Chapter 23

Paul ‘The Giant Killer’, or ‘How to Kill a Snake’.

My girls had not forgotten me!

Even with all we had going on, my thirst for revenge was not forgotten. McKenzie, Gordon and Wells became a memory, not the ‘snake’, though.

I may sound old fashioned, but another saying about nature abhorring a vacuum was to soon come centre stage.

McKenzie, Gordon and Wells was not a small company. Their client, ‘Corporal Tinker Toys’ never seemed to run out of money and did not seem to care about it either. It was like spend it or lose it and then raise prices.

Our little bean growers decided that SMART II was going to be more than that, now. The old brand names were just that: old and set in the past.

SMART II offered everyone a chance to do something different. It was John and Vicky in the ‘Think Tank’ who were talking one day to Nadia, Mei and Ginny about names for the cars.

The comment about it being ‘too bad we were not electric, we could then say our customers really got a charge out of their cars’.

When this was jokingly repeated one night, the obvious question was if we were missing the boat here; but I digress again. That Giant first. In order to slay the snake we had removed him from the giant. ‘Corporal Tinker Toys’ though would protect their own, unless they got hungry.

Like a good ‘General’ we motored through dark and dangerous territory until we came upon the enemy again, the giant, then, we were made to realize they were pretty damn big.

How that elephant got eaten was, right on, one bite at a time. But this time, with some unplanned for help.

Hold that thought about electric cars for a bit later in the program.

Back to ‘Pest Eradication’ efforts in Detwa.

That became a lot easier than any might imagine. Remember that ‘Ying and Yang’ stuff. In the US there was another saying to ‘Let Nature Take It’s Course’ and so it did.

MB may have given it a push, with that decision to move down South and build a new plant there. Our partner VW soon followed us South. Audi, it seemed, had gotten very popular, and Porsche was selling everywhere people could buy one.

Nature, Fate, the Sun, Moon, or the Unions, or whatever; we had started the ball rolling and we were aligned now. The new car production figures showed a US union worker produced one car a day. The non-union worker made three. Corporal Tinker Toy got most of their workers production success when they paid OT, and after the ‘8 hour coffee breaks’. Gordo Wagons did not fair much better. The new ‘Super Duper Skateboard’ was not going to replace that ‘Rotund Roller skate’ anytime soon, or so it seemed.

When ‘Sisler’ went under, that new HQ was going to revert back to Chief Pontiac maybe. At a time when car buyers started to expect more than 6 months for a new car to last those ‘other’ cars that were lasting 20 years or more became attractive. Fuel, gasoline and diesel both, inched up hourly it seemed. The $ 0.14 per gallon price from the 60’s went up a bit too, it was near $5.50(Calf only) per, back in 2014.

‘Made in America’ was no longer was synonymous to ‘Made in Detroit’. In fact, ‘Made in Detroit’, became a curse not a blessing. MPG ratings of 48-50 on our partner’s cars (Not all of them) made more ‘cents’ than the fabulous 21 mpg (when averaged at 1,000 ft alt, on a dry day of 0 % humidity, when rolling downhill) that the US domestic brands were touting. We had a few surprises planned now for SMART II. Honda and Toyota never priced their cars to make $10-13,000 profit per car either. SMART II would not either.

The final straw that would break the camels hump, or something like that, was the economy. There was none. The crisis of 2014 that hit many northern cities, took a toll in Detwa too. As plant after plant that made ‘Tinker Toys’ closed, so did 14.73 supplier plants, 23.2 dealer brick and mortars and 67.89 related support firms including some other ‘snake infested’ Ad agencies.

Ahh, ‘there is a God and she likes me’ went through my mind as new applications for jobs arrived from some, not to be named, competitors.

Meanwhile back in the ‘Pink Palace’ now called ‘The Playpen’ or ‘Pirates Den’ by my lovelies, we had some serious decisions to make.

That idea of Disney World was sounding good about now. If we did not take Erica along, Baden-Baden might be worth the trip also.

Remember John and Vicky, that cute, voluptuous, that ‘11’ Vicky? Well, she had a GF, who had a BF, who had an invention he needed help with. She single handedly ‘ruined’ my holiday plans.

They, John, Vicky, Monica, and Harold came to see us. If Vicky was to be an ‘11’, then Monica was at the least a ‘20’ on a scale of 1 to 10.

When Diane and my girls saw her, about all I could see is Harold and a line of bodies around me. Diane very gently told me, “No! Sit! Now breathe!” She then closed my open and drooling mouth with her fingers.

I re-directed my attention to, what was his name, Oh yes, Hubert or something like that. My mind remembered at least 1 bedroom available in the house for Monica. I once again heard Gilbert say something.