[LastPlaceComics] Hand Em Over

Punkie

I had a pool table, a professional tournament style, I couldn't get rid of, even if I paid someone. It was maddening, because people didn't understand that this was a plaster-laid, felted, slate top and the entire thing was 1300lbs. People thought a pool table was light like a dining room table. In order to move it, it had to be de-felted, have the plaster cracked, and the three huge 400+lb slate pieces moved individually, and then the huge wooden frame disassembled. No company would touch it. The place we got it from went out of business, so I had nobody to buy this monster of a table that took up half my rec room.

Luckily, some collector was found by my assistant some 17 years later, and finally, it was professionally removed. I paid $6000 for it, and while I only got $800 for it, I would have PAID to get it removed. So I was pleased to see it go and get my rec room back.

Dharma Curious (he/him)

Y'all wanna talk hoopties? Let's talk hoopties.

Two great stories below all the issues.

I had a 1990 Oldsmobile Regency. Google it for the full understanding of just how hoopty this hoopty was. I had it in ≈2012-15

An automatic, the gears were fucked, you drove in neutral, neutral was reverse, and park was reverse. There was no park. You put it in neutral and put on the e brake.

To crank it did not require a key. You just turned the little plastic nubs on the ignition.

The doors did not open from the inside, you had to reach out the window to open them from the outside. It also did not lock correctly, so it could always be opened from outside. Occasionally the driver's door would stick shut and could not be opened, so you had to scooch to the passengers door, or climb out through the window.

If you turned on the windshield wipers the radio turned on or off, depending on if you had it on or off when you turned on the wipers.

If you turned on the headlights the wipers came on. Period. Which then fucked with the radio. I used to have to physically take the wipers off and raise the little metal bars if it wasn't raining, so that they didn't screech on dry glass.

It had no muffler, and was so fucking loud

It had no blinkers or tail lights, so I bought a set of trailer lights and stuck them on the trunk. Wired toggle switches. If you wanna turn on left blinker, rapidly switch the toggle for the left blinker.

In short. Hot fucking mess.

Stories:

We drove this car from Tennessee to Florida when helping someone move. He put us up at Fontainebleau in Miami. We drove this hoopty in, and had it valet parked. The look on their faces was absolutely fucking priceless. They thought we were the clampetts.

But the best story is when my brother and I were at a campground. For reasons I won't go into, we were staying at a campground with our dogs. No one could know we were there. My brother has IBS. He and I went to bed in our tents, and at some point he got up to drive to the bathroom/shower room things. He gets in the car and goes to crank it and it won't crank. His stomach is upset and he decides he just has the walk the half mile. But oh no! The windows are up, the car won't crank, and he can't open the doors!

He repeatedly called my name and phone, and I just slept through it. He sat in the car for nearly 5 hours while he watched a family of raccoons eat all of our food. Including each individual egg from the carton. He had video of it for years. The only person who could know where we were was our mom, and he called her repeatedly, leaving the saddest voicemails that she kept for years.

"Mama... Please help me... I'm locked in the car... The raccoons are eating our food... I have to go to the bathroom... Please help... Mama... Please help"

When my parents finally got there, he told them not to wake me up. He went to the bathroom, and then when he got back he crawled into my tent, put his mouth by my ear and screamed my name as loud as humanly possible. Scared the hell out of me. He then made me watch the raccoon videos while he berated me for sleeping through it.

Tarquinn2049

I guess the tape didn't hold, mirror fell off sometime during the car jackers time in the car.

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Fantastic story, thanks so much for sharing

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I’d be worried about it falling off and killing the people behind me…

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Thank god he didn’t shit in the car.

I really thought that story was gonna go differently.

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I had a Jetta. One of the least hoopty hoopties I’ve owned. But as the years went on and miles piled up, in typical VW fashion, the check engine light would come on for no reason. Would pull codes and nothing. But of course inspection would fail.

It hadn’t come on for a few months so I took it in for a 3rd time that month to renew reg (would reset after about 100 miles). Sitting there in the inspection lane, light winks on. I screamed at the dashboard and it blinked off. I stared in disbelief for a moment and it passed.

Thought it was a fluke but, no — any time it came on after that I would scream and it would turn off.

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Tbh I didn't consider that he wasn't having a heart attack until your reply

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The old comic trick of having a dotted outline to represent something that a character is noticing is missing would have been better.

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Firm agree

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My buddy had one of those things when we were in highschool, and his had all sorts of electrical gremlins and funky nuances. But I'll tell you what, most comfy car to hotbox ever. And with the size of that trunk, we could easily cruise around with 10 people. Best party-mobile ever.

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At first I thought you were describing the Shit Mobile from Trailer Park Boys (Ricky's '75 New Yorker) but then it just got better and better.

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I thought he got shot and now I realize he is noticing he lost his gun.

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Maybe the light in the dash was shorting, causing the light to turn on on its own

And screaming was juuuust enough to cause the short to break connection?

It's either that or ghosts

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This is going to be lemmy history. Omg that was so funny

Dharma Curious (he/him)

Haha. That's amazing. It's one of my favorite stories. My family collect outlandish stories by way of poverty. Lmao

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Definitely Ghosts

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Incontrovertibly.

/home/pineapplelover

I feel so sorry for your bro

/home/pineapplelover

This is why I love lemmy.