But Wait! There’s More!

When the nice man came to take the car away, I had only managed to loosen one of the two screws that fasten the rear license plate to the car. I asked him for his help with the other one and that’s when the final figurative wrench was thrown into this literally life-or-death transaction.

He said not that’s part of the deal because cars with CA license plates are worth more because they don’t have rust from road salt. Bitch, please. This is bullshit because surely I'm not the first to notice that California has a longer ocean coastline than any other state so the likelihood of a car living near the beach where the dew is salty from ocean spray is higher here than in, say Indiana. Also, you don’t need the license tag to establish California registration when I’m holding out a registration paper from the California Department of Motor Vehicles. But I choose my battles and this was one I was not, let’s just say, too invested in.

There was still some white-knuckled suspense when he noticed a slight discrepancy between the vehicle registration number (which the Brits identify as the chassis number, not the engine number) and the various pink slips, certifications, expired registrations and other paperwork. The title to the car was in TOG's deceased ex-spouse's name too. The driver took pics and sent them to his boss and talked to his boss on the phone, and at one point I heard him say, so shall I take the car or not?  The whole world held its breath long enough for me to devise several murder suicide scenarios. 

Then he handed me an envelope with the certified check and I signed the papers and cried like a baby and DDK (Doctor Doctor K) handed me a glass of good bourbon. DDK later took my picture standing in the empty carport with the glass in one hand and the check in the other. For the record, my tears had dried by the time the picture was taken.

So, I took videos of the poor car having its rotten tires inflated so they would roll when the big chains pulled the car up and onto the tilted bed that would carry it to some rich playboy in Dubai who would race it with camels and drive it into a bridge abutment within days of it’s glorious restoration. One of the tubes started swelling out of a hole in the rotted tire like a dirty black piece of bubble gum. It popped as loud as a gun shortly after the truck bed was tilted back to level, but it heroically held out long enough to get the poor car on the truck before it gave its life for the cause of freedom.

So, I texted TOG with the half dozen short videos showing the car being loaded onto the truck and driving down the driveway, into the street, down to the stop sign and out of my life forever. It was a very emotional afternoon involving much medicinal bourbon and texting.

ME:  Bad news. The license tag had to go with the car because it’s worth more as a CA car.

WISIMH:  Which of course we both know is crap because I also handed the driver an old title I’d unearthed with CA DMV all over it. And plus, we both know the real reason is that I’m punishing you for being such a jerk about this entire episode. The student has now become the passive aggressive master.

TOG:  That’s illegal. It’s a personalized plate with my HAM radio call sign and its illegal for anyone else to have that.

ME:  Perhaps if they tried to drive it with the registration sticker from 1988, but they probably won’t do that. At least until they get new tires.

TOG:  I have newer stickers. I kept registering the car through 2003. I just didn’t put them on the tag.

WISIMH:  I’m shocked. Shocked that you managed to keep throwing money away paying to register the car for years and not even bothering to put the tags on. This is so unlike you I feel like I hardly know who I’m texting to.

ME:  Well, you have the buyer’s contact info. You can call him and offer to send him the updated stickers and registration papers in exchange for the license tag itself which is illegal for him to have.

TOG:  I’ll give the stickers to you when we meet for lunch tomorrow.

WISIMH:  And I’ll give you the gold doubloons I found in the trunk and we’ll call it even.

ME: Perhaps you have missed something here. Perhaps you don’t know how done I am with anything ever having to do with that car ever again.

Yeah, I said that not in my head.

When I met him the next day, I had an envelope of paperwork including some amazing handwritten correspondence from the manufacturer as well as remaining documentation and paperwork about the car. Before I could hand it to him, TOG handed me a small stack of adhesive blue registration stickers for the dozen or so years he’d been planning to restore the car. 

I put them in the envelope and gently placed it in his hands. It was a short, sober ceremony in which so much was so solemnly conveyed without a single word being spoken.  It was a shared moment of silence for the dear departed car that had for so long symbolized all that regrets we both had about our complex and unrestored relationship. Now all that’s left is our abiding love and deep respect for each other. And a single room full of crap.