Chapter 13

Whenever I have a serious decision or a difficult problem that needs time to consider, I head to my secret hideout. I felt my current problems qualified a visit to my sanctuary. Considering my last three phone calls, it seemed a good time to retreat. The modern term for my refuge is a man cave, but my place of solitude isn’t a cave, so I’m going to stick with variations of hideout.

I undoubtedly have a lot more weaknesses than just two, but the two I’m most aware of are my tendencies to date tall blonde-haired women and my love of automobiles. If I have to explain my feelings about tall blondes, then I doubt if we have much in common, and maybe you won’t find any of my musings of interest.

As far as automobiles go, I’m a car whore! I admit it, I love cars. I don’t go to automobile auctions because I would come home with every car I found the least bit interesting and I’d be broke. If it has four tires and burns gasoline, I am in love.

I was lucky enough to grow up in the days when gas was cheap and plentiful, and ten miles to the gallon was more than acceptable. I remember one weekend during my senior year in high school, and it was Friday evening. I had $1.00 in my pocket and that dollar bill bought enough gas to see me through the entire weekend. That buck bought me four gallons of gas. That was enough gas for my Friday and Saturday night dates, plus some extra to go cruising, and I still had enough for the ride to school come Monday morning.

Another thing, cars had balls back in the day! Best of all, they looked and sounded that way. My love affair with cars began when, at the tender age of thirteen and a half, I started driving on the back county roads of Whidbey Island (located in the Puget Sound), during the winter months. My family had a summer home on the island and often on Friday evenings during the winter, dad would pick me up at school and we’d go over to the cabin and return either Saturday afternoon or on Sunday. Mom didn’t care for the cabin!

During the wintertime, since there weren’t many people on the island and dad didn’t have a problem with me taking whatever vehicle we were in and driving around. Pop’s company had a Jeep pickup with a three-speed stick shift on the floor and I basically learned to drive in that vehicle. I drove that puppy all over the south end of Whidbey and by the time I was sixteen, I was totally proficient at driving.

Over the years, I’ve had more than my fair share of great cars, and lately I’ve been fortunate enough to buy and keep some of these works of art. I have a running subscription to Hemmings Motor News, and faithfully look through each issue at the different older cars up for sale. Luckily, one of the properties I inherited from my father was a five-story turn of the last century building. Over the years, someone had installed an old lift in the back of the building accessible only from the rear alley. The lift went from the alley to the top floor with no stops in between. I’ve leased out, or more correctly, Scott has leased out all of the bottom floors, but I’ve retained the top floor serviced by the lift. This is my hideout, and where I keep my collection.

Currently there are nine pieces of “art” stored there. On rare occasions I take one of them out and drive only on the very nicest of days. Two of them are Corvettes. I admit to being a kid at heart, and on some warm summer evenings it’s like being seventeen again. Put the top down on the ‘66 and with the wind licking at your hair and only the deep rumble of the exhaust to keep you company, that must be what heaven is like.

Also, among my group of cars is a super rare 1960 Pontiac Bonneville convertible. What makes it so rare is it has the biggest motor they put into a stock Pontiac that year, along with a 4-speed, floor mounted transmission. The car was so fast you had an absolute guarantee that it could pass anything on the road, except a gas station.

I also have other vintage cars. These include a 1967 Austin-Healey 3000 I found rotting away in a garage in Ohio. There is a ‘56 Mercedes gull-wing I purchased in damaged condition which I had shipped to Mercedes in Germany, and they totally rebuilt it; for a small fortune. And there’s my prized 1930 V-16 Cadillac Madame X Convertible Coupe, complete with the Cadillac build sheet, V-windshield, and factory chrome wheels. I ended up paying way too much money for that car. No, I’m not bragging about my collection. I’ve just been lucky in life, and I’m happy that I can purchase and preserve these cars.

At my apartment, I keep Faithful along with an ‘87 El Dorado convertible. All the stock motors in the Eldorados were pieces of shit, and somewhere around sixty thousand miles the motor dies. When my motor died, I had a mechanic pull out the old one and replaced it with a newer Northstar 5.2 liter. Now that I’ve done that, I realize I can never sell the car because of the stupid emission laws. It’s illegal to switch out the motor. I know I’m probably wrong, but I still believe I can keep any car running better and cleaner with proper tune-ups etc., than the current batch of junk with all of their emission controls and crap. I also know our government totally disagrees with my opinion.

My other vice has to do with MGB’s. Over the years, I purchased a bunch of ‘64 through ‘67 MGB’s in various states of disrepair when and wherever I could find one. I say a bunch, because I have many parts, and some of the cars I bought were rusted-out bodies, or frames which I used for parts. Some I paid less than $100 for and others a little too much. I really don’t know how many cars I could assemble if you could find all the extra pieces they might need. Sad to say, only one of them is actually running.

A few years ago, a firm in England purchased the dies to stamp out extra MGB parts, so it’s now possible to purchase exact parts for them, and they fit like a glove. However, when you need a part, they are rather expensive.

Arthur is my main man at the garage. Actually, Art is the only person at the shop. He’s a gentleman in his early seventies who supplements his income by working on my toys on a part-time basis. Some day we hope to restore more of the MG’s.

Art was once a mechanic and part-time driver of various types of old racecars. He has trophies to show for his efforts, and an incredible wealth of stories. But the best thing about Art is his ability to fix an automobile. He views them as I do, relics of a passing era. Each day they become more like the horse-drawn wagons they replaced. Cars now have no soul. We both feel that today’s cars all resemble each other, and worst of all, they only give you a few color choices to pick from, all of them very bland.

I know, get off the soapbox. I keep telling myself someday I should grow up, and rid myself of my toys, but I’m not quite ready to grow up. Maybe when I’m a little older!

I chatted a while with Art and we discussed Slim, and the problems related to it. He agreed both of Slim’s females sounded like their toothpicks didn’t completely pierce their respective olives.

One of the new pieces had arrived for the MGs, and Art was going to show me how he planned to install it. After around an hour of crawling under and around the car, I heard the grinding of the outside elevator. When it came wheezing to a stop, the door opened, and Scott stepped off. BJ sat up, gave him a half-hearted bark, and then lay down again in Art’s favorite chair.

Scott stood for a moment looking at me and remarked, “Thanks for returning my call this morning!”

I’d dropped the ball. “Oops! Oh fuck! Sorry ‘bout that, something came up and it slipped my mind. What did you need to see me about?”

Scott came over and handed me a piece of paper. It looked like some sort of official notice from the City of Seattle about an upcoming change of zoning. Nothing seemed to make sense until I reached the exact address of the change. It was the marina where the houseboat was moored.

I asked Scott what it all meant. “It means not only are they going to put you out of the marina, but they might evict every houseboat. The city has wanted to shut down all the houseboats for a long time. By the way, look at the name on the notice.”

Thank God, I was still sitting on the ground. When I saw the name on the letter addressed to David Wheeler, I probably would have fallen to the floor. I’d no idea Wheel owned the damn marina! I looked up at Scott and it seemed that he could read my mind. “Yes, it looks as if our ol’ ‘Wheel’ is the owner of the marina.”

“Have you tried to call him and see if he’ll give me a stay of execution?”

Scott laughed, and replied, “No, I just got the copy of that notice yesterday at my office and that’s why I was trying to get ahold of you. I thought you might want to talk to him yourself since you’re the new owner. However, this notice could mean he might be in trouble, too. Now, what was so important you couldn’t call me back?”

I proceeded to tell Scott of the morning’s happenings with Miss Rockingham and the stepsister’s jerk lawyer. I ended up, “I don’t know what the status is now. It looks like if there’s no existing will, my guess is the daughter and stepsister may take the estate to court, and unless my wolves are very good, there might be a chance the houseboat could sink before it’s all over.”

Scott tugged at his beard for a moment, and then started, “I’m not a lawyer, but I think as long as there are legal problems, Wheel can’t do a thing to have the houseboat evicted. Even better, this might cause the city to stop doing anything for a while.” Scott paused again, “Oh, and as long as the police investigation is ongoing nobody can move a thing, anyway.”

As far back as I can remember there have been articles in the Seattle papers about how the city wants to rid itself of the houseboats scattered around the various lakes within the city limits. It looked like the council was going to try to take another run at it again. I was confident when most of the residents in other marinas heard about the plight of Wheel’s place there would be a major ruckus down at City Hall.