a new car and semi-employment

We went car-hunting as a family unit last Friday. Dad is working a contract position for the state, and for some strange reason he gets every Friday off. So we all piled into the truck and went cruising around downtown Victorville looking for a vehicle for yours truly. We passed by the large dealerships on 7th Avenue without really meeting with much success. Number one, they didn't have what I was looking for: an inexpensive, medium-sized truck or SUV. Number two, they were all closed. (We weren't out that early, jeez.) However, right when we were about to give it up for the day, we happened upon a small dealership on Palmdale Road called Eagle Motors. Sitting in the parking lot was a white, noticeably undamaged four-door 1995 Jeep Cherokee SE. Missives like "$2995" and "LOW MILES" were scrawled on the rear windows. We parked and did an inspection. It seemed mechanically sound. There was a dent on the right rear fender, but that didn't bother us much. There was no noticeable oil leakage. The interior was old, but not overly worn or shabby. There was a slight amount of rust on the body, but nothing significant. All in all, it seemed a good deal. While we were inspecting the vehicle, a swarthy fellow with slicked-back hair and a polo shirt came out of the office. His name was Sal, and he was one of the salesmen. We talked with him, but he had little to say apart from a glowing description of the vehicle in front of us. At Sal's urging, however, Dad and I climbed in and took the Jeep for a ride around the block. I was pleased with the way it handled. It was a zippy little number (totally unlike a massive Ford Expedition which Dad and I had perused earlier in the week). The power brakes worked zealously well. We told Sal we were interested in the car, but we'd like to have it inspected by our mechanic first. He bucked and snorted a little, but finally agreed. We said we'd think it over. Later that day I called him and arranged to come pick up the car at ten on Monday and take it over to A-Action Automotive on Hesperia Road, near Bear Valley Road. And so I waited the long weekend, the Jeep growing on me the whole time, slightly worried that it would sell before I could go back on Monday and pick it up. With bated breath I drove into town that Monday morning. Whew! The Jeep was still there. Unfortunately, Sal wasn't. I had to explain everything to the proper owner of Eagle Motors, Carl, an old man with a stern glare, salt-and-pepper stubble on his chin, and a beer gut like a small porpoise. In spite of his imposing appearance, he was a decent ol' stick. Once I communicated the situation to him, he accommodated me quite cheerily. Since only he and his wife were in that day, there was no one to ride with me to the auto shop. So I offered to put down collateral. Carl asked for a hundred bucks and some contact info. I slapped both down (one on the desk and the other on a piece of paper) and drove the car over to A-Action. Steve Coultas, the proprietor and head mechanic of A-Action Automotive, also has a beer gut...but his bright eyes, sandy hair, big hands and jolly booming voice lend him a more congenial first impression. We filled him in on the situation, and he told us he'd give our car the kind of inspection that he himself would perform on a car he was about to give his own daughter. He said it'd be about an hour and a half. We thanked him and left. Mom (who'd followed me into town in the truck to pick me up from the mechanic's after I dropped off the Jeep) and I didn't know what to do with ourselves. We were in the downtown area, sure, but neither of us felt like traipsing around the Mall of Victor Valley for ninety minutes. We didn't have library cards, either. So we called up Dad at his office and told him we'd pick him up for lunch. We drove over to his office and then went to the nearest Farm Boys for burgers (well, I had a chicken club; I'm trying to cut back). Man, that was nice: just to be able to sit down in a burger joint and have some true American cuisine with people speaking English (and some Spanish) in the background, and the familiar stucco buildings with their red tile roofs glimmering in the hot Mojave sun outside the windows. Reverse culture shock is gradually turning into warm nostalgia. After that Mom and I dropped Dad back off and we went over to the Victorville post office to mail my brother Harlan a package. The line was hideously long, putting things into perspective for us Apple Valley residents. The good thing was, however, that between the burgers and Harlan's package, we'd used up the entire hour and a half. Or we thought we had. Upon returning to A-Action we'd noticed that the Jeep still hadn't moved from its parking space out front. Upon entering, we discovered that the shop was a bit backed up that morning and they'd be getting around to us in a little while. It'd probably be another 45 minutes, Steve said (as he frantically hurried around the office checking work orders). So, Mom and I just sat around in the tiny office (with its three AC Delco chairs and its piles of Drive magazines) and waited it out. Well, Mom did. I paced. Burns calories, you know. I telephoned Eagle Motors to apprise them of the delay and received a green light. I wondered if I should've given them more collateral. I walked back and forth between the wooden door of the office and the sliding glass doors across it (only two or three paces). These glass doors were blocked by large blue metal cabinets that had been placed across them to enclose the waiting area of the main office, but I was tall enough to peek over them if I stood on my toes. And stand on them I did, every four or five revolutions or so. Dale, the co-owner of A-Action, said I looked like an expectant father in the hospital waiting for his child to be born. "That ain't a bad analogy," I said. "I'm waiting to see if he comes out deformed." After about an hour or so, the affair was finished. It turned out that the Jeep didn't have quite so clean a bill of health as Sal had suggested. The brake rotors were below the legal limit for thinness. By law they'd have to be resurfaced and refurbished. The same was true of the inoperative blower in the ventilation system. As a matter of maintenance, Steve suggested we replace the serpentine belt; there was also a minor oil leak in the oil pan and the coolant system could have used a flushing, but those were minor details. The two major repairs were the rotors and the blower. Steve said we could either demand that the dealer fix those two problems himself, or else lower the cost of the car. He encouraged us to do the latter. Otherwise, he warned, the dealer would go with the cheapest fix and we'd come off the worse in the long run. That sounded like a good idea. Steve was nice enough to print up estimates for all the repairs on an individual basis, so I had some paper evidence to wave in Carl's face if necessary. In total, the two major repairs would cost about $250. On Friday we'd talked Sal down from $2995 to $2795. I decided to try to get Carl down to $2595, subtracting $200 for repairs. So we drove back to Eagle Motors. My heart was thumping in my chest. I'd never bargained for anything (successfully) in my life. The most experience I'd had was haggling for cab fare in Korea. I'd never even approached something like a car before in any previous transaction. But I was determined to do it. Mom and Dad had done most of the talking on Friday and I had set my face against them doing it again. It was high time I continued standing on my own two feet, irrespective of the fact that I was living in their house and eating their breakfast cereal at nine o'clock every morning. ...and it came off. I looked Carl dead in the eye, told him about what was wrong with the car (skipping the minor stuff) and told him I'd take the Jeep if he knocked the price down to $2595. He considered for a moment, then agreed. That warm, slow feeling of elation (the one that comes after accomplishing a nerve-wracking task) trickled through my torso and legs as we went through the motions. Carl took my information, entered it into a computer program, then printed it onto a bunch of forms, which I then signed. I then paid him $2800 (that was all the cash I had; plus tax the bill came to $2974.50, but Carl was kind enough to let me come back later and pay the difference). And then...after Carl scraped the "for-sale" epistles off the windows with a razor blade, I drove my new Jeep Cherokee off the lot. I stopped and put thirty bucks' worth of gas into it on the way back, but apart from that the drive was fun. Today I took the thing into A-Action again to have those major repairs done. They had to completely replace one brake rotor that was completely worn down (which upped the price by another thirty dollars), but they were successfully resurfaced. The blower now blows for all it's worth and the serpentine belt has been replaced. (Dad looked under the car yesterday and said the oil leak wasn't worth worrying about, and that the two of us could flush the coolant on the weekend, so we passed that over.) The bill came to $360. So, sports fans, that means I have blown one quarter of the twelve grand I saved up in Korea...but also that I am now in full possession of an operative, low-mileage, tough and capable automobile. Now I just have to insure it. In California. Yippee. So! On the employment front, I've heard absolutely nothing from any of the six or eight reporter's positions (ranging in location from Arkansas to Connecticut) I've applied to. I finally got up the gumption to call New Northwest Broadcasters' Anchorage branch, but was told that they had no on-air openings whatsoever. They requested my information and told me they'd contact me if anything came up. (And you know what that means...that's a polite way of saying 'Thanks, but no thanks.') I've gotten no bites in TV, radio or print. However...I have been officially accepted as a freelance writer for Demand Studios, based in the L.A. Basin. They're a sort of information-gathering firm that posts article topics on various subjects on its website (home, culture, art, travel, pets, sports, leisure, science, education, what-have-you). A large staff of freelance writers claims the topics, writes them up, and submits them. Demand Studios takes these results, packages them, and disseminates them to various online databases like eHow. It doesn't pay much; $5-$15 per article, usually, or royalties, but still, it's better than nothing. At least somebody accepted my help. Anyway, I wrote my first article for them today, a nice little "strategy" piece (which, according to their style book, means a 50-word overview and then a series of chronologically-organized paragraphs, separated by subheads, offering tips on something). The title was "Tips on Learning to Play the Piano." I figured seven fruitless years of piano lessons made me, at the very least, unequivocally qualified to explain that. I adhered the best I could to their style and formatting guide; we'll see if it gets accepted. Currently it's under review. I'll keep you "Posted." So, now I have a car and semi-employment; more updates as events warrant. Oh yeah, and someday soon here I promise I'll get around to uploading photos of my Jeju/Gwangju getaway. You'll love 'em.