Car-Shopping Is Fun!

Car-shopping is fun! And sometimes incomprehensible!

For example, let's take a look at this random listing from craigslist:

1968 american rambler - $2500

very original 4dr 6 cly 3 speed with over drive white blue int have original papers int is great dash perfect trunk great call will text pic 865 315 4007 it has 59242 real miles

Okay, just forget the fact that the guy doesn't understand the use of punctuation (or got one of those keyboards that doesn't have any punctuation keys on it). 

We are, of course, to understand the abbreviations, as any good reader of classifieds should. Even when they're misspelled so that it looks like the car has 6 clays, not cylinders, but other than that, the standard shorthand is used.

I am glad to know that the white/blue interior looks great, that the dashboard is perfect, and that the trunk is great (I would have preferred to hear that the trunk was wonderful, or fabulous, or capacious, though that might have been giving away too much info). I wonder if the car runs?

My favorite turn of phrase is, "Very original." I'm glad it's not one of those "sort of originals." 

That reminds me of the name of the repair shop that I recently helped my friend take her Jeep to. It's called Just Jeeps & More. Do they know what "Just" means?

Next fave in the ad is the last few words, "59242 real miles." That's pretty profound, if you think about it. How many of us know how many *real* miles we've covered? Of course, it reminds me of that beautifully written short story by Raymond Carver, "Are These Actual Miles?"

You might be able to see why, now, it has been close to two months, and I still haven't found a replacement for my wrecked Miata. It takes awhile to thoroughly digest these ads.

Southern Exposure

A visiting pastor from Ohio told this story to our congregation of East Tennessee Presbyterians. The pastor, who found Southern ways strange and accents almost incomprehensible, had found himself transplanted to Tennessee, and he often used examples of his confusion over all things Southern as illustrations in his sermons. He sometimes referred to the place where he’d found himself as the “Deep South.” 

Finally, after one of many such references had been made from the pulpit, an old man from Mississippi who had been transplanted to East Tennessee himself to live with his daughter and her family (and apparently was none too happy about it), went to the pastor after the day’s service. 

The Mississippian said to the pastor, “Suh, you often refer to Tennessee as the Deep South. Tennessee is not the Deep South. Tennessee is not the South.  Tennessee is not even the beginning of the South. Suh, Tennessee is the bottom of the Nawth!”

To read more on this story, go here: http://longinvolvedstories.blogspot.com/2013/02/where-is-south-anyway.html

I Want That Thing That Is Not Really That Thing

I pulled up to the Starbucks drive-through window and ordered a salted caramel hot chocolate.

Long silence.

Then I realized that that might have just been a holiday flavor, so I asked if that was the case.

SB Barista: No. We still have it. Just without the salt.

KB: You have the salted caramel without the salt?

SB: Yes. Well, no. We have the drink. But it was a holiday flavor [Ah!]. But we’re out of the salt crystals that go on top.

KB: Ooooookkkkay.

SB: The caramel hot chocolate is the same drink, just without the salt.

KB: Okay. I’ll have that then.

SB: It’s the same drink once you get past the caramel topping and the whipped cream.

KB: Got it. I’ll have that.

***

This reminds me of one of my and my sister’s favorite stories about our dad. Dad had a wit that was as dry as the Sahara, and was delivered with such flat affect that almost no one could tell for sure when he was joking and when he was serious. (This combination of humor and poker face continued to the end of his life, in spite of his dementia, which threw off many a nurse involved in his care. They would mistake his humor for confusion.)

Oh, before I embark on the story of Daddy Mac’s hammer, I have to give the back story that my maternal grandfather–dad’s father-in-law–known to all as “Daddy Mac” was a revered and larger-than-life character in our family. His sons-in-law loved him as dearly as his three daughters did, and though Daddy Mac had died before most of us grandkids were born, our childhood was so rife with stories about the man–his boyhood, his humor, and his adages (which were many) that we felt as if we’d known him. He was a venerable person in our eyes.

Now, cut to many years later. My sister and I, in our midteens, were hanging out in the kitchen, which was a sure sign that there was nothing that had to be done there, as we had a gift for making ourselves scarce when there was work to be done, particularly in the kitchen.

Dad came into the kitchen from the garage (his workshop), which was just off the kitchen. He came through, armed with the basic tools needed to do some sort of simple DIY project somewhere in the house. We spoke to him, and, for some reason, he held up his hammer, and he said, “Have I ever told you that this was Daddy Mac’s hammer?”

We were properly impressed with this bit of information and expressed an appropriate amount of awe and respect. It was certainly believable, as the hammer was really quite ancient-looking, and I couldn’t remember his having had any other hammer in my lifetime. The handle, which had obviously started out as a blonde, was now burnished to a rich auburn by much use and “elbow grease.”

Dad went on to tell us that Daddy Mac had given him (the oldest of the sons-in-law, who had known Daddy Mac the longest) many of his tools before he died, this being one of them. Well, as far as Sis and I were concerned, this made all of dad’s tools family heirlooms, and, again, we expressed our appreciation of this info. Dad then began to walk past us, explaining, almost as if to himself, “Well, of course, I had to replace the handle after it split, and then I replace the head when one of the claws broke off. But it’s Daddy Mac’s hammer all the way.”

By this time, he was out of the kitchen, leaving my sister and me looking at each other quizzically until his words sank in, and we were left, as my dad used to say, “to ponder the advisability of it all.”