Mr. Ferrari rolled up into Dishonest Used Car Dealership’s parking lot his usual hour or so late, only this time, he was piloting something new. Rather than his usual 5-series, he had a brand new Land Rover LR3. Mr. Ferrari regaled us with what a superior off-roading machine it was, concluding with a direct assault on my poor old Jeep.
”And they’re far better off-road than that piece of sh!t Jeep, or whatever it is you drive.”
He was probably right. My Jeep was pretty basic: small lift, mud tires, rear locker, skids – certainly no rock crawler. His Land Rover certainly better have been better – it was nudging up on $45,000, and my Jeep was $2200 at an auto auction and came free with eleventeen hundred thirteen thousand million pounds of dog hair stuck in the carpet. More to the point, my magnitude of not-giving-a-shit was immense, so I walked off. Mr. Ferrari followed me into the office, jawing endlessly about what a better rig his Land Rover was than my old Cherokee.
Mr. Ferrari: ”Not only is it better off-road, but if you pulled up to my country club in that Jeep, they’d kick you back out.”
Me: ”That’s nice. I’ve got better things to do on the weekend than stand around in a polo shirt with irritating people and hit balls with sticks.”
MF: ”Well, good, because they wouldn’t let you.”
After a few minutes of this, Colossal Redneck was getting tired of listening to Mr. Ferrari, and made him a bet.
”You know that there pile of concrete at the back of the lot? You should try an’ climb it. I’ll bet that thing can’t make it up.”
The Raver saw what was going on, and joined in on the conspiracy.
”Yeah! I’ll bet he gets stuck or breaks something!”
Mr. Ferrari was very interested in proving the value of his new purchase, and practically ran out to his Land Rover.
Back behind the building that housed the service bays was a pile of concrete from when we had the bays re-poured earlier in the year. The old floors were cut up into chunks about 3’ square by a foot thick or so and piled up for disposal. Of course, the disposal cost money, so therefore it had never happened. Thus, we had a mound perhaps 25 feet long by eight or so feet high of broken up chunks of concrete just waiting for someone with something to prove to try and climb it.
Mr. Ferrari idled the Land Rover to the bottom of the pile. He pressed a handful of buttons on his dashboard and began climbing. The thing actually climbed pretty well, until it got toward the top, when the small stock tires did it in. The front slid into a gap between two pieces of concrete, and the vehicle slammed down on its belly with a satisfying crunch. The peanut gallery, now composed of the entire office staff, let out the kind of “oooooh” you hear when someone gets punched in the face, and we proceeded to laugh our asses off about his predicament. Mr. Ferrari was thoroughly stuck, but he was so high in the air that he couldn’t even really get out of his vehicle to survey the situation.
”What the f*ck? This isn’t funny! Get something and pull me down from here!”
Of course, the best way to tell if something is funny is when someone tells you it isn’t. Colossal Redneck gave me a grin and shouted over to Mr. Ferrari.
”Alright, but first you have to tell everyone that you have a really small dick.”
MF: ”What!? Pull me down!”
CR: ”Your dick! How tiny is it?”
MF: ”I’m not going to dignify that with a response!”
CR: ”It’s the smallest dick in the world, isn’t it?”
By this point, we were bellowing with laughter. Mr. Ferrari shouted a stream of expletives, opened his door, and practically fell out of his Land Rover. The howling got even louder. He dusted off his cheap suit and swept an accusatory index finger across the audience.
MF: ”F*ck each and every one of you. Go get a truck, and pull me down, NOW!”
CR: ”Alright, alright, but just because you have such a small dick and I feel sorry for you.”
Colossal Redneck pulled his battered old Chevy pickup around and backed it up to the pile of rocks, intending to pull the SUV backwards and down. He grabbed a tow strap out of his toolbox, hooked one end to a clevis on his rear bumper, and handed the other end to Mr. Ferrari.
CR: ”Hook it to a tow hook or somethin’ solid. I ain’t gonna do it for ya’.”
Mr. Ferrari grumbled, hooked the strap under his new toy, and gave Colossal Redneck the go-ahead. Colossal Redneck idled forward to put tension on the strap, and gave a tug. We heard a creak, the Land Rover slid backwards an inch, and then unleashed a huge bang and crunch as the Chevy lurched forward a few feet. On the other end of the tow strap was Mr. Ferrari’s exhaust system, which like an idiot, he had attached the strap to. In the process of being forcibly removed from the car, the exhaust caught on the rear bumper, which was now hanging on by a thread.
By now, our laughter had gotten to the point where it was beginning to hurt, which was only amplified when Colossal Redneck walked back to see the damage and started cackling his stupid redneck laugh. Still stuck on the rocks was the LR3, only with exhaust having landed about ten feet away. Mr. Ferrari was livid.
MF: ”What the F#CK!? That thing has only 50 miles on it, and you destroyed it!”
Practically having a fit from all the laughter, Colossal Redneck gasped out,
”I know! And… the worst part is… you still have… a tiny dick!”
We left Mr. Ferrari’s new car up on the mound for a couple more hours before we eventually winched it down. Aside from the bumper and the exhaust, he had munched a rocker panel pretty badly when it got stuck. He refused to have us do the repair work, and as far as I know, he never drove it into work again. We hung the fugitive tailpipe on the wall above the door to the service bay for all to see.