The Car Gets Stolen - Part 3

So I am sitting in my newly recovered car and not happy. You see, the ignition is hanging from the steering column and I have no idea what to do. I am dripping wet and cold. I am out $110 and I know no one other than my sister in Bellignham I can call for help (and she's in classes). I think "rage" covers my mood. I cannot for the life of me imagine this day could get anymore botched than it was. Then I looked down at the gearshift and saw that indeed, the day could go even more bizarre.

Sitting next to my gearshift is, pardon the crudeness, a big, no huge pile of excrement.

A whopper. Huge. Gross. Beyond disgusting.

Something in me snapped. I was on the edge of a breakdown.

Not only had some bastard stolen my car, he had taken a dump in it. WTF?

So my spirit was dashed and my resolve was gone. I was lost. I sat there and despaired. But only for a few moments, because as my brain was un-shocking itself out of it's daze, it started to work the angles - literally. I thought to myself, given the interior of the car, how in the hell did Mr. Car Thief actually take the dump? I tried imagining myself doing this and no way did the angles work. More WTF? A dog perhaps? Big dog though. Still wasn't working for me.

A few moments pass and I realized that if I am going to get through this nightmarish day, I had to suck it up and deal. Working angles or not.

I did a quick priority list in my head and then started to execute to plan.

So I rummage in the back and find some papers that I can use to pick up the turd and chuck it out the door. Again, more WTF...

As I pick up the noxious waste, I realize both to my relief and absolute confusion, it is not real. It is a gag turd. A totally realistic, but very plastic gag turd. As I write this, I have no idea the how or the why of it, but gag turd it was. Okay one down, moving on.

I get out of the car and go into the office again to deal with the bimbette. I explain about the ignition and she says that "Billy Bob" or "Billy Joe" or some other "Deliverence" sounding name, could help me. She calls back and some portly yokel in denim overalls and a baseball hat motors out. We go look at the car.

He shrugs and says, "Why don'tcha just hot-wire it?"

I gape at him. "I don't know what they taught you in school, but I never had "Hot-wiring 101."

He spits his chew. "T'aint hard, you just get in and do this..." He proceeds to hot-wire the car. "That'll getcha back to Seattle." He looks at me like I am the stupidest city slicker he has ever met.

"Um, where is the nearest mechanic?" If Jethro thinks I am going to drive to Seattle in a recently stolen and now hot-wired car, he better switch up to a higher grade of malt liquor, clearly what he was drinking had him delusional.

"That'd be Roy's over on Something Street."

I thanked him and gingerly eased the car out of the lot. At one intersection, the car died and I had to re-hot-wire it. I was kind of pleased with myself, but also a little flummoxed because when in the hell would I ever need this new skill?

I got to the mechanic fine. Went in an told him my tale. He, out the the kindness of his heart and the grace of a true pro, puts me next in the queue, "We'll getcha fixed up and outta here in no time."

I sit and wait. As I am sitting and waiting, I listen to this guy do his thing. He is negotiating how to get some woman's car fixed on payments. I am shocked. He is like Mother Theresa of mechanics. He clearly owns the joint and is perhaps the nicest mechanic I had met, even today. Premium customer care. I'd bring my car to him in heartbeat going forward but I am tripped up by the fact I never plan on setting foot in Satan's backyard again.

Finally the car is done. Another $110. He takes the check no questions asked.

Yes, gentle reader, I am being lulled into a sense of the worst being over. But we know better, don't we?

So I am out of there. I hit I-5 going south and I am doing everything by the numbers. Best driving practices. No speeding, no recklessness. Just going to go home drop off the car and hit a bar and get blind, stinking drunk.

Five miles out of Bellingham, red and blue lights go off in my rear view mirror. I pull over and directions are blared at me over the bullhorn. Cop gets out of his car, gun drawn.

Next thing I know, I am legs spread, hands on the hood of the car. The cop is telling me I am under arrest for stealing the car. I respectfully wait until he is done telling me the computer has the car has stolen and I explain this is all a mistake and I can prove it. Well, the cop is sure he has got me and is very unresponsive to letting me explain my side of it. I finally convince him that the paperwork is in my coat pocket and if I can show it to him, it will explain everything. Very carefully, because I know he is completely ready to send me to Valhalla, I produce the paperwork. He looks it over and chuckles.

"Son," he says with a bit of a drawl, "do you know how many cars are stolen every year?"

I shrug meekly "Dunno, a lot?"

"Son," he continues, "do you know how many cars are recovered a year?"

Again meekly. "Dunno, not so many?"

"Son," he says with a bit of a grin, "do you know how many get stolen and recovered in less than 24 hours?"

I reply miserably, "Mine."

He hands me my paperwork and wishes me a nice day. If only my knees would quit knocking with the thought that the car could still have been hot-wired.

I drive back to Seattle and drop off the car, go to the bar and drink myself into a coma.

Epilogue

A few weeks have past and I get a call from my mother, whom I had been using as my permanent address.

"Ross, I think your car has been impounded." she said.

"Yeah," I told her, "that was a few weeks ago."

"No... I don't think so. This notice is dated a couple of days ago."

"Don't sweat it, Mom," I tell her. "It's just the system is slow."

Still unconvinced, she says, "If the car was in Bellingham, why is this notice from a towing lot in Madrona [a Seattle area]?"

That got my attention. I went down to the parking lot and the car was gone. I hadn't noticed because I had been bussing and hadn't needed to drive for a few days. Seems the Seattle cops were prowling the lot and ran my car plates that came up as a stolen car and they did me the favor of "recovering" it for me. Thankfully, Seattle at the time, didn't charge for the first five days of storage.

The first of many of "the Car From Hell" stories.