into kitchen, grabs beer out of fridge, then slips down the hall as spouse enters the kitchen, and into the bathroom where inertia is restored while body sits on toilet while drinking beer and watching game on smart watch.  Thusly is stability achieved...  :-{)}

Viet Nam

My participation in the extended debate in the 60’s over why we were in Viet Nam consisted mostly of attending anti-war demonstrations in Seattle.  I had been lucky enough to score a relatively high draft lottery score, 256, so I was pretty sure I would not be getting one of those “Greetings” letters from Uncle Sam, and could live my life without fear of having to go to basic training and learn how to kill people, let alone having to go to some far-off land and actually do it.

Of the kids I grew up with, many were not so lucky.  I remember one in particular, Steve, who not only got drafted and sent to Viet Nam as an infantryman, but lived to come back to his old neighborhood and tell the story.  Another, my future brother-in-law, was assigned to a helicopter maintenance operation at the air base in Da Nang as a welder/fabricator.

Steve was one of the dominant group in our band of delinquents who hung out at a park in White Center in the late ‘60s.  When he disappeared in ’69, and we heard he had been drafted, he faded from our consciousness until he reappeared in the summer of ’71.  He had saved much of his pay for the two years he was on active duty, and rewarded himself after he mustered out with a brand new Ford Galaxie XL, the one with the hidden headlights, so when he showed up back at the lake with a fancy brand new ride he was received as royalty, and we hung on his every word about the wide world out there and what it was like.

He told us how his platoon would be rounded up in the morning and remanded to expend a certain amount of ammunition every patrol, and how important the body count was, so they would hide behind a tree and fire off their M-16s, even though there was nothing out there, nobody was shooting back, and report anything that might possibly have been a dead body.  He explained that the 2^nd lieutenants were assholes who would bust any grunt caught smoking Thai stick, and that everyone was high on something as much of the time as possible, and you could get anything you wanted in the local markets.  Remember that our forces were mostly draftees in those days.

JB confirmed that with his story of the puppy dogs of Da Nang.  It seems that, every so often, a scrawny, shivering puppy would appear inside the gated secured compound that housed the maintenance wing of the repair facility attached to the airbase, and would promptly be adopted by some homesick American GI and soon become the mascot for the entire barracks.  In a few short weeks the rescued puppy would thrive, and put on weight on a diet based on the table scraps and orts from the entire company.  Then, suddenly, the puppy would disappear, and within a few days another shivering scrawny waif would take his place, while at the same time one of the local restaurants featured a dish made with young dog.

Ramparts magazine back in the day had uncovered a document showing how all the major oil companies back then had parceled out the entire offshore of Viet Nam, both north and south, into a series of leased areas for oil exploration that went a long way towards a reasonable explanation of why the U.S. was sending troops over there to die in increasing numbers.  The official explanation, that we somehow were “preventing the spread of Communism” throughout Southeast Asia, was the same kind of bullshit that is used to justify air strikes and boots on the ground in the Middle East to attack ISIL.  In both cases, the only winners are the multinational arms corporations and the military-industrial complex in this country and the result of their profit taking is the same:  death and destruction.  There are only two kinds of people in the countries that are currently being used to expend our ammunition, those who are making money off us and those who are suffering because of it, and who hate us in return.  I offer you one simple example that shows exactly what is going on:

Every band of “terrorists”, or “partisans”, or “rebels” or “freedom fighters” has one thing in common.  In their midst is always an imam, a preacher by any other name, a sky pilot who is there to exhort them to action, promise them the eternal rewards they will earn by their actions, and teach them that it is the will of God, or Allah, or Buddha or whoever that they take those actions.  God is on their side, and they cannot lose.

All it would take to put a stop to all of it is to hold the individual imams responsible for inciting the crowds.  If every fatwa declaring Jihad was immediately followed by an aerial bombardment that destroyed the mosque from which the fatwa was issued, along with the imam who issued it, the faithful would soon begin to marvel that God is not responding to this challenge, and wonder if maybe the imams were lying through their teeth, and sending them off to die for nothing, which they are.  Just as those politicians who think America has to be the world’s policeman are lying when they make up bullshit excuses for sending our own men and women off to die.  One thing you will notice is it is never their own children, always the children of the poor working class, the expendables, who are chosen to make the ultimate sacrifice.

You’ll notice we don’t do that, hunt down the imams and destroy their mosques.  We don’t have our Secretary of State stand up and shout, “That story about the 72 virgins if you die a jihadi is bullshit!  And any preacher that says so is lying!”  We don’t want to disrespect their religion, I guess, or maybe we just want to expend some more ammunition.

But if you spend any time reading history, you can find the real stories about what we did in the world as a country to make so many people hate us.  Read up on how we replaced the elected president of Iran with the Shah, or how we participated in the murder of the elected president of Chile, or of South Viet Nam, or the many times we tried to kill Castro, not to mention the Sandinistas, and you will eventually catch on that, in this world in this year 2015, the United States of America is no longer the beacon of hope for the rest of the world.  Instead, for most of them, we are the bad guys.  It’s pretty clear that for all those years our foreign policies were designed to result in protection of private property all over the world and the successful exploitation of other countries’ resources for the profit of the multinational corporations that control our government, and many of theirs, as well.

That is why I am continually puzzled by people who proclaim their pride in being an American, who adopt that old line, “My country, right or wrong, but My Country”.  Those are the folks who cannot see into the future with enough clarity to realize that we will be defeated one day, without a shot being fired, other than our lunatic fringe being executed by the police.  We will be defeated because we no longer will produce anything of value to the rest of the world at a price they are willing to pay, and our working class will no longer be able to afford their products.

And that, as they say, is when the shit will hit the fan.

“Ah, but,” you say, “What about all those sharp young people who are out there making things happen in the world?  Are they not also the future?”  Why, so they are.  But why do you think they can be successful, ultimately, without your help?  

Don’t you see, this is all about you!  You have to step up, in your community, in your neighborhood, in this society!  You have to take the time to attend your community meetings, your caucuses, your get-togethers and your events.  You have to show your face.  You have to put your money on the line.  You have to look in the mirror, and ask, “Am I all about me and my family, or am I putting some effort into my community as well?”

And what are the principals upon which you choose to operate?  Do you believe that all people are equal, and that all of them deserve a share in the world’s resources?  Or are you more of the “All for me, none for you” persuasion?  It doesn’t matter which, it only matters that you think about such issues, and take a stand one way or another.  When too many of us are content to sit on the sidelines and let someone else do our suffering for us, everything falls apart.  And the one thing we all can share, misery, is always waiting out there for us.  It’s up to you to make that not happen. : –{)}}

How was your dinner?

How was your dinner?

Did you have the steak?  Or the burger?  Good stuff, huh?!

How about the shame?  You know, of course, that you’re getting a heapin’ helpin’ of shame along with every bite of your commercially raised, fed, fattened, slaughtered, butchered and packaged beef you take in, right?  You do know that, right?  Because of all the methane coming out of the assholes of all those cows,  not to mention the diesel and the fertilizer used to grow the feed for them, nearly matched in production by the hot gaseous eructions emitting from the pieholes of most of the politicians out there who are not named Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, that steak was good for you, bad for the environment.

Let me hasten to add that, contrary to what you might be asking, no, I have not gone all Vegan on us, not yet anyway.  I still eat my red meat.  I’ve just cultivated a taste for shame.  It’s like a guilty pleasure, the kind you get when you smoke a cigarette, knowing full well that, within a few years, they will be illegal and marijuana will be legal, go figure that.

It’s a tossup whether shame tastes better than crow.  I’ve eaten both, you can be sure of that, and I think it depends on the recipe.  When you have to eat some crow because you said something about someone else that was bullshit, and they call you on it, that kind of crow’s not so bad, with enough catsup and soy sauce.  After all, you did deserve it, right?  It’s a lot better than the kind of aged, stinky crow you have to eat when you get up in public and try to deny global warming, or pretend that Republicans are the friends of the working man.  If you truly believe the drivel you spout, then there’s no shame attached, though.  That comes when you spout your drivel knowing it is bullshit, but you’re making money doing it, so you don’t care.  Shameful crow is the equivalent of flattened three day old armadillo off a highway in East Texas or somewhere just as hot, and there’s no amount of Sriracha that will blunt the flavor of that snack.  The aftertaste alone is a mortal sin.

So what about chicken, or fish?  Is there less shame attached to them?  I don’t think so.  The only chicken you can eat shame-free is free range, uncaged chickens that have been fed only organic chicken feed and bugs, but even then somebody has to kill them, and a certain portion of the karmic shame that comes with that act is attached to the meat whether you like it or not.  If the chicken comes from a factory farm where they’re caged by the millions and fattened in three months the shame quotient goes way up, of course.  The only thing that brings it back down some is if you eat the chicken in Chinese or Mexican food, where the pieces are small and the sauces strong enough to allow you to pretend they’re tofu or eggplant.  And don’t even start on fish, unless you also want to talk about farmed salmon, net by-catch and factory trawlers.

The real problem is, if you’re looking for shame-free food, where are you gonna start?  Corn?  I don’t think so, let’s talk about fertilizer and water consumption, not to mention feed corn and gasohol.  Wheat?  Sorry, gluten is bad now, as are carbs in general.

The inconvenient truth is that if everyone only ate food that was ethically and cleanly grown, processed and packaged, we’d all starve.  There’s not enough land out there to make room for all those chickens.  So we better just get used to the taste of shame.  It probably tastes like Soylent Green.  :-{)}

The Thrill of The Score

It was one of those days in Monroe at the Fairgrounds when the sun would peek out behind the clouds just enough to give one hope, then dash it with a blast of rain.  The overflow crowd trudged through the sprinkles from the far parking lot through the underpass into the main lot, even then full of cars for sale.  It was the annual Automotive Swap meet on Saturday morning, and the underground economy was in full swing.  All the indoor spots were taken up, as usual, by the long-timers with the same old stuff, the trinkets and gubbins and gewgaws, so the action was out in the parking lots and the grassy areas along the fence where the newbies and the latecomers are sent.  That’s where you’ll find the guy who just wants to get rid of stuff, as opposed to the inside guy who’s trying to make a living.

The thing is, when you stumble across something worthwhile you have to recognize it and bite down hard and fast, because, if you look away, it will be gone.  So it was with the matching fender set off an early ‘90s Harley Davidson Heritage Softail that I spotted laying in the grass alongside some yard tools and other junk.  I could see they were in pretty good shape, even had the Heritage script intact on one side of the front fender, so I asked the guy who was on the spot, “How much you want for them fenders?”, pointing.  He got a big ol’ grin on his face and said, “Ten Dollars!”  “Each?” says I.  “Nah, that’s for both of them.” He says.  “I told that son-of-a-bitch they weren’t coming back this time, no way, nohow.  Ten dollars!”  ”Done!”, I said.

I peeled 10 dollars out of my wallet in record time and scooped up the fenders and beat feet out of there, in case the son-of-a-bitch was anywhere on the grounds.  Just for the record, I sold them later on EBay, quickly, for $285 with free shipping.  It turned out they were a matching pair, in Vivid Black, and all the trim was in place including the lights on both tips, along with the factory paint and hand pin striping, and it was all in excellent shape!  And that, my friends, is a score.  That’s why we play the swap meet game, and the Craigslist game, just searching for that oh-so-sweet moment when the adrenaline rush lets you know you’re on to something and your fingers start to twitch as you reach for your pocket.  It’s the payoff, for all the years of mistakes and lost money, and learning about the subtle differences between the various years and models, and what fits what.  It’s what Carl Sandburg was talking about when he said, “I seek to make my vocation my avocation.”  For most of us, we have to “retire” to do that, so, when you find yourself in that position, count your blessings.  Pity the one who doesn’t recognize the point of departure when it comes, and continues to slog away in harness until he drops to the earth, spent.

But for those of us who have freed ourselves to enjoy the pursuit of the score, be it on a gaming table, an ad in the Little Nickel, or on the ground at the swap meet in the rain, the undeniable thrill of the occasional unexpected single item score pales when compared with the one you get when you stumble across a pile.

And that’s the second thing.  Every pile has a story attached, for good or bad, and sometimes the story lingers long after the pile is gone.  One in particular remains fresh in my memory.

It was early Saturday morning, and I was cruising Craigslist’s motorcycle section as usual.  I have learned that you need to check in every day to catch the hot ones, the earlier the better.  This one read, “Harley shop going out of business, leftover stock for sale today.”, with an address in Tacoma.  I hemmed and hawed for a few minutes, then gathered up any loose cash I could find in the house and headed for Tacoma from Renton.  I even hit the cash machine for $300, just in case.  When I got there, at a strip mall on the road to McNeil Island, I found chaos.  The building was newly constructed, and consisted of bare concrete floors inside a steel and glass building that could be upfitted to be a Chinese restaurant, a massage parlor, or a Shucks Auto Parts, depending on your needs.  In this case, the space was occupied by a church.  They were raising funds to turn their space into a sanctuary by selling off a number of donated piles of stuff that one of their members, who ran a storage lot, it appeared, gave them.  I looked one way, past the two nice ladies at the picnic table with the cash box and receipt book, and saw a pile of flooring, another way a pile of household goods, over there a bunch of TVs, and there, on the floor surrounding the center post of the room, a large pile of Harley parts.

I saw a hardtail frame, a couple of front ends, I saw wheels and tires and boxes of new stuff.  I saw gas tanks and carburetor parts, lots of S&S stuff.  I saw bins full of odds and ends, the type that accumulates when you run a shop and you need an axle spacer, say, so you order a dozen of them in various widths, or those special bolts you need to mount a starter on an open belt drive on a Shovelhead, and then you need a system to keep track of all that stuff, plus takeoff parts and mistakes and spares, lots of spares.  It was all there.  I went looking for the person in charge.  I found him near the back, harried and hurried, with several people demanding attention at the same time, and maneuvered him over to the pile.  “How much would you like to get for all this stuff at once?” I asked.  He looked over at the pile, his face betraying the obvious fact that he had no idea what Harley stuff was worth in those days, and said, “I don’t know, you think it’s worth $500?”  I gave him the spiel I have used successfully in the past:  Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out all the cash I had on me at the time, which was around $385, held it out to him and said, “Easily.  It’s worth a lot more than that, I’m sure, but all I have on me right now is this, and I’ll give it all to you for this pile right now.”  He hesitated, and I added, “and if I do real good on this pile I’d be happy to make a donation to your church later.”  That turned out to be the magic words, and the deal was sealed.  I asked him, before I stuffed my Chevrolet Astro Van with the seats removed to the gills with all the plunder, what happened to the shop in question, and he didn’t know too much.  After I broke $1500 on that pile of parts I sent the church a $200 donation, upon which they hounded me for years afterward, just in case.  It was only later, after most of the pile had been sold, that I heard the rest of the story. 

I knew the name of the shop that had gone out of business from paperwork that was in with the pile of parts, and one day, a couple of years later, I saw an ad on Craigslist for one of the custom choppers that this particular shop had intended to build and sell as part of their business plan.  I sent an email asking if there was any connection to that shop, and it turned out the seller was the guy who had owned the shop!  As I learned, this guy was an Army Ranger, a Special Ops guy, and the shop was his own retirement avocation.  But in the heat of Iraq, the guy got called back for one more tour of duty, so off he went, even though he was supposed to be retired soon.  He told the landlord about the callup, and was promised that, no matter what, that shop would be there waiting for him when he got back from Iraq.

But then he got injured, bad, a roadside bomb or something, and wound up spending the next year or so in rehab and recovery.  And the dirty bastard of a landlord evicted the business from the shop and turned whatever survived over to the church for disposal while the soldier was in the hospital in Germany.  By the time he got back it was all gone, and I had made a pile off the last of it.  I felt kinda shitty about that, as you would imagine.  I gathered up most of what was left, bins and gubbins and paperwork and stuff, and took it back to him as a token recovery, and told him what happened, and how it went down.  I hope he sued the shit outta that landlord.  I can’t think of too many animals lower than a landlord who would screw over an injured Ranger who put his life on the line for the powers that be, and I hope he gets what’s coming to him.

And I hope there’s another pile out there with my name on it, with another good story attached.  The one is worth as much as the other. :-{)}