The Auto Auction

So let me start this at the beginning. So our present governor, Martin O’Malley, is a complete azz. He has raised the taxes on everything and cut back on everything all so that he can say he left Maryland with a billion dollar surplus when he runs for president. I can taste his presidential run. Do not vote for this man, America.

Anyway, MTA in Baltimore does not go your fukking way. Tuesday, I had the worse ride home. I had so many different people’s pelvises pressed up against me I swear I needed a cop, a CSI, a bath and counseling by the time I got off the bus.

So, Wednesday I had taken the day off to do some errands. Nothing like doing errands on a week day when most kids are in school and most adults are at work. I remembered that Baltimore’s impound lot has their auction every 2 weeks on a Wednesday. Lucky me, or so I thought, they were having one on my day off.

I figured if nothing else, I’d spend a few hundred dollars on a car that would get me from point A to point B and spare me the little piece of Hell that is Maryland MTA presently.

My last car was bought at the Bel Air auto auction and it ran great until I sold it. It needed more work than I wanted to put into it after a few years. I sold it to someone who worked on hoopties and everyone was happy. Gas prices were/are on a rollercoaster ride. I figured I’d wait it out. I didn’t know O’Malley would lose his damned mind and shut down mental homes and just release them into the streets of Baltimore with the rest of the moderate crazies. Can’t tell who is who anymore.

Bay…be. The stories I could sit here and type if carpal tunnel were not a factor.

Anyway, I woke up to a warm rain and thought maybe that would work in my favor. That perhaps the crowd wouldn’t be too thick. I’d never been there before. If nothing else, I appreciate the experience. I hope I never have to go back.

It was one of the most desolate places I’ve ever visited. I’ve been in cheerier cemetaries. While in the Caymans I took a tour to a little spot called Hell. I don’t have any pictures because it disturbed my soul. This place could have been Hell’s parking lot.

It was raining so everything was muddy. There was no grass. Not even WEEDS!!!! You know weeds grow any and every damn where. But nothing grew there. The mud was cracked like in a desert. I didn’t want to step in it for fear that I’d track something toxic back out of the gates and into the world.

Sound dramatic? Well, that’s how I saw it. Can’t help that.

There were rows and rows of cars in different states of death and decay. Some didn’t look too bad, like maybe their owners just didn’t have the money to pay their fines and get them back. While others looked like they had been there since they were new. There were actual burnt out cars, which stressed my soul because I wondered were there people in them when they caught fire. Several accident wrecks that made me wonder about the condition of the people who last rode in them. Then there were a couple vehicles with some suspicious dried blood colored splotches in them.

You’d have thought that would have been enough to send my azz right back out the gates and back to civilization, right? Well, there is nothing civilized about Baltimore’s transit system anymore so I stayed.

At the Bel Air Auto Auction, you are allowed to come and inspect the cars the day before auction and 2 hours prior to auction. Then you go and sit or stand in a large open air building and they drive each vehicle into the building and you bid there. In a covered building. Protected from the elements.

At the Baltimore Impound Lot…they put one of those bull horns atop a small city pickup truck. You know, one of those small trucks that is about the size of a VW Beetle. I can’t tell a Lexus from a Lincoln so I never know the name of any vehicle that I’m not responsible for.

In front of the pickup with the bull horn is another vehicle with a driver and a guy with a clipboard. The guy with the clipboard is key here. He calls out the numbers of the cars to be auctioned off. He yells off the numbers to the auctioneer. The auctioneer is the poor sucker who gets to walk the impound lot with us bargain hunters looking for a deal.

For nearly two fricking hours I walked out there in the rain, in the cracked mud, among abandoned vehicles. There were a couple trucks that made me sick in my heart. They were definitely workman’s trucks. Someone who was a skilled laborer. Their tools were still in the bed of the trucks. They sell as is at the Baltimore Impound lot. So how ever they got them, that’s how you get them.

We passed one car with a condom sitting up on the dashboard. I hope dude had a back up. People’s lives were still in these cars. Telling stories. *hunches shoulders* It was too creepy. I didn’t buy anything.

Not that I didn’t bid. Old cracked faced, tanning booth, biddy kept out bidding me! Heffa! After a while I got pissed and bid on one she was about to get dirt cheap. Like for $200. I had zero interest in this vehicle with four flattened tires. I was just pissed that she had outbid me on every vehicle I had been interested in. I refused to let her get this one dirt cheap. My dumb azz bid $450 on this vehicle that would surely need to be towed, repaired, excised, blessed, and a miracle performed on it to even get it to turn over. I am sure she just wanted it for parts. There were a few people there buying up junk cars.

Anyway, after my bid, I just knew she was going to nod $500. Heffa turned and walked away. I almost yelled: Bytch get your old azz back here and buy this damn car! *chuckling* That learned my azz. For a minute there I almost had it. My heart sank at having to fork over $450 on a vehicle I knew didn’t work. Then her partner called to her and she looked back at it and nodded to him. Then he bought it. *relieved sigh*

But through it all, I had to stifle the urge to shudder at the scene before me. At one point it was raining so hard and there were so many people that I didn’t put up my umbrella because it just would have been hitting people in the head. A thought ran through my mind real fast: I hate buying junk.

There it was. I hate spending my hard, hard, hard, HARD earned money on junk. I stayed the whole auction, even through the scooter auction but I didn’t buy a thing.

And I didn’t feel bad getting my azz back on the bus to go home either.

I’ve decided I’m going to try my best to be a very good person in this life. I am hoping to make it to Heaven. I am hoping that God will ask me is there anything special I want if/when I get to Heaven. And I’ll reply, Yes, Lord. Let me chose O’Malley’s purgatory. I don’t think it is too bad. He gets to ride a bus for a millennium or two. Just getting on sardine packed tight buses and getting off to wait in the heat, rain, cold, snow, hail, etc for a couple thousand years. Having total strangers pressing their private parts against his body. See how he likes having a guy’s pissy smelling crouch beside his face while he’s sitting down on an overcrowded bus on a summer’s day with no AC or *excited yell* OR on a cold winter’s day with the heat so high it feels like it is 100 degrees Fahrenheit and you’re melting inside your winter coat. See how he likes having crazy people talk to him about whether or not they will die poor and he hasn’t even made eye contact with these loons.

Oh yes…yes yes yes yes yes! I’m betting they’ll be others in Heaven that will have even better ideas and we’ll have a millennium or two to make sure he feels our pain. I’ll be sure to show him just as much mercy and consideration as he’s shown the working class citizens of Maryland.

*sighs* I bet I have some good dreams tonight. ‘Night…