It just never seems to be easy.
There is a 1997 Camaro sitting in our driveway. It’s been there for several years now. It doesn’t run.
This was Richard’s car.
I bought it for him from the cousin of a coworker of mine while Richard was still in high school. It looks pretty good and he was rather proud of it. It only has a V-6 engine so I felt safe he wouldn’t be in too many races with it.
The deal was I’d pay half the cost and he’d pay for half. I bought it and he didn’t have to make good on his half until he finished school. He did give me $1000 he had saved, so he had some skin in the deal.
He never was all that mechanical. Never showed much interest in turning wrenches.
The car overheated on him. Several times I think. In the end the head gaskets blew, and the AAA tow truck delivered it to the spot in the driveway where it still sits today.
Replacing the head gaskets is a high dollar repair – unless you do it yourself. Richard had no interest in doing it himself. Not having a garage to work in made it a no-go for me too.
But Richard said he wanted to fix it someday. So the car stayed in the drive.
Recently we had some repair work done to the electric range in our kitchen. The repair tech was a chatty sort. As he was leaving, he mentioned the Camaro. He used to have several like it. I told him about the condition of ours and asked if he wanted to buy it. I gave him a pretty low price. He seemed excited about it.
We talked about it for awhile longer and he said he wanted it. He hoped to come back that next weekend with a trailer to haul it away.
That’s the last I heard from him. That was about 2 months ago.
We had a yard sale this past weekend. I thought it would be a good idea to add the car to the items for sale.
We were talking about posting ads for some big items on Craigslist. When the subject of the car came up Debbie laughed and said she’d never forget Richard’s response when he thought I was going to sell his car one time before.
I was home one morning and heard a knock on the front door.
The man on my front porch said, ” I was wondering if the Camaro is for sale.”
“I don’t know. It’s my son’s. He’s away at school. Leave your number and I’ll ask him about it. I’ll call you if he wants to get rid of it.”
Well he was home a few days later and Debbie gave him the phone number and the news about the man wanting to buy his broke down car.
He grabbed a piece of paper and a Sharpie. He wrote, “NOT FOR SALE” on the page in big black letters, stormed out of the house and taped his sign to the inside of the windshield and locked the doors.
He told his mom he was going to get that car fixed someday.
As I listened to the story and remembered the event I felt a wave of guilt sweep over me. I had almost sold Richard Camaro.
Now I try to be logical about things.
I don’t really care much about that car. I didn’t like driving it. It’s too low to the ground for my aging bones and from the driver’s seat the windshield seems like it stretches out for 10 feet in front of the car.
I don’t want to do the work on it myself. It costs way more than the car’s worth to have it done by someone else.
If you remove the emotions from the decision, the choice is clear. Sell the car. Get it out of the driveway. I don’t want it, and Richard won’t be getting it fixed.
But there’s no way to remove the emotions.
It was Richard’s car and he wanted to keep it. And that makes the pile of junk in the drive have a lot of emotional baggage.
So now the Camaro is no longer for sale.
Why does this stuff have to be so hard?
