STEVIEB GETS SCRAPPED

Have you ever been to a metal scrap yard to sell a car for scrap? Yeah, me either. Until yesterday.

I hadn’t spoken to my Mom in awhile so it was out of the blue when she called yesterday. She finally broke down and bought herself a new car. A top of the line Champagne Chevrolet Impala. What the call was about was her luxury Pontiac Bonneville. Luxury for 1990. She wanted me to come over after work and drive it to the place that was buying it and since it sounded simple I agreed.

The place which I thought was a dealer was completely across town. At what point to tiny eighty year old women just stop taking the interstate? It’s probably for the best. So, I followed her an hour across the city at thirty miles an hour. I was fine with this because at this point in her Bonneville’s life cycle the Charlton Heston is my president Bumper sticker had faded away.

Turns out the “place that was buying” her car was a salvage yard. As we pulled in I quickly had a twinge of sadness for the ol’ Bonneville. I was the one that picked it up and drove it home. But, then I realized that it was a NRA branded luxury automobile and realized it had to die.

The yard was huge and smelled on oil, stolen copper wiring and broken dreams. We parked and I helped the Momster into the sorely under-decorated yard office. This is where I met my dance partner for the occasion, Duke. Duke whistled through his missing teeth that he would most appreciated it if the car would make its way to the scales. Showing his disappointment in our relationship when I didn’t know where the scales were or how I couldn’t hear anything he said over Whitesnake blaring out of his headphones.

I took the keys and left the Momster in the office to drive to the scales. Duke wanted me to cut through two lines of massive semi-trailers and cut in front of another to get to his scale. This is when the car realized where it was heading. To the back room to put down. It promptly died. In the middle of the entrance with six large trucks ready to plow over me and the 1990 example of American luxury.

It didn’t take long for large men to start yelling at me to “Move my car!”

“This isn’t my car! They think this is my car." I’m wearing a Barneys New York polo shirt. I have an iPhone. I’ve been to white parties! This is not my car. I look over to see my Mom waving at me through the bullet-proof glass of the office window.

“Old woman, you may have given me life but not to die inside of the 1990s best example of General Motors engineering. That’s for damn sure.”

So sitting in a dead car in the middle of a scrap yard being swarmed by gentlemen that didn’t speak English and trucks ready to back over me at any second? What did I do? I opened up Facebook on the iPhone to see where people were going on Saturday night. Eventually a fork lift rammed me from behind and pushed me to the scales then to the row of other deceased cars. When I got I out I thanked the non-English speaking forklift driver for the ramming. I then walked back to the office to pick up the other outdated piece of American engineering to drive her home.