Border or Bust, Part 4: Buying the Yellow Submarine

We last left off waiting for Tammy to get home from work.  We had just sold our truck for 80 dollars and walked back to her house.  We had the money and hopefully were going to buy a yellow truck to hopefully make us to Acapulco.  We hadn't had much luck thus far, so we weren't super optimistic on it working out, especially considering it was yellow. I've never been a fan of the color, so it almost seemed like a sign it wouldn't work.  In reality, it was a sign that I should stop judging a book by it's cover. 

She made it to her house, where we smoked before we left. It was a bit of a long drive on a cold wet night in Oregon and I don't remember much before we got there honestly. We pulled onto the property and were floored.  It was a huge very well done ranch property, complete with log sign and gate with fencing.  The house was a massive log mansion and there were several huge log buildings, one of which housed the truck.  

A large, older man came out to meet us, who I'll call Harry.  He was the dad of the kid who the truck belonged to, a guy that had gone into the Navy and was off starting a new life with his wife now that he was done with that.  The truck had been his beater, driven all over the country and Mexico too in his youth, now forgotten on his Dad's property.  They were asking 750 for it, and we barely had that. We talked him down to 700, as we needed the money for gas...which we honestly did. 

He got right to it, getting in the truck to start it.  It was a familiar sight and sound to me because my dad had driven a similar truck most of my life, just a few years newer.  I knew they had their quarks but I also knew they were dependable as hell at the end of the day.  When he fired it up and it ran just fine, I knew this truck was literally our golden ticket.  I cracked a smile and we said we were in. 

He asked us some questions, like where we were headed and why we needed it.  We played the role of two wayward hippies, stranded for false work promises, just trying to get home.  We got the money for a truck, we just needed one to get on our way down south to another job.  We planned on taking the truck back to Detroit if our job south didn't work.  He took it without much shit.

Tammy told me she needed to use the restroom, and asked if I'd accompany her to the house to do so, so I did.  The house was massive and gorgeous.  The woman of the house, Harry's wife, I'll call her Nosy, was there to greet us.  While I waited for Tammy, she grilled me.  Evidently, she was a native Mexican and she wanted the specific area we were headed.  I had looked at a map, so I knew Chula Vista was near the border so I told her that.  I didn't realize why she was so anal about it until later.  She got the nickname nosy for a reason.

We returned to the garage and he pulled out the title and realized his son didn't sign it.  It was at this time that he mentioned he was a former cop in San Diego, so it wasn't something that should have happened.  He struggled with what to do, as it was technically illegal to sell the truck, but he knew we needed it and he honestly wanted to be done with it. 

He took us to the house and just copied it.  In the other room, his wife argued with him for almost 15 minutes on how it should be handled.  It seemed he wasn't interested in appeasing her, and she came out to essentially grill us again.  It was bad enough to where Tammy asked "What the fuck was that lady's problem?" when we left. 

He returned with the title and said that they would put out a notice with the DMV inten days that they were no longer responsible, so the registration wouldn't be valid after that.  We knew then, we needed to be over the border before those ten days were up, preferably much sooner than that even.  He seemed inclined to ignore any red flags he was noticing and I was grateful for it.  We gave him the cash, got the keys and got into the truck.  

On the way out the the driveway, John stalled it.  Partially out of nervousness and not knowing how to drive this specific truck, and partially due to the fact that it was sitting for months.  We got it going and headed back to Tammy's for the night.

In downtown Grants Pass, the truck died at a stoplight.  I couldn't help but cry.  John stalled it again, accidentally.  In the process of trying to get started again, he flooded the fuel filter.  Not knowing what else to do, we pushed it onto a side street and decided to come back in the morning.  

I'll end it here, as the next day is yet another story in itself.  Getting the truck was a huge close call in our situation and at the end of the day it seemed like we had just wasted more than 1500 dollars on two different trucks that didn't work.  We weren't for sure why the truck died at the end of that day, so things seemed pretty bleak.  

Tammy's heart was breaking watching it, so she offered her floor to us for the night.  She was going to take us back on her way to work in the morning, where we would attempt to get it running again.  It was a scary situation to be in once again.

Thanks for reading!