Kickin' Rocks

with Don Pennington

Gold Plated Hot Rods... Governmant Surplus

While kicking the proverbial rock around the other day and trying to filter out the really big lies from the regular lies about our latest ebay home runs (mine was a set of Mouseketeer Ears with somebody named Annette embroidered on them, paid $2), one of the guys announced that he really likes that old crusty musty stuff and was going to start buying lots of ears and other stuff, then build a new house from the profits. He said he is going to get out of rods all together and go big time collectible and musty stuff dealing. To help make this detour to the unemployment office sound some sort of good he tries to justify this with "little musty stuff takes up less space than a hot rod and the wife would like it more, they could work together all day...everyday". I'm not so sure, we all have a bunch of that junk and when piled together can easily fill space for ten or twenty cars! And I'm not sure about the wife thing either unless she likes the smell of musty old stuff that belonged to people with uncounted unnamed communicable diseases. This massive financial commitment was to be financed by the sale of his $75,000 hot rod, which was okay with his wife, and a small lien on the house, which she didn't know about! First off, that's a lot of ears and second, you really need to see the car to understand how screwy this deal is. With this announcement the above rock-a-teers suddenly became mute, eyebrows with weird shapes and eye rolling filled the air, you see... we have all seen his car. This is the same car that he built in his garage over an eight year period from grease covered swap meet parts that if they hadn't sold at the swap meet they were going to the dump... and mucho free help of many friends. This is also the same car that he has heavily advertised for $25K (no inquiries to date), praying to get somewhere close to that or maybe picking up a little by taking part trade, at 25 grand he would also be eligible for a spot in that Guinness book. Sounds like 75 is a good number, don't ya think?

Do you suppose the magic guy can poof his wand in our direction? Can this 25 becoming 75 work in other parts of our lives? Is your 2 car garage now 6 (still too small), you now have 6.9 kids (get my gun), 3 wives (interesting), no more girl friends (3 times zero is still zero) and you now drag down 150K a year! Apparently some eleemosynary (dime word of the month) earth shuttering event has occurred flipping the thrice switch to ON and twisting our buddy's brain into believing he could get that big a pile... for that pile. We always thought this guy was a half bubble off but we kinda let it slide, stones and glass houses you know.  

So how did we get to a place where our hot rods are worth more than your houses and are now THE negotiating point during marital spliture? What has pushed these cars to the far side of the moon? Some of the high end art that passes as hot rods apparently take a quarter million to build, but the question still lays there, are they worth that? Who cares. Those cars are in a different world, but why is it that a normal hot rod that was begging the market at $25K is now a sure sale (in the mind of the owner) at $75K. Some people blame the buyers, if they wouldn't have paid so much, others wouldn't bring that either. I don't think so.  It may be the "if yours is worth that...mine is worth more" syndrome, yup... that's it.. I think car ads should have two things, a picture and a phone number. If we don't know what the others are asking, we can't bump our price up... jus cuz. The seller would now be forced to contrive a new way to come up with THE NUMBER, something like what it cost me to build it or how much I need to get the wife a new diamond.   

There was this joke, "do you know why your lady gets those lines around her eyes as she gets older?" Lacking an answer from your target sucker you scrunch your eyes real hard, lean into his face  imitating your lady friend with those now infamous lines, and say "you want me to do what?" I think guys get those same lines when reacting to a moon-high-prices... "you want what for that rat?" It's a natural reaction to scrunch up you eyes and constrict other openings when uttering those words. If the price is way way out there, "how much?" turns into "cough-growlrowellgrowl-cough", apparently the constriction problem has moved north. It takes a few seconds to get back to real words, but soon things like "I saw one just like it for half the price" or "how did you come up with that price" start rolling off your lips. When the seller says something like  "uh... cuz tings jus go up", you know it's time to move on, you are not going to move this guy.

We are really into making rules, things like requiring someone to actually own a car to join a car club or if you don't pay your house taxes they'll come take your garage, and everything in it. Maybe it's time to set some standards for pricing these cars, look at the yacht deal... it could be something like so much a foot, better yet so "we" couldn't be blamed for setting prices too low  maybe the girls could set the prices. They could tie it to the paychecks they have been cashing over the years for raising the kids, cooking and cleaning up after us, wait... that won't work. Socialism, that's it, worked for centuries in Russia and look where they are today, the parts would be at cost and outside labor would be fixed at $5 an hour, that won't work either, the cars would just move to another country, go into the body shop business or just steal stuff. How about we could just let the government build them with an open ended budget, store them for five years or so and then sell off as surplus for two cents on the dollar, wait... if the government built them they would all be painted flat desert yellow or that lovely warfare green and only get you half way to Baghdad before breaking down, that won't work either. Well hell, we are hot rodders, creative people, we can figure this out!

Oops, can't do it now, time is up, I got to write up an ad for this old fender I found in the alley, it's somewhat straight, fits a 1932 Diamond T I think, pretty rare car I'm told, should bring about 2500 bucks don't you think. Not that I am trying to gouge anybody but I saw another ‘32 part for sale, it wasn't as rare a car, I think it was for a Ford, a model B-400 they told me and there was something else...NOS, whatever that is, and it was in an old shipping crate addressed to some guy named Henry, these whack jobs wanted $2000 for it. Mine's better, what makes them think it's worth that? Whackjobs. Nutzos. They are everywhere!    

Kick a Rock

DP