The year was 1980 and I had filed for divorce against the lovely Barbara, aka wife number 1. She and the kids had moved back to Chicago and I had sublet my car lot to a friend and taken a job working for a rental car company, balancing their inventory and buying fresh cars. One day I was hanging around the lot when this young kid came in wanting to know if I wanted to sell any of the cars wholesale. We had a number of cars that had been wrecked or were not worth fixing, that sat in a pile waiting for God knows what. I pointed to the pile of cars and said, those are for sale, but since I didn't know him, I told him cash only. Ron was about 25 then and reminded me of Elvis with blond hair. Tall, good looking kid with his hair on his forehead. He bought three of the old clunkers and went off as happy as a clam. I didn't know at the time, that those were the first cars he ever bought. He'd saved up a thousand dollars and was determined to get into the car business.
The years passed along and we kept in touch, but he got into the retail business and I continued to wholesale. Much more glamorous but not as much money.
Ron's social life is the most interesting part of his story. He left an ex-wife and son in Michigan and moved out to sunny Arizona. He met a girl and moved her in with him and proceeded to have 3 children with her. They lived in a house that Ron had bought at 35Th Ave and Greenway. Things started getting rocky after a number of years and the lovely couple split up. Shortly after that, Ron started seeing the younger sister of his ex-girlfriend and moved her in with him at his new house and proceeded to have 3 children with her too! His youngest son is about 10 now. At Christmas, it's just one big happy family. Don't ask, I don't.
Six years ago when I awakened from heart surgery and more of less came out of the fog I'd been in, there in my room were a host of people and one of them was Ron. He was involved in a heated argument with Patty, my ex-sister-in-law, Barbara's sister, who lived in Chicago. She was screaming at Ron for bringing me food from the cafeteria downstairs. Did you ever wake up from a dream and your Mom who's been dead for 20 years is having a political argument with your dog and the dog is winning? Well, that's how it seemed. How did Patty get there and how does she know Ron? Why are they fighting? My Morphine must have worn off.
When I got home, Ron came to see me a couple of times and was selling me some pretty nice cars. He understood that it was hard for me to get out like I used to, so he'd call me on them. Then the entire business changed and I didn't hear from Ron for quite some time. I called him a couple of weeks ago, after realizing I hadn't heard from him in about 6 months. He was busy with visiting family and called me back when he found the Volvo convertible. I used to specialize in Volvos. I was known as the Valley's only unauthorized Volvo dealer. It was printed on my cards.
So that's the story of Redneck Ron. As an addendum, we lost Patty to cancer this past January, she will be greatly missed.
No comments:
Post a Comment