Urban Legends

                            

   Its been around sixty years since I first heard the story, but I remember it like it was yesterday.

 I was at my cousins home in Houston. Going to Houston was always a exciting treat for me, the country boy. My cousins were "street wise" and when we got in an argument, they called me a country hick. On that particular day, a friend named Brown was visiting them. This guy was a few years older and big talker and knew everything.   At least at the time I thought he did. Over the years as I grew up I found out that most of what he had said was total crap.

On this particular day he was talking his head off to his attentive audience.  We were all ears and I marveled at his extended wisdom .  Then he said something that made all of us gasp. It went like this, "My brother works with a guy whose neighbors cousin,  just bought a Corvette with only 300 miles on it for Two-hundred dollars." . We were all flabbergasted . In the 1950's, when the Corvette came out, you would have been hard pressed to find any young man that hadn't dreamed about owning one. We all held our breaths, waiting for an explanation as to how someone had bought a $5000. car for Two-Hundred Dollars! Brown took a deep breath and continued.

  The story was that some guy had gone down to the Chevy dealer and paid cash for a new Corvette. He had taken off a day of work and he wanted to surprise his girlfriend by driving to her place and giving her a ride in his new Vett. He didn't even knock at the door ( In those days, people didn't have to lock their doors) and went right in. Searched the house till he found her in the bedroom with another man. He rushed out of the house infuriated. He didn't show up for work the next day and it was three weeks till someone found the Corvette on a dead end road in the middle of nowhere. His decomposed body with a pistol still clenched in his fist was sprawled across the seats. The buyer had got the car for $200. because (and the story teller paused and  rolled his eyes back ) "they couldn't get the smell out".  We were speechless.

The BS secession was finished for the day, as that story could not have been topped with anything.

I believed the story and over the years retold it several times. I perfected the part where I would roll my eyes and say " And they just couldn't get the smell out".  It was a story that never failed to please the audience.

I quit telling the story, however, when I got  to college. The first and last time I told it,  it got disputed with "I heard it was a T-bird" and another , " No, It was a new Cadillac!".

I became suspicious.

A year later I was working on a Merchant ship on its way to Africa, when one evening as the crew gathered around a tub of iced down beer, a similar story came out, only the guy had done it  in a new Thirty-Two foot cabin cruiser.

I couldn't count how many time I heard the story in many variations while in the Navy.  I became amused and the most interesting thing was how the story tellers would always roll their eyes as they said " and they just couldn't get the smell out".

It wasn't till many years later that I heard the term "Urban legend" and figured out that the story was only that. 

However, I remember that that day that I first heard the story, I secretly thought that I could have "gotten the smell out". If only I could have come up with another $199.

©2013