![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
We, mainly I, have been spending this first full day of 2009 watching the Barrett-Jackson Collector Car Auction on Speed Channel.
I’ve never thought of myself as a Car Guy. And certainly compared to those guys I’ve known who are Car Guys, I’m not. Aside from a bitchin’, Lotus Green “Baby Vette” Opal GT I owned, and cosmetically restored, then folded in half just after high school and my sorely missed Orient Red 1961 MGA 1600 Roadster that went with the divorce, I’ve never owned Car Guy kinda’ cars.
Like any other work of art, however, I can admire those masterstrokes of industrial design that have appeared on a regular if not reliable basis since the demise of the horse-drawn carriage. But honestly, Car Guy or not, looking at some of this iron makes me want to touch myself.
“Some” of this iron. But some of it reminds me of my youth, even my own youthful neighborhood and that has me thinking: WTF?
I’ve been watching automobiles sell for record-setting sums for a few hours now, and this marathon featuring the annual auction in Arizona is composed of repeats. Thus I was pretty convinced I was watching pre-financial meltdown gavel action. Until, that is, CEO Jackson himself expressed his joy at the “health of the collector market” in “today’s economy.” “We were concerned,” he said, “that we would be affected by the mortgage crisis and other things going on out there, but the totals we’re seeing are as good as or better than ever.”
For the record, the above statement attributed to Mr. Jackson, while in quotes, is a paraphrase. But you can be sure my verbal memory is worthy of Nagra recording equipment so it’s pretty darn close. And it is clear that whatever may be going on “out there” isn’t having much of an effect "in there," under the big top in the Arizona dessert, where people who look like your next door neighbors (but aren’t) are plunking down anywhere between $80 and 300-thousand dollars for machines they won’t be using to commute to the office.
Of course high end car collectors as a rule are not the type of individuals who might be worried about their mortgage. I should say their mortgages, plural. Any of them. Yet it still blows my mind to think that ANY form of wealth is unaffected by “what’s going on out there.”
So much for my all-too-human desire for suffering—if it must be—to be universal suffering. After all it was at least 20 years ago when the then boys of Monty Python’s Flying Circus explained to me that one could always spot royalty because they’re the ones that “don’t have shit all over them.” Still. Geeze.
Big on the block lately is so-called “Big American Iron;” the Super Bees, the Barracudas, the Shelby Mustangs and Chargers and Challengers those of my generation grew-up calling Muscle Cars. Those were the cars the Car Guys owned.
Moments ago, a 1970 Forrest Green Dodge Charger with a mighty 440 under the hood went for just shy of $80,000. I know that car well. They very same, inclusive of color, was owned (and I’m pretty sure still is owned) by my childhood next door neighbor, David.
David was several years older than I and was by every measure a Car Guy long before I ever bothered to get my learner’s permit. He seemed forever to be working on, restoring and thundering off behind the wheel of an endless line of automotive Teen Heartthrobs of the day. But when the showroom-new Charger came home after an insurance settlement for a motorcycle accident that nearly left him paralyzed, his quest for upgrades ground to a halt. That Charger was washed and waxed more often than a Playboy model. He did the occasional mod that always seemed to make the thing sound even ballsier than it already did. Even touched-up any marred white letter-paint on the tires with a tiny brush and something called "rubber paint."
It displaced his father’s car as sole occupant of their modest two-bay garage (he needed the “other spot” for all his Car Guy equipment) and, perhaps out of more respect for gleaming speed machine than his son, the old man never complained as he was chipping ice off his own windshield; he, the man of the house, exiled to a curbside parking space out front.
Apart from the Hurst short-throw shifter, Bumblebee distributer wire and some sweet chroming applied to the manifold, you can be sure David’s Charger was, and has been, kept in original condition. Or as is closer to the truth in these circumstances, original…only better. Lord knows he never drove it in the snow (he had a beater pick-up, all in primer black, for that). And last time I peeked through the windows of that garage off Schmidt Court (the ally behind our homes), it was still in there.
Does he know that a clone of that very car just went for that much? And, if not, what can I do to convince him to sell it to me? For, say, 5-thousand?
Lots of luck, buck. My neighbor David, the working class product of a Dairy Farm Inspector dad, a religious stay-at-home mom and sibling to a firefighter older brother somehow managed to live his life with no discernable vocation; no jobs to speak of. Between the insurance windfall and his parents eventual Last Will and Testament he never had to work. He went to Canada to fish. He went to Alaska to hunt. He went to more local, basically equally rustic environs just to camp. Between you and me? I think this guy presaged “Brokeback Mountain” with his, ahem, lonely macho tastes. But that’s neither here nor there.
He certainly wasn’t a “bum” or a lay-about, involved as he always seemed to be with avocations ranging from boat building (with his, ahem, buddy Ralphie) to wood furnace repair. The guy got up early, worked in the garden, the basement workshop (packing his own 30-0-6 and shotgun shells, for example) and, especially, the garage.
Especially the Charger.
So it’s more than simply likely that David knows exactly what’s parked in that old but well-maintained garage. And as he’s done his whole life, will at his need transform that hunk of steel in to his retirement fund. Which by my watch, should need tapping right about now.
Maybe?
You think?
Was the Barrett-Jackson Charger his Charger?
Oh well. I hope so.
Because if there are people unaffected by the current state of things, and there are, I can appreciate just knowing a couple of them.
Happy New Year, beloved reader.
And may the future bring you naught but beauty and treasure. Arrive as it may from the heart, the stock market…
or the garage.
Yours for yet another year,
come vroom vroom or gloom doom,
Illuminaught
You, My Love,
Here's to our next year.
All of me,
D
Re: You, My Love,