[PRCo] Re: PCC Question

[Fred Schneider]

I still think my old buddy Donald Duke had the record ... From the late 50s onward he only owned four cars and one of those was in investment car.

The investment?   Well, back when the federal government was still giving away a lot of money for libraries, he was making money like crazy.   His accountant told him he had to find a way to have the business spend it or he was going to give it to the IRS.   So one year ... and this was before the IRS put restrictions on buying fancy foreign beasts ... Golden West Books bought a Porche.   I don't think the company used it much because it really wasn't suitable for hauling books from the bindery or to the post office.   Eventually ... remember, I said investment, he traded the Porche in the 1990s to his HVAC mechanic to have his house air conditioned.   That was after it went down in value and started going back up again.

The other cars.   Well in the 1950s and early 1960s he owed a Chevy.

In 1967, Don bought a Dodge Monoco Wagon.   John Swindler may remember the green Dodge from the time I took him there.   It lasted into the 1990s.  Don finally got rid of that beast when his mechanic was being forced to manufacture parts to keep it on the road.   By then it had over 430,000 miles on the clock.   No that is not a typo.   Four-hundred, thirty-thousand miles.   Don bought miles, not cars.   At one point I felt like sending that car a new set of door rubber seals for its 20th birthday because I remembered the time we took it up to Mount Shasta and went plowing down a dirt road after a Southern Pacific freight train and the entire inside filled up with dust that leaked in around the dried up rubber seals from the rear door.

Then he bought a Dodge Taurus.   He had that for about 15 years when he died early this month.   It was still in the garage in San Marino when I saw Don in May.   



On Oct 20, 2010, at 3:03 PM, Derrick Brashear wrote:

> The 90 caravan died with it's 3rd owner around 235k miles.
> The 95 spirit was totalled by a drunk around 96k
> the 99 neon was traded in for the 2002 sebring convertible (in 2005)
> which i am still driving (130kish) and hope to for many years and not
> many miles.
>