Today's title is actually a misnomer. The place started out as John's Garage in East Millstone, New Jersey, and in my memory, looks nothing like that website link might lead you to believe.
We, my mom and Dad and six children lived in a house my parents rented from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection on River Road, literally across the road from the Delaware-Raritan Canal The rental was part of a project that ran out of money where the state was going to create a huge heritage corridor along the canal but, failing to use eminent domain to acquire the properties bordering the canal, they had zero dollars left for the actual construction but did have all kinds of houses just going to rack and ruin so they rented them out to keep people in them. We were some of those people.
I was a commuter student, a freshman at Rutgers College, Rutgers University in New Brunswick. My first car was a 1963 Corvair Monza and everything you've ever read about Corvairs was, in my experience vastly understated and entirely true.
I doubt there was a week that went by when I didn't have the car at John's Garage (with a car wash alongside it), until he sold the garage to Steve, and then that's where we went. The car was so bad and so prone to failing in ways I previously thought unimaginable that at one point Steve, himself, took me aside to ask me if it was possible to find another garage who'd work on the car and if not, would I consider not telling people he worked on it?
Yeah, that's how bad it was.
He had a sign hanging over one of the service bays that read:
Labor:
$10 an hour.
If You Watch:
$20 an hour.
If You Help:
$50 an hour.
-bill kenny
1 comment:
Funny!
Post a Comment