A Tale of Two Cars
The industrial estate lay silent in the blackness of the night. The usually bustling units and factories of the daytime were resting behind their padlocked gates. The silver car was parked beneath one of the few street lamps still working. The men inside waited. No one spoke. The money had been counted and lay in the bulging envelope in the glove compartment. A bead of sweat skated slowly down the driver’s temple. It was a balmy night. A cicada rasped in the undergrowth nearby above the sound of the nearby freeway. The driver glanced into the rear view mirror. The headlamps of an approaching car masked his face with light but slid noiselessly past.
A few minutes more and a red car approached. It cruised by them slowly and then turned and drew up before the large double gates of a deserted factory. Its driver climbed out and in the glow of the headlights unlocked the gates and swung them open. He climbed back into his vehicle and drove into the yard.
The silver car started up and swung round in the road in the glow of the street lamp and drew to a standstill on the street outside the factory. The two men got out and walked through the shadows into the yard. The driver of the red car was nowhere to be seen but suddenly a strip light flickered on in an office window. The office door swung open silhouetting the driver of the red car and briefly flooding the yard with light. All three men approached the red car and its driver opened up the boot, leaned in and took out the baseball bat.
The driver of the silver car clutched at the envelope of money in his pocket...
Whoa!...whoa!.....I think we need to rewind a little....
So...after finally getting back on the internet, Will has been busy since Saturday night, searching for cars on Trading Post. We decided on a budget of $3000 after our soul destroying and skin burning visit to the Moorooka Mile where we realised we would get nothing decent for less than that. Rather than run the gauntlet of dodgy car dealerships... ( I am sure there are genuinely nice, decent car dealers who love to give a good deal to mechanically inept homox-uals...but they are very hard to spot!) ...we decided the ‘private seller’ was a much better option...where finding someone with, at least some integrity was a marginally higher possibility. Will amassed a collection of ‘contenders’ to be considered but some had to be discounted as it turned out they had already been snapped up.
We always had ‘Mike Hunts’ (sic) Ford Ka as back up...but really needed something with a bit more ‘oomph!’ to get up that long, winding, hilly track to Frogknot!
Will focused on 4wd or Awd (All Wheel Drive) cars and our budget ceiling crept slowly higher!
Yesterday (Tuesday) we decided to hire a car for 3 days and walked, in the ever present sun, down past Archerfield Airport to the depot to collect it.
They gave us a silver Nissan Pulsar which after ‘Lemon Myrtle’ (Will’s car) and ‘Pixie Pixem’ (my car) felt like a limousine! It was also an automatic. I have never driven an automatic.
We drew up a plan of action and prioritised the cars we were most interested in.
Our first choice was a red Honda CR-V 4x4 in Loganholme. Its owner Chris had arranged for us to view it outside the factory he worked in.
We drove about 30 mins down the Pacific Highway and found the place using the satnav on Will’s phone. We parked up and found Scott who worked with Chris and who was holding the keys while Chris was out. Scott flipped the bonnet and we looked in pretending to look as if we knew what we were looking at. I wanted to say “Oh! It’s got an engine!” but I didn’t think it would help. We poked and prodded a few pipes and metal bits and ‘ummed’ and ‘aahhed’ like knowledgeable truckies!
We took it for a drive down the road and it felt and sounded really good.
We handed the keys back to Scott and walked out of the yard with as much masculinity as we could muster.
We texted Chris and said we liked his car. He wanted $3500. We said we would give him $3200 for it.
He texted back, “You’re on!”
Yay! But Damn! We still had the silver hire car for another two days. Typical! No cars for days and then two at once!
We drove back to Will’s mums and later in the afternoon went over to The University of Queensland to see the Jacaranda trees in bloom.
Later in the day Will had an interview at Chalmer Station Kindergarten as an assistant teacher. He came back saying he felt it had gone very well.
After tea we headed off to meet Chris and pick up our new car. He suggested we meet back at his work...
‘The industrial estate lay silent in the blackness of the night.... All three men approached the red car and its driver opened up the boot, leaned in and took out the baseball bat.
The driver of the silver car clutched at the envelope of money in his pocket...’
“I’ll just take out the dog’s toy” said Chris.
‘The dog plays with a baseball bat?!’ I thought...Heck! What kind of a dog was it?!
We met Gypsy...the dog. She hobbled into the office while we were signing registration forms for Chris. She looked like she would hardly have the strength to nudge the baseball bat with her nose never mind pick it up. She was an old Blue Heeler.
Chris was really nice. He was very young, late teens, early twenties and was reluctantly selling the car because he was going overseas...to the U.K on an ancestry visa. There is some synchronicity in that.
He had integrity. We handed over the money and Will drove ‘018 RXM’ home while I struggled with the automatic gear box of the hire car. But that’s another story!