Thanks to Robert over at Middle Zone Musings, whose monthly meme this month was about anything on “transportation,” and as I was fading in and out of driving-subconscious this morning on the way to work, which is where I do my best what-to-write-in-the-blog thinking, an older Corvette with a younger guy drove past me. Fast. Jerk. Envy is a terrible thing.

I had a Corvette once, a brand new cream-colored one, 1976. Cost me, if memory serves, around $9,000.

Here’s how I got it.  I was in Wichita in the Air Force, but had a parttime job downtown. One of my downtown friends worked in a bank and one day he calls me, all breathless and excited which was not like him at all, being a banker and all.

They had just foreclosed on some motorcycle shop and the bank had been asking for bids for the inventory. But the inventory was not actually in the store yet but on the way, having been purchased from some Canadian company. They didn’t even know how much, what it was, worthless or not. Did I want to bid? There were no other bids.

I said “sure, why not?” So, I bid $3,000, maybe it was $5,000, for the ‘inventory.’ Sight unseen, no one else was so daring stupid.

When the inventory arrived, it was19 brand new Can-Am dirt motorcycles. In boxes. It filled up two storage lockers I had to rent. Sheessh.

I hired an airman to put them together for me, for the favor I gave him one, and the others I sold to guys on the base. It took a week, and I think I sold them for less than $1,000 each. I traded one for stereo equipment and another for an old catamaran sailboat,which was really smart because it was Kansas. And I did not live by the lake.  A few guys paid me like $20 per month for years.

In short order, I had made, after taxes, about $9,000. Just like that.

I was 25, with a paid up Corvette, life was good.