Car Guts and Skeletons

The boss was kind enough to let us leave an hour early today, so I found myself with an extra hour of daylight. Not wanting to waste it, I decided to visit the U Pull It scrapyard. A friend advised me to go there to try to find some metal hubcaps for my car. I'm tired of the cheap plastic ones that crack or break every time I go through the car wash, or if any work is done on my tires. My car is getting old and I certainly don't want to spend too much money, but a hubcap-less car looks kind of pathetic, in my opinion.

So anyway, I'm still dressed in my work clothes and three-inch heels and I walk into the trailer/office of this place and wow, it was like the parting of the Red Sea when I came in! The place reeked of testosterone and sweat and grease....and conversation pretty much ceased. Suddenly I was the recipient of sideways glances and feigned indifference. I'd like to think it was my overwhelming beauty and presence (*smirk*), but I think it had more to do with my invasion of their man-cave inner sanctum.

It was nearing closing time and when I mentioned what I was looking for, the entry fee got waived (perhaps being a girl was helpful in achieving that little perk) and directed "out that door and to the left" to the import car corpses. It was about a two-block walk. I picked my way gingerly across crunching windshield glass and automobile flotsam and jetsam and stuff that, well, I didn't really want to recognize. It was kind of creepy, walking through the skeletons of car bodies, and guys stopping to stare - "what the heck is she doing here?!"

Suddenly one of those guys hurried up to me and asked what I was looking for. I explained and he started to help me look. Unfortunately there seemed to be very few older Nissan Sentras and the only set of four matching hubcabs we could locate not only were the wrong size, but they were off of an old 70's era Ford Fairlane or something. I think my little Sentra would blow a gasket if I dared deface it with American-made hubcabs. Blasphemy!

I found out later that overall-ed, mustachio-ed Leo wasn't even an employee there, he was just looking for parts for his Mazda 626. As we picked our way through, he regaled me with descriptions of his 626, about Thanksgiving dinner being at his sister's place, and how he had dreamed of being a mechanic, but...

I thanked him for helping me and he insisted on "escorting" me back to the trailer, where the guy-talk volume got cranked down pretty quickly. Some guy accidently dropped the "f" word and was told to shut the hell up, there was a lady in the room!

This was my first trip to a junk yard (and probably not my last because I came away empty-handed), but I have to admit, there was a certain...chivalry, albeit a bit rough about the edges, about the experience. It's not often in this day and age of equality and whatnot, that I get treated like a lady. I felt a little out of my element, out of my class, but was surprisingly, and reluctantly, charmed. A caveat, however: this would definitely not be my choice on where to find a date.