The year was and I was, as usual, working two jobs. My partner in the latter enterprise, a brilliant half-Filipino named Greg, was also my office mate in the former.
What a sweet gig that was. Our clients each forked over between twenty and two hundred bucks a month to share their dreams, opinions, and products with the world. For a pair of twenty-somethings with very few actual expenses, it was a dream come true and the only problem was figuring out where to spend all the money. Once, I helped him clean out his desk at work and we found three uncashed paychecks totaling just over six thousand dollars. You get the idea. He was in the world, as the Apostle Paul would say, but not of it.
Although Greg drove me nuts sometimes, I liked him β and I needed him. My wife and I started looking after him a bit. Eventually, we all moved into a hip, tall-ceiling condo. Greg chose to sleep on a bare mattress in a room filled to waist level with books, unfolded clothes, and pizza boxes. Where were we? Oh, yes: the Colt. Big Blue paid for our dinner pretty much every night of the week, and those dinners swelled with the ranks of the contractors, the subcontractors, and the hangers-on.
At one of those dinners, a sub-sub-contractor mentioned that the death of his father had left him in possession of an 85,mile Plymouth Colt. He wanted it gone. Two hundred bucks was the price. I had it in my pocket, so the next day the title, and the car, were in my hands. From the moment I put the Colt in gear, I loved it. With 81 horsepower to push pounds, it was sprightly enough, and the grey-vinyl interior was dismal but durable.
Visibility was absolutely superb, the cowl was low, and the very small complement of controls was easy to operate. Think Honda CB as an example. They were all well-made, durable, a bit bland, and difficult to identify at a distance. They were all under pounds. They could be had with vinyl floors and, usually, four-speed transmissions. Only rust could take them out of circulation, really. They were good cars.
