Sold the Ghortmobile last week. Insert Manowar-esque tribute about wheels and burning forever and rings and burning and glory.
I received the following email in response to my craigslist post, which advertised the car for 2,000 US Bones.
—
Hello,
I am very interested in your car, but here’s my situation. I have a
single mom with two small kids who lost everything in Katrina. She
virtually has only the clothes on their backs. I want to help her get
started, including buying her a car, but my funds are limited.
Please tell me your rock bottom price so that I know our price without
hassles.
Thanks
Dennis
—
I was immediately suspicious of scammery, but I’m a sucker so I called Dennis anyway. He of course asked for a charity discount, and I was feeling overwhelmed by feelings of getting rid of my car and helping someone at the same time so I said I’d sell it for $1500. Note that the blue book value of this car is around $2500. We arranged a meeting.
Dennis turned out to be a lecherous-looking middle-aged fat man in a mustang convertible with no tread left on the tires. He brought along a young lady who is probably considered to be hot by some people, showing a lot of cleavage, wearing one of those wretched baby-doll shirts that make one look pregnant. Perfect California tan. Two cute two squirrelly kids in the back seat of the ‘stang.
While she took the Ghortmobile for a spin around the block I asked Dennis where she was from. Pensacola. How did you meet her? She’s my niece.
She got back and he took it for a spin. Where are you from? New Orleans.
After much brow-furrowing despite the fact that I was basically giving them $500, they’ll take it and we agree to meet the next day to make THE DEAL.
I call the next morning to give directions to La Jolla; she answers. After talking for a minute, she says: Here, let me hand the phone to my dad. NICE.
After getting off the phone I was pretty sure there wasn’t a whole lot of truth to the Katrina story, and almost called them back to say shove it. But I didn’t really care about the money difference and was too excited about the prospect of being carless in less than an hour. And this way I don’t have to feel bad if the original trans with 162k miles on it falls out in two weeks, or the brakes start shaking more than they have been, or that the car hasn’t had a tuneup in about 50k miles, or that I didn’t even bother to wash & vacuum it for them. It’s in the hands of the karma police now.
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