[TR] vehicle offers while driving a TR

[Michael Porter]

On 5/24/2017 6:17 AM, Matt wrote:
> I figured there would be some interesting tales.

The closest I came to having anything offered was as a consolation 
prize.  My very first car was a `63 Spit, and I had put it up on blocks 
one winter and stored the tires in a closet in my apartment, thinking I 
would do some work it needed in the spring.  In the interregnum, the 
police were embarking on an abandoned car clean-up campaign, and they'd 
identified it as abandoned and they'd traced the car back to me.  Um, 
how, exactly, did you trace ownership? "Oh, we checked the license 
plates."  Then you realize it's still currently registered, right?  "Uh, 
yeah."  That means it's still insured, right?  "Um, yeah."  So, if it's 
still registered and insured and it's on property I rent, it's not 
abandoned, right?  The police lieutenant said, "ah, I see what you 
mean.  I'll take it off the list."

A few weeks later, I wake up one Saturday morning to the apartment 
buzzer going nuts.  One of my more spaced-out neighbors is jabbering 
about the army taking my car.  Sure enough, I go out to the parking lot 
and someone has taken the car and even the blocks it was sitting on.  
Eventually, I track down the car.  The National Guard had brought in a 
flatbed with a crane, wrapped a chain around its middle, hoisted it onto 
the flatbed, and then dumped it on its nose in the junkyard.  So, with 
it wasp-waisted and frame bent and no shop space, there was no way I 
could salvage it.

When I called the police and demanded to know what happened, they 
couldn't explain it.  Said the car wasn't on their list.  A few weeks 
later, the police lieutenant I'd talked to originally called, and 
somewhat sheepishly admitted that he had taken the car off the police 
list, but that he'd gone into the hospital before calling the National 
Guard to have them take it off _their_ list.  So, my Spit, which I'd 
bought in Hawaii when I was stationed there, had driven cross-country, 
and for which I'd had great plans, was perhaps the only car in history 
to be totalled by a double hernia.

The cop really did feel bad about it, and a week or so later called me 
to say that, maybe, he'd found another car for me.  The owner didn't 
want it and they were going to pick it up for him in the clean-up 
campaign.  It was a really ratty-tatty `58 MGA with a seized engine.  I 
knew that without a shop and the tools necessary, and going to school, 
besides, I was never going to be able to make it roadworthy, and had to 
pass on it.


Cheers.

-- 


Michael Porter
Roswell, NM


Never let anyone drive you crazy when you know it's within walking distance....