I went to get a sticker today on my slant six 67 Barracuda. I usually drive across town to have a friend inspect it, but he doesn't really look too close, so I wanted to see what an impartial inspector would say. I went to my neighborhood gas station, around the corner.
The guy tried to stare me down, which doesn't work on me, since I just smile and look like I've just met my new best friend. He looked over the car shaking his head, and admittedly it could use a new top and some paint.
"Everything works," I said.
"It had better," he said. Still not charming me out of my socks.
He took an alarmingly long time on the car before me, and then finally had me drive in.
"So everything works, huh?" he said.
"You don't like old cars, do you?" I asked, sympathetically.
"You have an exhaust leak."
"It doesn't have a catalytic converter which may be why it sounds like that," I said. "It didn't come with one."
We waited for the machine to process its information.
"Are you a mechanic?" he asked.
"Yeah," I said, without going into specifics.
"Where do you work?"
"Well... I fix my own vehicles." I had assisted at a friend's garage during the late 80's, but I was going with my S.O.P. of being friendly and vague.
He rolled his eyes, and sneered for a while longer. I smiled back.
I figured he would give me a rejection sticker, but he slapped on a fresh sticker, as if it was a booby prize, without even checking to see if the horn worked.
"You came here because you didn't think it would pass at a real garage, didn't you?" he said by way of a goodbye.
"I think it would pass..." I offered, but then figured, what's the use?
Someone summed it up for me a long time ago when they said, "There are a lot of nice places in the world, and Boston isn't one of them."
