Of bondo and scam artists

Speaking of the good old ’88 Accord, here are a few highs and lows with this car. (This is getting classified under Stories from My Youth because, well, all this happened when I was younger. Is it sad that I’m classifying anything before I turned 30 as “My Youth”?)

Sara got it our sophmore year in college. Being one of the few people who had a car, we used it often. I remember one time driving the whole softball team to a game in the car. That’s right – 10 people squeezed in there. Don’t ask me how. We were in college and not too bright.

Our first accident that we had was leaving for Minnesota for Christmas break and not more that 10 miles after we left, we were crossing an overpass and the kid driving the Firebird next to us lost control and knocked us into the guard rail. I still drive by that guard rail just outside of Hudsonville whenever we take trips to Grand Rapids and remember that night fondly. Well, maybe fondly isn’t the best word.

The car was driveable, so we went on. For whatever reason (probably the mental exhaustion from all that), we stopped for the night somewhere in Wisconsin. The next morning, the car battery was completely dead because there was damage to the flip-up headlights and they were attempting to close all night long. So we spent the morning getting a tow to a garage and getting the battery charged. Good times.

There are other great stories. Like the time I lent it to a coworker while in the film business, and he managed to rip the front bumper off when he hit a concrete embankment while parallel parking.

But the coup de grâce was in the spring of ’98. I was driving up Sacramento Ave. when up ahead a light turned red. There was also an ambulance sirens heading towards us, which may have contributed to the confusion. The guy ahead of me slammed on his brakes. I slammed on my brakes. The woman behind me decided to use my rear bumper as her preferred method of stopping her car.

She had one of those vans with the vertical attachment to the front bumper. Thus, this left a nice rectangular dent in my bumper and the side panel above the passenger side rear well folded up a bit. The car was still driveable, but the insurance company bought out the car instead of fixing it, since that was the cheaper option.

One day, as I was leaving the Menards parking lot, I start seeing a guy in a pickup truck behind me honking his horn at me. I eventually figure he’s flagging me down. We stop and talk. He hands me his business card from a body repair shop and informs me he can pop that dent out of my bumper for $150. Considering the repair would have cost me over $5000, I figure this is a bargain, so my young, gullible, trustworthy self agrees to the deal.

We go back to the parking lot where he did make a valiant attempt at popping the dent back out. First with some hand tools and then he tried hooking up a chain to his truck and pulling it out (thus the two screw holes in the dent where he attached lag bolts to my car). But none of it worked. To his credit, the fold on the side did decrease slightly and the bumper straighten out a tad.

He said he needed another tool and could do it properly. He would come to my apartment the next day with it and finish the job. Then he slapped a bunch of bondo on the side dent. I paid him half of the amount and told him I’d pay the rest when he finished the job.

I never saw him again.

I tried calling the number on the business card, but they never heard of him. I now figure he must have just had that card in his wallet. Perhaps he was a customer.

I’m slightly comforted by the fact I only paid him half, but I still kick myself for paying him anything at all. He really left it looking worse than it was. I could have slapped bondo on there better than that.

So, lesson learned. In the big city, you really can’t trust any strangers off the street.