Born Chevy

Life has a funny way of throwing curves.

I grew up in a small town where there were many examples of "drawing a line in the sand". Catholic or Protestant, Republican orDemocrat ,rich or poor, white or non-white, local or non-local (if your family didn't go back at least two generations you were always referred to as "not from here".)

Another important life choice was whether you were Ford or Chevy. If your grandfather drove Fords, your father drove Fords, it was understood by all that you would always drive a Ford. It wasn't uncommon for a Chevy owner to say " I 'd sooner change religions than drive a Ford. "

I was born Chevy.. Learned to drive in my Grandpa's 57 chevy pickup. I bought a Chevy Nova when I got out of the service. Later I got a Chevy pickup and a Chevy Laguna. My brother had a used car lot and carried all brands, but I never considered anything other than a Chevy.

But, like I said before, life has a way of tricking us. Opportunity knocks and our lives take a different direction. In 1978 , after 33 years of being Chevy to the core, I moved back to my home town and bought the Ford dealership. Been driving a Ford ever since.

Joints

Joint replacements are shaping up to be like the Hysterectomies debacle during the sixties and seventies. I don’t have any way to prove or disprove what the experts are saying. I can only tell two stories that convince me that both procedures are mostly unnecessary.
  Old Man With A Bad Shoulder:
 I owned a small auto dealership and knew most of my customers on a personal base. I had one customer that was in his eighties and would come to my store once a year to get his vehicle inspected. He only drove about a thousand miles a year. One day he came into the parts department where I was working and I could see right a way that he was hurting. He was holding his right arm close to his body and his face grimaced with pain at every slight movement. I asked him what was wrong and he told me that he was going to get a total shoulder replacement in a month. I questioned why he had to wait in pain for such a long time and he replied that the surgeon was booked up that far ahead. He gave me his keys and I gave them to the mechanic that was going to inspect his vehicle. I had had problems with my knees and had found great relief after I started taking Glucosamine Chondroitin pills. I asked him if he had tried taking that for his shoulder and he said that he had never heard about it. He asked me to write it down and since his car was inspected, they left. A year passed and I was again in parts working when the same old gentleman came in and tossed an empty box on my desk. I was surprised and looked at the box and it was from Glucosamine Chondroitin pills. I did not remember our conversation from the year before, so I guess I gave him a curious look. “Don’t you remember me?” he asked. I was starting to remember what I had told him and asked, “ Did it help?” He swung his right arm around several times like a softball pitcher. “Did you get the shoulder replacement?” I asked. “NO!” he shouted. He then told me what had transpired. When he had left my shop the year before, he had stopped at Wal-Mart and purchased two bottles of the Glucosamine & Chondroitin. He started taking the supplement as suggested. After a week, he began noticing that he had some painless movement in the shoulder. It kept improving so much that after another week, he called the surgeons office to post pone the surgery. The surgeon got on the phone and became angry and told them that he could not postpone the surgery because it was too late to schedule anyone else in the time slot that he had set aside for him. When the old man heard that, he cancelled the operation. The doctor was screaming as he hung up the phone. He continued taking the supplement and was almost completely back to normal within six months. He kept thanking me for telling him about the supplement.
   Second Knee Replacement
  Another customer came in using a walker. I started to talk to her as he car was being worked on. She told me that she had had one knee replaced two years prior and was scheduled to have the other replaced. She was dreading it and had postponed the procedure several times. She had not fully recovered from the first surgery and was dreading another. Her surgeon assured her that it was necessary. Once again I asked her if she had ever used Glucosamine Chondroitin pills. She had not heard of them. I told her how they had helped me and also told her the story about the old man with the bad shoulder. She was very interested and left telling me that she was going to try. At least two years passed and one day a car pulled up in front of the showroom and the lady that had used the walker the last time I had see her, bounded out of her car and came up the steps to my office. “I need to give you a hug!” she said loudly. Once again I did not even remember who she was. I guess she noticed my curious look and said. “Don’t you remember?” I was in here a while back because of my bad knee?”. I remembered then and told her so. She then told me how she had purchased the Glucosamine Chondroitin pills after she had talked to me two years prior. It had taken about a month before she started noticing an improvement in her knee. Another month passed and she had quit using the walker. After two years she had no more pain in that knee but still had a pain in the knee that had the joint replaced. I won’t say that all joint replacements are unnecessary. I have a friend that worked for a freight company all his life and when he retired his knees were so shot and he was so bowlegged that he could have straddled a gas pipeline and touched his heals underneath. His knee replacements were needed. My experience is that he was the exception.

Dents

A few months before I gradated from the University of Houston, I started getting credit cards in the mail. That practice was later banned. I also got offers from all the auto dealers offering no-money-down deals on new cars. A friend, who I studied with, became the proud owner of a new Volvo. To prevent getting any parking lot dents on his pride and joy, he parked diagonally across three parking spaces at the far end of the stadium parking lot. While returning to his car one day, he found his car surrounded by police and wreckers. The police had been in pursuit of a bank robber that had lost control and plowed into my friends car.
    Many years later, when I was in the Auto business, I had a fellow dealer that told this story and swore it was true. He had just delivered a new truck to a customer and watched as the customer reached into the tool box that had been on his old truck and took out a hammer. He then proceeded to give the side of the new truck a good hit, leaving a good size dent. The dealer ran out and asked the customer what the hell he was doing. The old guy threw the hammer back in the tool box and said. " Now I don't have to worry about getting the first dent."
A few days ago I was walking through the parking lot at our local supermarket. There was a distressed young couple standing next to a new sports car that still had the paper tags. I stopped and asked if they needed any help. With tears in her eyes the young lady pointed at the sizable dent someone had just given them while they were shopping. I tried to console her by saying that it was not too bad and could be easily repaired. It didn't seem to help. I had been thinking of getting a new vehicle to replace our 16 year old Taurus. Maybe I will keep it. It has lots of dents.