(Bill’s story continues from an earlier post.)
Just a bit more on my first car: I was working for a CPA firm (a very conservative group (white shirts, ties, hat, late sixties, early seventies). We often audited banks, and the managing partner and I were going to audit a branch in a neighboring county. He asked if I would drive, and of course he was dressed like a typical CPA with his hat. The branch bank was situated in front of a line of stores with parking dividiing the bank with the stores.
As we neared the bank, the Partner said to park near the bank, but not in its parking area, so that we could observe people as they went in. Being the employee that I was, I did so, and we watched. We had been there only a few minutes when the Partner, Mr. D, pulled out one of his expensive cigars and lit it up. I said, “Mr. D, what are you doing? No one smokes in my new car!” to which he promptly threw the expensive cigar out.
We resumed watching the bank, but suddenly a convoy of police cars showed up and circled around my car. We were to find out that one of the employees had noticed that we were sitting in the car watching the bank, and called the police. Between the out–of–town license plate on the Hugger Camaro, and Mr. D hunched over in the front seat, we must have looked suspicious. We all had a good chuckle about this particular audit. Mr. D drove from then on.
One day it was my turn to drive the staff to lunch. As young staff accountants, we decided to eat in the flats at some go–go place. As i got behind the cab only of an eighteen–wheeler truck we came to to an uphill part of the street, and for some reason the truck stopped short, and I had to slam my brakes on. I stopped about four to five feet behind this truck, and when the truck started up again, he rolled back onto my orange Hugger Camaro.
He took off , but I chased him through the streets of the flats, and followed him as he pulled into his warehouse, and tried to pull the door down. I jumped out of my car and ran under the door as it was closing, leaving the staff guys in the car.
Once confronted, the truck driver was actually very sorry about the accident, and gave me his insurance information, but asked that I let him know the cost before we turned it over to the insurance company. We worked it out that way and he eventually sent me a check.
The guys who had been in my car had been worried that I’d been getting beat up, but when I appeared at the door, they were very relieved. One guy thought that I was nuts to go after the driver, but my car had been damaged, and I wanted the guy to pay for it. A few months later, I ran into the same truck driver, and we had a beer and a few laughs about how the staff guys were worried that they also were going to get beat up.
A few months later my car tangled up with my wife’s car. I was running late for work and her car was parked behind mine in the driveway, so I asked her to back hers out so I could leave for work. She backed hers out onto the street, but moved forward as I was backing out. Crash! My back hit her front.
We still have some laughs on this one.
Bill Svec