One Bad Convertible

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October 23rd, 2016
Back One Bad Convertible

Life was treating me well. I was newly married to a pretty redhead from Alabama. I had a good job as a reporter in Los Angeles. And I was healthy and full of vim and vigor.

There was only one problem. I had no car.

Shortly after my marriage, my car had 'given up the ghost,' and I needed to do some car shopping. We lived near the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner where I worked and my City Editor Tom Caton patiently indulged me while I looked for reliable transportation.

A few days after my car collapsed, I found it.

I was riding the city bus past a used car lot when I saw this white Chevrolet Impala. It literally shouted at me to stop.

I exited the bus and ran over to the sparkling convertible with the red interior. Perfect, I thought. Just perfect.

After negotiating with the cigar-chewing owner over price, we settled the deal and I drove home in my new -- well, nearly new -- convertible.

My wife, Nan, pretended to be impressed over my purchase, but I think it was pretense. We decided to celebrate our new car by driving to Las Vegas that weekend.

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We had a small dog, Tippi, a Chihuahua-Rat Terrier mix, that we took with us. All the way to Las Vegas, through Wickenburg, Kingman, Wikieup and Henderson, we kept the top down. Tippi loved the air and Nan had to hang onto her to keep the dog from flying into the desert.

There is a hill on the way to Las Vegas that is known as Mechanic's Hill. It forces vehicles to do some pulling and often brings out undetected problems in used vehicles. That was what it did to my white convertible.

We made it up the hill. But as we leveled off, red lights began going off all over the dashboard.

'Oh, oh,' I thought. 'We're in trouble.'

We were in trouble. We kept losing engine power and barely limped into Las Vegas. I coasted to a stop at a garage. The engine was steaming and when the car stalled, I tried without luck to restart it.

The head mechanic shook his head. 'I'll do what I can,' he said, 'but it don't look good.'

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We took Tippi and found a room at Sam's Town. After dinner, I played poker and Nan tried her luck at the slot machines. Around 5 p.m., I called the garage and was given the bad news that the engine had blown. Our sparkling Impala convertible wasn't worth a plugged nickel.

We took a Greyhound back to Los Angeles. Fortunately I had won enough money playing poker to cover most of the price I had paid for the convertible.

We had to leave Tippi behind since Greyhound would not permit us to take a dog aboard the bus.

We returned to Las Vegas the following weekend in a much more practical car that my wife chose and picked up our dog.

And that, dear readers, was the last convertible I have ever bought.

“sparkling convertible with the red interior. Perfect, I thought. Just perfect.”

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