I’m not sure if I told anyone this but the day Rocky and I found out we were pregnant, we had been to a Pull-A-Part (PAP) in Charlotte. For those that don’t know what PAP is, let me describe it. You pay $1.00 to enter inside a fenced in area. Inside you’ll find neat rows and rows of junk cars that are somewhat organized my make; imports here, Chevy there, ford there, etc. You get the picture. People go to PAP to find used parts at a fraction of the cost of new. For example, a hood costs about $23.00. Not bad, huh. Sure it may have a little damage or it may be the wrong color, but for $23.00, you either live with it or restore it yourself. Think of PAP as a yard sale for the auto do-it-yourselfer.
Since I’m not much of an auto do-it-yourselfer, I spent most of my time looking around on the ground for nuts, bolds, keys, or just about any other thing that had fallen out of a car. I think I found .56 cents on my first trip. So this past Saturday, Rocky, his friend Kyle, and Kyle’s dad Ken all needed to make a trip to PAP. So Cletus and I decided to tag along with them for posterity (or something like that). I wore my “sewer boots”, old jogging pants, and an old sweatshirt, cause PAP’s ain’t clean. I paid my $1.00 and I commenced to “looking for treasure”. And man, did I hit the jackpot.
First, I search out the minivans looking for loose change. Why minivans, you ask? Cause minivans are driven by Mothers who are distracted by children, errands, and cell phones. They, and their children, tend to loose things in cars and never look for them. They tend to contain the most loose change. First minivan nets me 1 cent. Rocky and the gang find an old 4runner (Rocky needs window switch thingies), so I dig around in it while waiting on them. I find another 1 cent but this time it’s Canadian. COOL! Now I’ve gone all internationale. I also find the remnants of a car’s emblem that reads “CR”. Perfect gift for our friend CR. Then I find what could turn out to be the greatest find EVER in a PAP: a matching pair of size 91/2 black paten leather high heeled ankle boots with zippers. Whoa Momma! They are HOT. I show the boys and they are very impressed by the find. However, Rocky doesn’t want me to take them home. I guess he’s afraid I’ll catch a foot fungus and give it to Cletus. Good point, the shoes get put in a trunk, hidden from the weather, for some other lucky gal (or gent) to find. The guys are through with the car and we go out in search of windshield for Kyle. That means IMPORTS!
In this section, I head for the most expensive cars, Acura’s, Mercedes, and Volvo. I figure rich people can’t afford to stop and look for loose change and I can reap the benefit. I find a penny here, a nickel there, several expired car registrations, and even a paper American express card. Apparently left home without it! I also find lots of mail, including utility bills, and some Guy in Concord names alsdfjaldfj gadjgaois sasodifasdf is way behind on his power bill. By now I’m approaching .50 cents and then I find it…hidden under a plastic bottle…a whole quarter. WOW! Who’s in the money? I’m in the money? Oh yeah, I picked up the fabric from a head rest along the way and turned it into a make shift pouch. The boys give me their small parts and I keep it along with my goodies. I also pick up a broken screwdriver and ratchet along the way. Sometimes you just need a tool to pry something open with and I’ve got ‘em covered if they do. Uh oh. Rocky and Kyle broke the windshield. As they’re looking for another one, I find a miniature Barbie doll wearing the season’s hottest fabric animal prints, a truck that’s been there so long that weeds are growing in it’s bed, and a car smashed so flat that we looked for signs of DNA evidence to indicate someone may have expired. Luckily we didn’t find any. Now we moved on to Chevy for seats for a project car Ken’s working on.
I don’t expect to find much money in the American car section. After all, it’s mostly made up of cars that hard-working every day folk would drive and we all know we’ve already searched for pennies under the seats to buy gas just to get somewhere at some point in our lives. I did find a working pipe wrench though. We didn’t find any seats, probably b/c the working man’s seats are worn out from working. So we head back to the Japanese car section to look at some prelude seats Ken found earlier. We saw the boots again. And found another quarter and some pennies. We headed out to checkout and I walked away with .93 cents, a pipe wrench, a socket and a ratchet extender. All in all, a GREAT day!
Here’s a list of some other things we saw along the way:
Baby shoes (which Ken thought I might should keep for Cletus but I passed on)
Children’s underwear
Lots and lots of hair bows and pony tail holders (lice was extra I’m sure)
Eye glasses from the 80’s (these were hard to pass up, okay, not really)
CDs
Love letters from “Big Daddy” to “Lil Momma” (which I really wish I had not been so privy to read)
An old car key (which we assumed would not crank the winning car)
An Audi car emblem (possible Halloween costume idea)
Perfume and cologne bottles
Bottled water (in case there was an emergency and we got trapped in PAP)
Lots of French fries (again, in case of an emergency)
And the list goes on and on.
So, the moral of my story is this: for $1.00, you can entertain yourself for hours. For $2.00, you and your significant other can go out on a date you will never forget. And for $15.00, you could have your child’s birthday party at PAP and you wouldn’t have to buy trinkets to go in gift bags for the kids. Give ‘em a free grocery bag and tell them Merry Christmas not go fill it up!
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