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6am time to get the Groceries!

Well what do you know the Blithering Blogger is back!

So as I woke up this morning, or actually late last night, ahem, once again in a strange (meaning not my own) bed. In the pre-dawn darkness I was scrambling around to find my clothes....

Shorts, good, that's where all the essentials are, the cell phone, the keys (gotta have those!) the Wallet, (phew!) all in the pockets. Shhush those jingling keys up! Ok now the shirt, good right under the shorts... socks, did I wear any socks last night... Here they are black nylon socks, must be mine.... Sneakers in the other room, got em good slip them on really quickly and get me out the door.

It was about 6am and once again I found myself walking home, so on the way home there is a 24 hour Walgreens. Now Walgreens isn't exactly known as a grocery store. Let alone at this hour. It's basically a convenience store, with a pharmacy. So it should have been rather easy to pop in at this time grab a Crispy Creme and a Frappachino, while there I might as well grab a 1/2 gallon of milk, so that I can have a proper "nutritious breakfast" bowl of Honey-Nut Cheerios when I get home. In just that time it took me to stroll into the milk aisle and get the Milk and Frappachino, some guy with wife and brood in tow ambles (and don't they all amble!) lazily toward the only checkout counter open at this time. Is this guy getting one thing or two, as most would in a convenience store... HECK NO! This guy is doing shopping for the month with his entire brood. He has a full sized grocery cart full of things, and I mean FULL all the way to the top and then some. He has liters of Soda and Gatorade in his arms and his wife is carrying along a hand cart loaded with things so many things that each one of the little offspring are helping out and carrying a few items with them.

So the Ace shopper and his crew leisurely amble up to the cashier and start to unload the booty on the little counter there. Of course the cashier is some elderly lady, probably named Mildred or something and she is putting her little half-spectacles up to her face and, nice and slowly starts to inspect the items at about a minute a clip looking for the bar code. Is it just me or is this the same floundering group that seems to be laying in wait to ambush me when driving by pulling their slow moving SUV directly in front of me whenever I am driving. It was remarkably similar let me tell you. All this mind you at 6am as well.

As I am feeling a little silly holding three objects there while poor old Millie is still searching for the elusive bar-code at 6am. I am looking around the store and see no other cashier options. Basically no where to go, like being stuck on a 1 lane street with this guys SUV going 5mph in front of you... What to do. There was a guy looking very much like a manager, chatting with the stores security guard by the exit, and after making eye contact with this obviously uninterested person, I excused myself, loudly as I pushed back Father knows best over here with his monthly rations on line set my three items down on the end of the counter there past Millie, who was still looking for that darned bar-code, and when the Manager caught my attention again, I tipped my invisible hat to him, as I exited the store. All the while muttering about who would be taking the family grocery shopping in a drug store at 6am?

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No Cash, but would you like a Machine Gun?

Wow, it's been quite a while since I blogged anything. I was stretched a little thin over the past 4 months with the whole http://www.thenfledge.com thing! Another outstanding year where we gave you the winners at a 65% clip! Oh yeah I know enough with the shameless plug. Well I have only a limited amount of tolerance for looking at one of these ghastly radiation leaking monitors. As I have to look at one for 8 or more hours a day in my primary job of Software Engineer. Throw in another 5-10 hours a week to publish that famous site, http://www.thenfledge.com, and you can see why I would not sit in front of a monitor for another hour or so to bring you another failed installment of artistic writing. Lets face it Dave Barry I am not. So as it is this site has become more of a dead end than even a personal memoir. On rare occasions such as this "off-season" after the NFL season, and before the Arena Football Season, I thought I would take the time to write up a little something....

much to the amusement of no one in particular.

This tale is from many many years ago and it just recently resurfaced in the recesses of my mind, and God only knows why things like that happen. This tale took place right around 1993, after I bought the then brand new 1994 Chevy Pickup Truck. It was a spiffy little pickup truck, shiny Black with a silver stripe on the side a powerful 4.3L V6 engine, and most importantly of all 4x4! However that truck is not the subject of this story. Instead this tale deals with my beloved 1983 Chevy s-10 Blazer! The old blue blazer which I had affectionately named "Bucky", Bucky the Trucky, and I had Blazed many a trail. I bought that car used for around $3,500, back in 1987 with some 60,000 miles on it. I ran that thing into the ground flipping the odometer (which conveniently only had the 5 digits) and when it was time to sell six years later the odometer only read 50,000. Yeah 50,000 "original" miles.... Although considering the number of parts I had put into it, the majority of that truck really had only about 50,000 miles on it.

So as sad as it was in 1993 I had put the Truck up for Sale. I don't recall why I felt I "needed" to sell it, as it was it still ran pretty good, and in upstate New York where I was living at the time, the winters were brutal on new cars, so many people with nice cars also had "winter beater" cars just like old Bucky the Trucky. A winter beater was a car you could drive around in the slush and snow, and let the weather beat on that while your new car was wrapped cozily under a tarp and a blanket of snow, NOT rusting from the road salt or adding miles to the odometer ready for you to cruise around with in the spring. Actually I now remember why I needed sell it, as I had to pay for INSURANCE for both cars.... yeah that was the deal, and as a 25 year old male, with a few "incidents" and a pending lawsuit (oh that is another story in itself) on my driving record, it was when I opened the Insurance renewal notice, and saw that I was going to pay more for insuring the Blazer than I had paid to buy it, that I made the decision to part ways with old Bucky the Trucky.

As it turned out Bucky was in the classified section under Autos for Sale as of the next Monday morning:

1983 Chevy s-10 blazer ps/pb, v6, 4x4 auto. trans, runs good, many new parts $2,500

Thats when the fun began. I couldn't begin to imagine how many people were calling on a 10 year old truck. The fact that it was a 4x4 was particularly appealing to many people in the area who were looking precisely for a winter beater car. And some of the questions I would get, about mileage. Q:"how many miles on it" A: "a lot, but I have replaced most of the replaceable parts" Q:"so what is the mileage" A: "about 150,000" click. Really they were calling about a 10 year old car I was asking $2500 for, what did they expect, a low mileage cream puff.

The fact that the car was driven personally by me in the upstate and western NY winters over the past 6 years accounted for a decent amount of surface rust on the vehicle. When I bought it there really wasn't any rust on the car, allegedly the car was a Southern Car. That makes it even worse as the winter hit and it got its first taste of SLUSH. Slush as I define it is the disgusting grey glop that covers the roads in upstate New York, from about November until usually April or May. Slush starts out as just snow, add to it a healthy layer of salt, which is what they use to in great quantity to "clear" the roads in the winter. See when it stats to snow, the snow gets pressed by tires onto the streets, the packed snow will melt some in the sun, and after dark the liquefied surface on the pressed snow turns to ice. Slippery almost invisible ice covering the roads is about the most dangerous driving surface I have ever experienced. So to combat this, huge dump trucks roll over the roads dropping salt, just plain old NaCl (sodium chloride) table salt, on the frozen roads. The salt reacts with the ice and lowers the freezing point turning it from solid ice into the consistency of a slurpee or a snow cone. Mix in a healthy dollop of car exhaust (which if you ever looked at a snow bank in close proximity to a running cars exhaust pipe, you will see that the exhaust cools on the snow and turns BLACK... Like ash), tire grime (just plain old dirt) and oil and grease from the passing cars and you have SLUSH! Road slush, a nice dark gray colored nasty concoction. Every time you drive on a slush covered road your tires essentially sand blast your wheelwells and underside of your car with this slush. Oh and the kicker is this mixture of basically salty water is a corrosive agent. Yup thats right it actually HELPS the cars to rust faster. OK so now you get the picture. Poor Bucky had been subjected to six seasons of this daily sand blasting. So the car had a little rust on it.

Flashback to 1988, spring, a small rust spot about the size of an aspirin first appears on the passenger door. Just a little rust bubble on the surface. I got a piece of sandpaper and sanded the rust spot off, I used some genuine GM touch up paint to cover the now exposed metal and the spot was imperceptible. That is until about November when the snow and slush started covering the roadways again. Just like a bad case of Herpes before a big date, the rustspot reappeared, only bigger now it was the size of a nickel and all bubbly. So in the spring, of 1989 I went to the local auto parts store, and bought some rust proofing agent. "Stops rust on contact, and converts it into a hard workable material suitable for painting" the label read. So back with the sand paper, clean the spot - which had now grown to about the size of a quarter - coat the surface with the rustproofer, let it dry and paint. The texture on the spot was noticeable still, but the rust was gone and the door looked good. Until the winter that is. I will say that the rustproofer looked like it had worked, as it was strong and holding up. However the rust like a cancer started to appear on the edges around the "patch" the rust bubbled and flaked like a nasty rust-doughnut around the patched center. By spring of 1990 the Doughnut was about the size of a softball now and although the center looked good an intact, the rust around it was all bubbled and flaky. So this little dance started over again with the sanding and the treating and the painting. Once again the slush was having its way with old Bucky and the patch didnt make it past the winter of 1991 - the softball sized patch stayed intact as the surface around it rotted away like a type of target. The patch didn't survive as the rust ate all the way through and one day it was gone, and there was a plate sized hole in the door.

Fast forward back to 1993. Thinking about selling the truck, I would need to do something about the holes in the doors, in the rear fenders, etc. Were talking about big holes here. I wasn't about to do any major body work just to sell the car. However the big holes and rust were unsightly and wouldn't really show very well, despite the fact that the car did run pretty well and was fairly reliable, the rust didn't belie that fact. So for about $3 I bought a small bucket of bondo, and took some old clothes that I was meaning to give away. I stuffed some old clothes into the whole where there was nothing there until they were packed in and created a small surface. Then I coated some denim with the bondo and covered up the rest of the clothes. I let it dry and added another layer of Bondo-- smoothing out the surface as best as I could. Then a couple of cans of a close matching spray paint and presto... No more holes! The texture wasn't very smooth, and the paint wasn't really an exact match, but no matter if you asked me, it looked better than a hole in the door!

Now were back to getting calls about the truck. Q: "does it have any rust on it" A: "well its rusty, but there's no VISIBLE BODY RUST". Was I wrong? Well no there was no visible rust on the body. In many places - there was no body. Just some old clothes covered in bondo and paint! Well inevitably people were coming by to check it out. I had also put a for sale sign on the windshield which also elicited a bunch of folks just walking up and knocking on my door wanting to see the truck. A few folks told me that the body work was awful on the truck, (and where did I get such lousy body work done??? Ahem) some even said that they had preferred that it wasn't patched and even one guy who said he would have bought it even with the rust, but the body work was so bad, he couldn't buy it like that. One guy even went as far as poking at the patch and then pulling at the seams when a piece of denim popped out from the edge of the patch. "what the he** is this" he exclaimed while tugging on it. I quickly slapped his hand away and said: "listen if you aren't going to buy it, DO NOT MESS WITH IT!" He was a little indignant that I slapped his hand, and I really should have asked him to leave right then. Things escalated from that point, and he shouted back at me. "Well If I am going to spend any money to buy this frigging thing I really want to know what I am getting.." I didn't let him finish, raising my voice, "...Yeah well its a 10 year old truck, and it had a little rust, so I patched it up to show nicer as I am trying to sell it. The rear fender has no bearing on how the car drives, it runs fine. If its that big an issue to you, AFTER you buy it, you can do your own body work and fix this up to your liking." Again I should have known this guy was trouble, and told him, I am not selling it to you, and been done. Instead he went on, paining over the other spots like the door where I had patched up. Again he tried to poke at it "Uh-uh!" I waived my finger at him, "no picking at the body work!" He just shook his head. "Let me drive it." Again I should have been more insistent on NOT selling to this guy. Yet I started it up, and like always Bucky cranked right up. "See that" I added "runs real good" "sounds ok." He said, and I popped the hood, he could see it was running nice. He reached in and grabbed the throttle right off the carb, and raced the engine a little and was checking the exhaust for signs of burning oil and/or a cracked or leaky gasket (both of which it did have as issues!) so I wasn't pleased. He mentioned the burning oil, and I should have said "OK well it looks like you need a different truck" and been done with it. Instead he asked to take it for a ride, and I agreed; "Hop in" I said.

He immediately irritated me much more. He was tweaking with and messing with every control, every item within reach. The heater, the air, the radio (changing my presets!!! come on dude!!), the mirrors, the lights, etc. He was messing with everything! He tore out of the driveway in reverse, and before it even stopped rolling he popped the transmission from reverse to drive, slamming the tranny then gunning the gas. All the while making negative comments. "How on earth do you think you are going to get 2500 for this car? It is a piece of garbage" He kept on needling me. Gunning the gas revving the engine hard, then slamming the breaks. He was popping the transmission (rebuilt back in 1990) from D to L to H, shifting from 2wd to 4wd while revving the engine. In 5 minutesthis guy abused the car more than I had in 5 months! All the while he was making negative comments about what a piece of garbage he thought it was. Finally the "test drive" was over, and we got out of the car, I didn't say a word, because I only wanted to berate this lunatic. He checked under the car and added: "the transmission fluid is leaking" (which it was - bad seal on the tranny box) but his driving no doubt exaserbated the situation. "It wasn't leaking before you abused it like that" I slammed at him, "I should have you pay to fix that now!" at this point I was fuming and not holding back. "Your crazy!" He retaliated "I didn't do anything to your car. Nothing I aint supposed to, changing gears, and changing the drive shouldn't break the transmission. You just crazy, selling this hunk of junk and thinking its worth $2500". I replied "Well, if its all the same to you, I am going to sell this car, and I would like to have it in one piece to sell it for the most I can get for it, and I don't need you to destroy it for nothing, so if you don't like this car leave now please." He had a friend who was waiting in his car as all this was going on, our raised voices had now gotten his attention and he had come over to see what was going on. His BIG friend. He looked at me silent for a minute, as I was firm and not really backing down. Then he shocked me when he said, "OK I will take it." You can't imagine how surprised I was to hear that. Of everyone who had come by to look at the truck, this was by far the LAST person I was expecting to make an offer on it. He reached into his pocket and pulls out a wad of cash. "I will take it" he said handing me the cash. Still a little shocked, especially since we didn't even negotiate. I counted up the cash, over his numerous vocal objections, like he really expected me to trust him? Could he really be as dumb as he was annoying. I counted anyway, and it was only $700 he handed me. "Your a little short here" I said, "this is only 700, I am asking 2500". "Man, you're crazy to think you gonnna get 2500 for this car, it aint worth but $500, and I am giving you 700, cash!" Well without delving much further into the argument that ensued, I returned his money and told him basically the car was not for sale - to him! I thought that was the end, until he came back later that evening, knocking on my door. I had my girlfriend over now and told her what had happened, she was nervous, I told her to be ready to call the cops as I went outside to see what he wanted, locking the door behind me. He offered me $500 now, not for the truck, but for the VIN and the title only, and I could keep the truck. I didn't like the sound of that and without much debate, I told him that we were done, I wasn't going to do business with him for any amount, and good night. Fortunately that was the last I heard from him.

Most other people I had dealt with in trying to sell Bucky the Trucky were much less noteworthy. They simply looked at it, asked to start it up, and usually left with no major consequence. With a few exceptions. Namely the crux of this little story. The Arms dealer.

During that time, while trying to sell the Blazer, I had the ad running in the local newspaper, I had also posted a few flyers around and even had signs on the windows indicating it was for sale. I was getting lots of calls inquiring about the truck, where I was located and how to get there. Lots of folks were coming by, some just stopped and looked and drove off, some drove it and said no thanks. Other than the character who tried to grab it for $700, I had no other offers on it. Until this guy showed up. The majority of the process was routine, he inspected the car, asked some questions about the mileage, and the state of the car, pointed out that the body work wasn't that great (ahem, you mean the old blue jeans that I patched the holes with?) and how did it run. "runs good, as advertised." Then I cranked it right up for him to see. Started up, ran nice and smooth, took it for a ride and came back. Nothing too noteworthy, and by this time I had developed a little shpiel about the whole thing, runs good, body's a little rough but its reliable, and the 4x4 works good, a good winter car, blah, blah, blah... I was a regular used car salesman. So when we get back, I asked him if he would like to buy the truck. (Did you know that most sales are lost simply because the Salesman DOES NOT ASK his prospective customer to buy it!) After many rejections, and "I will think about it"s, I was pre-programmed to say, "well thanks for coming to look at it anyway", and may have even started to say that when I was taken aback. "Yeah I think I want this truck." The guy stated rather matter of factually. "OK great, well just get me the money, and I will sign the title over to you and its yours." I couldn't believe that I was finally going to sell my truck, and no hard ball haggling to boot, or so I thought!

"Well, I want the truck but I have a little problem. I am a little short on the cash, in fact I don't really have the money." Well that puts a little damper on things, I was thinking. He went on, "Yeah I don't have the cash on me right now, but would you consider a trade." At this point I started looking at the mid-70's model Ford this guy pulled up in. It looked to be in even rougher shape than ole Bucky, and besides I was trying to get rid of the second car not acquire another older one "I really don't know about that" I started, "what did you have in mind, your car for this?" "No" He replied, "do you like guns?" he asked. Curious, although not really interested, I asked again, "possibly, what did you have in mind?" He started walking toward his car, and beckoned me to follow him. He took a quick look up and down the streets, and then opened his trunk. The back looked like a weapons cache. In fact had they found this in Iraq this past year, George W. Bush might have made a little speech about finding the weapons of mass destruction... Was that a Bazooka I saw in there. He pulled out what looked like a military issue M-16. "M-16" He confirmed, "with two loaded clips of ammo." Handing me the gun (sans clip) "that's got to be worth about $300 I figure." He reached in and pulled out another, "Russian Kalishnikov Rifle with two clips of ammo." An hands me the AK-47 rifle, "that's a good assault rifle" he added "fully automatic, not like the dumbed down ones they sell at shows, got to be worth about $500 I am thinking, You like handguns?"

Perhaps I was foolish not to take the weapons, for old Bucky. Two big problems with that, for starters I had no idea what the weapons were worth. Second, I really had no one to sell them to. I mean had I known some Al-Queda or Taliban or some Iraqi resistance fighter wanna-bes, or had I a certain friend who knew a friend type of thing, maybe. As it was I had no designs on starting my own militia, and while I really liked the Bazooka, I don't think having one around with an RPG or two inside of an urban city limit is too practical. That and the fact I really had no idea where these weapons came from, were they stolen, used by some band of terrorists. One could have been a murder weapon, and all I need is some nosy crime scene guy coming by asking to see my revolver and implicating me in a series of murders. Who was this guy anyway, for all I know it could have been Timothy McViegh, the Oklahoma City bomber. There were reports he was in the Western New York area right around that time. No I had no use for the firearms, and respectfully declined this persons offer for Barter.

Despite all that the epilogue of this little tale is far less interesting. I eventually sold the truck. Tired of dealing with all the calls and weirdos. I lowered my price down to $2100. This kindly older gentleman came by and gave me what he said was $2000, which in actuality was only $1700 in cash. (What is it with some of these folks, is it that they really can't count, or do they think that I won't count it) Well if it was a tactic, it was the right day for it, cause even when I told him, "There's only $1700 here" His reply was, "You don't want it?" and that was all the negotiating I did. He got me on the right day, as I didnt re-count the money I just stuffed it in my pocket and signed over the title. It was a sad day indeed. However that is not the end of the saga of Bucky the Trucky. There is one last twist to this tale. In those days I was fond of speculating on garbage penny stocks. I basically wound up sinking $1500 of the proceeds into a crappy penny stock named Unigene (symbol: ugne) I think I paid roughly 1.30 or 1.25 per share. It proceeded to slide down to no where and I wound up selling it at right about a quarter, and thus I managed to turn Bucky the Trucky into about $250. Then of course I ran into him again.

I was driving to work in the legal publishing company I was then employed with in 1994. When I turned down this one road on route to work. There was an old gas station where the guy basically sold hubcaps only now. There in the lot was a sharp looking Black Chevy S-10 Blazer. No rust holes, no painted over denim. Solid fenders, solid looking door. In fact it looked like a new truck. For some reason I happened to look at the trailer hitch in the back, the one on old Bucky was not straight it was slanted on an angle from an incident years ago with a Mercedez-Benz that was blocking my driveway, ahem! Well I noticed this Blazer also had a angled hitch. So I pulled in and took a look. Then the old guy comes out of the hubcap store. Immediately recognizing him, I shouted almost gleefully "Is that my old truck". Although had I stopped to think, maybe I would have not been so gleeful. "Yeah it sure is" He responded. "Wow" I went on "I could hardly recognize it" "Well it did need a lot of work... " he started, and I was suddenly feeling a hot flash like he might accost me for some ailment I was unaware of, I think he realized that, and stopped in mid sentence, and smiled, and said "good truck though" "Yeah" I responded "it sure was a good truck!" With that I never did see old Bucky again, it was safe to say though that he wound up in good hands.

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