”Tales From The Underbrush” documents, with occasional hyperbole, the experiences of the artist over a lifetime of interaction with what used to be called nature, now reinvented as the environment for reasons apparently best known by just about everyone in the world excepting the artist-writer. These wilderness interactions have come mainly while working as a geologist, briefly as a forester, but sometimes as just a guy whose principal happiness in life has been derived from being outdoors. Not that life in the wilderness, be it at work or at play has been without pain, discomfort, deprivation and even danger. Fortunately, the passage of time more often then not artfully blots out or at least dims the recollections that wound, substituting instead a recall that if perhaps not substantiating the aging athlete’s jest of “the older I get, the better I was”, at least allows tales to unfold that warm the memory and give substance to the life that experienced them.

The artist proposes to post monthly herein a chapter from his book “Tales From The Underbrush” in the hope that his adventures may be shared and enjoyed by those who might stumble onto this blog. This month’s entry continues the tale.

MR. SLICK GETS A HAIRCUT

“Appearances are often deceiving”

Aesop

“The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance – it is the illusion of knowledge.”

Daniel J. Boorstin, (American historian, 1914-2004)

The initial events of this tale did not take place in the jungles of Ecuador or the barren lands of the Canadian Arctic but rather in the jungle and barren lands that made up the used car strip along Decarie Boulevard in Montreal, and which was not far from my old neighbourhood of Notre Dame de Grace where I was born and raised. Excepting brief visits on business, I have not returned to my home town since the late 1970’s so I know not whether that “strip” still exists, but I would bet that the real estate that comprised it has come to better use.

It was 1964 and being in the middle of graduate studies, I once again had secured a summer job to help pay for “b & b” in the forthcoming academic year. In this case, “b & b” had nothing to do with “bed & breakfast” establishments but everything to do with books and beer. Not that the latter was on a par with the former of course, but was nonetheless of some importance to academic survival; but perhaps it is best if we no longer pursue the subject. The wonder of this summer was that for the first time in my geological field career, I was to work in an environment of relative civilization, including living in a hotel and driving to work every day! I was beside myself with excitement. I would have been even more excited if I did not have to work at all and could spend my summer devoted to another variation of “b & b”, namely babes and beer, but hey, the world is not a perfect place. I had therefore to accept the fact that I was reduced to only being beside myself, which was confusing because as hard as I peered in every direction, I could not locate myself at my side. To be honest, I have always found me to be more within myself, a hopeful state that would not allow me to lose myself if somehow I was located outside myself instead of beside and/or within myself. Such are the mysteries of states of being and the expressions they engender.

Being beside, outside or within, I had nonetheless secured employment as a senior geologist with a large American metal producer. The latter held a copper-gold exploration property in northwestern Quebec near the village of Taschereau, itself about an hour’s drive north of the famous mining town of Noranda. As I recall, work on this copper-gold property incorporated mapping, sampling and diamond drilling in an attempt to develop a commercial mining operation, and was one of a number of properties held by the Company in the region. The base of operations for this particular property was in Taschereau, about ten miles away from our project. As I understood it, while the crew I was to be part of would be supplied with a company truck to transport men and materials back and forth between the property and town, a personal vehicle would also not only be useful but would in addition offer certain scheduling flexibilities and facilitate access to the company’s regional office in Noranda where both business and the odd pleasure were to be periodically pursued.

Ergo, it would be in my interest as the big cheese party chief to own a car, a piece of machinery that had to date not been part of my worldly possessions. Needless to say, as a typically impoverished student, I was certainly in no position to even think of buying a new car, nor were my parents in a position to advance me sufficient funds to do so. Besides, they were too smart to do that even if the affordability factor had been there. So, a used car it was to be, and the cheapest of cheap of that variety it had to be, given the paucity of available purchasing power I possessed. We have all heard of the evils of the used car business, now quaintly re-branded as “pre-owned” as if the latter somehow means that being pre-owned means not being used. Perhaps these pre-owned, unused cars were meant to be bought as mantelpiece decorations or front lawn ornaments in place of those hideous storks. To meet my financial standards however, I knew that the only pre-owned car I would most likely be eligible to buy would not only be used, but would have been well-used, not to speak of possibly misused and abused. Furthermore, the enemy with which I was to engage was a formidable one: experienced, goal-oriented, disciplined, battle-hardened and tough, devoid of the standards that govern normal, civilized behaviour and completely devoted with messianic zeal to a creed that took no prisoners…..greed! I speak of course of the notorious used-car salesmen so immortalized in numerous films, books and church sermons. How was I, a mere boy-man empty of life experience, to overcome such a formidable foe without being taken to the cleaners?

Research baby, that’s what! Since the battle was to take place on the enemy’s ground I was determined to engage him on an equal basis; if not pound for pound, then at least by having equipment that would be as good as or better than his. I beg your pardon? There was absolutely no such inference. What I meant was that to achieve this, I had to quickly acquire a large inventory of particular and specialized knowledge. Knowledge of any sort, however general and useless it might be, is not normally an element that the world normally regards a boy-man having in over abundance or perhaps even in under abundance. Nonetheless I determined to overcome this dastardly stereotype by boning up on the art of buying a used car. In addition to the whole attitude thing, that is to say, being cool, detached, unhurried, bored with the process and appearing not to be interested in actually purchasing a car, all of which for this same young lad was a hilarious and illusionary deception, principally, if not completely to myself, I decided that the key to victory was to become as familiar with the tricks of the used-car trade as were those that were trying to pawn off their old “beater” inventory to unsuspecting buyers, particularly young, first time car buyers like me.

To do this, and remembering this was in the days before computers and the internet, I was left to scouring every book and magazine I could find on how to buy a used car, probably using up half my car purchase budget in the process. Nonetheless I deemed it not only worthwhile but the key to success in the forthcoming battle. At the end of weeks of constant research that had threatened to compromise my study for forthcoming final exams, I nonetheless got through the latter and emerged from the former with an impressive array of tests that should be undertaken on any used car under consideration for purchase. So impressed with my newly acquired knowledge was I and so confident of the superior results and value that this knowledge could engender that I briefly, very briefly, very, very, very briefly, thankfully, considered quitting my geological studies and becoming a full time car salesman. Talk about a little knowledge being a dangerous thing!

So it was that I determined to first scrupulously check the exterior appearance of any car that fell favourably under my eye. Cracks in the windshield, scratches, dents, corrosion spots, broken lenses, faded mirrors, worn wipers, missing hub caps, nothing would escape my eagle eye. Similarly diligent would be checks of all gaps in the body panels for evenness and similar width, any variation being a possible indication or a prior accident to the car. Check the reflection of the body panels. Were these reflections perfect or were there ripples in them and uneven paint quality? Check for rust spots on the panels. Open the doors and try to lift them up on their hinges, noting any excessive free play that might indicate body warping from a prior accident. Do the doors and the trunk open and close freely? Do the locks work? Does the trunk have a musty odour indicating possible leaks in the trunk? Has there been a suspicious and excessive use or air freshener in the car?

Then there was the interior to examine. Check the instrument panel. Were all the gauges working? Were there warning lights such as "check engine" that come on when the engine is started? How about the driver’s seat? Was it excessively worn that might give a lie to the odometer mileage, which while almost certainly turned back to an unknown degree as standard practice, might nonetheless lend suspicion to the assertion that the car was only driven on Sunday mornings to church and back by little old ladies? Did the steering wheel have excessive play to it? Then of course were the tires to undergo scrutiny. In the class of car I was to buy I knew that the car dealer could not afford to put a set of even moderately worn tires that he might have lifted from another car he was to flog. Therefore it was likely that I would probably be looking at the tires that actually belonged to the car in question. Check the tread wear and most importantly the pattern of tread wear. Was it even or was it worn more on the outside or inside of the tire tread, indicating improper balancing of the wheels and possible misalignment. Man, was I brimming with expertise!

Next it was necessary to check the condition of the engine. Again, knowing that the odometer reading was useless and a lie, there were nonetheless other indicators that might provide a clue to engine condition and wear. Two things were obvious in this regard. Firstly, on a Decarie strip used car lot there were no hydraulic lifts to properly look under the car for signs of oil leaks of either the engine or transmission variety. Secondly, any used car salesman worth his salt would invariably present you with a very clean looking engine, despite its possible one hundred thousand mile history. It is amazing what a fresh engine shampoo can produce! Notwithstanding this, any burnt oil smell under the hood, badly corroded battery terminals, obvious oil leaks, sludge under the oil filter cap and black deposits on the filter itself would be all signs of poor maintenance. Automatic transmission fluid and engine oil should both be clean, although both could have been put in that morning, as could moving the car to a new parking location on the lot every hour also cover up a kneel-down inspection for evidence of any oil leaks onto the pavement. Finally there was the actual driving test, usually around the car lot and rarely outside its boundaries. For automatic transmissions of the era, said transmission would be checked that it did not engage without a delay, nor with any excessive jerking or jolting.

But my piece-de-resistance was two other tests for which I was most proud and that would surely single me out as a true car expert. The first was to examine the car’s rocker panels for excessive corrosion. It being Montreal with its normally large snowfall in winter and its prodigious use of salt to help keep the roads free of ice, accelerated corrosion of car metal from this salt was a well established fact. The rocker panels beneath the car doors could therefore provide a reasonably good indication of the overall condition of the car’s underbody. This was not foolproof however, since replacing worn rocker panels with new(er!) ones was not unheard of when trying to flog an old car to an unsuspecting buyer. Nevertheless the inspection of a car’s rocker panels was a must for the newly emergent expert that I had become. The other test of even greater magnificence to my tiny little mind, was checking the shock absorbers. This was accomplished using a method that only a truly car-savvy and experienced insider could possibly know. That was me of course, having learned of this secret as I had from a forgotten issue of Popular Mechanics magazine. Standing at each corner of the car, and using the leverage of one’s body weight, the top of the fender was pushed abruptly and emphatically downward and then released. If the car quickly and evenly returned to its level condition then the shock absorber underlying that corner of the car was still in good condition and likely to provide stability and safety to that part of the car. If on the other hand, after compressing the corner fender of the car, it rebounded and continued to bounce up and down like a bobble-head doll, one knew that that particular shock absorber, while no doubt having had a very exciting life, should in fact be now heading for retirement in the old shocks home. Testing of all four fender corners therefore would allow a potential buyer to gauge the overall stability and safety that the shock absorbers would provide the car.

Armed thusly with this prodigious amount of expertise, if only of the academic sort and still untested in the real world, I nonetheless sallied forth brimming with confidence and with the firm expectations that my research was to bring great rewards in the quality-for-value quest I was about to undertake. I first did a general scouting of the used car strip which extended for several miles along Decarie Boulevard in Montreal. This reconnoitering took place over several days as I worked to establish my presence on the strip. I imagined that word would spread like wildfire that here was a cool and knowledgeable customer whose youth belied an obviously professional grasp of the essentials of car mechanics that would seriously challenge that of even the most experienced of car salesmen. After a few days I had narrowed down the choice of car dealers to several, based in no small part on the logistics of their lots, identifying those I thought I could get out of in my new car without ricocheting off and destroying most of the other cars on the lot. Oh! You guessed did you? That I had not had that much experience driving cars? Good for you. How perceptive!

At the time however, that had nothing to do with anything. It was just that I had identified certain dealers that seemed to specialize in the vintage, read price, of cars that I was prepared to consider, which is another way of stating what was my affordability index. I had of course practiced the art of bargaining in front of my bedroom mirror. I had been reduced to that form of negotiation with myself after my father, acting out the role of a used car dealer, had driven me to distraction and tears with his refusal to accept a deal that I thought was reasonable. What, I had asked him, was the problem of trying to undercut the dealer’s offering price by 90%? That approach had driven my father to tears also, but of a different brand than my own. So I took turns at the mirror, acting out the part of the dealer and the cool, knowledgeable prospective buyer that I was, unconcerned about the actual price of the car but merely wishing to maintain my reputation as a sharp businessman who would not allow himself to be taken by anyone, be it a lousy car dealer or some world famous financial magnate of similar if slightly inferior calibre to myself.

Laughed off several lots where my offering price for cars that had attracted my interest was apparently not up to their low standards, I ended up at a dealer who providentially had a wide straight exit driveway and an inventory of used cars that might have qualified for vintage license plates. I don’t recall exactly what the salesman looked like but let’s do a job on him. He was a large, beady-eyed, seedy looking individual dressed in a plaid suit, threadbare shirt and florid tie. How is that for stereo typing? Shifty and ingratiating he was, but I instantly knew that with my superior knowledge and practiced cool I had his number, and that he knew it. Casually and with deliberate nonchalance, I excitedly ran from car to car, cursorily bleating out questions as to their vintage, origin and alleged condition. Finally, with supreme indifference and studied disinterest I indicated to the salesman that perhaps, for the right price, I might condescend to take this pathetic wreck off his hands. I may have indicated that I was a movie mogul, looking for a suitable wreck as a prop for my next Oscar-winning movie, I cannot recall. At any rate, I then proceeded to conduct the myriad of tests that I had learned that would establish the true state of this car, an early 1950’s Chevrolet Belair as I remember, resplendent, well relatively so, in two tone blue and white, its prominent winged rear fender fins lending a certain flair that I identified as befitting such a learned chap as myself. A visual inspection of the car’s interior revealed no excessive wear. There were even two new floor mats placed on the floor in front of the back seats. It was when I did my famous shock absorber test that I began to smell victory. Did I see a slight narrowing of the eyes, a tightening of the jaw line, a barely perceptible paling of that florid complexion as the salesman realized exactly with whom he was dealing? Did I hear a slight sharp intake of breath as he sensed this was to be the most challenging potential sale of his entire career? After falling off a fender during one of my shock absorber tests, an event I put down to a particularly bouncy compression recovery, I casually remarked, but with suitable distain, that notwithstanding the pitiable and undesirable condition of the car, I might, just might, be interested in this wreck depending on how close to an absolute giveaway price the salesman might have in mind. Shifting from one foot to another, me that is not the salesman, my challenge produced what I discerned as a look of both relief and worry on the salesman’s face. Relief that he had a chance to offload what had obviously remained long unsold on the lot, but worried that my obvious negotiating skills might provide an impenetrable obstacle to a successful sale. Deigning to barely listen to his litany of the car’s attributes and splendiferous condition, I awaited with bated breath for a number that might fall within the budget I had so carefully put together.

“This has been a most unusual experience for me” said the salesman. “Rarely have I encountered such a knowledgeable customer, nor have our cars ever received such a thorough testing. I therefore have no recourse but to offer this car to you for a paltry $500.”

Showing complete contempt and disdain for this offer I turned away and made as though to leave the lot. In actual fact I had to use the washroom but was afraid to lose the deal if I did so. Steely-eyed with resolve I instead countered that his price of $500 was completely unacceptable and that I could offer nothing more than $525 for this alleged vehicle. Suddenly and with bewildering rapidity I found myself the owner of a brand old Chevrolet Belair and for which I had forgotten to request a test drive. As the salesman clasped his meaty hand in my sweaty one, I belatedly realized that I had upped his offer instead of undercutting it. This being of course a cash deal, and having only budgeted about $400 to buy a car, I was forced to run to a nearby branch of my bank and withdraw additional funds to cover the cost. My confidence, now under considerable strain, was further undermined when I again had to make a bank run to cover the cost of “license fees, registration fees, transfer fees” and a host of other apparent fees that I had not been aware of nor have heard of since. It was as though the salesman knew the complete contents of my bank account since that last bank run reduced my account balance down to the minimum necessary to maintain the account. The fact that I had provided for most of the direct car cost with several bags full of small currency bills and quarters, did not apparently qualify for a discount on the purchase price. It furthermore seemed to engender a certain amount of surliness in the salesman’s manner that belied the sense of triumph I was struggling to maintain.

Nonetheless, despite the few slight errors in the application of my expertise, I was now the proud owner of what passed for a car as I lurched my way out of the lot without incident and similarly wended my way back to my parent’s place where I was in temporary residence. I was now unsure as to what condition I had left the salesman, and was less certain that I had bested him in reality as opposed to the imaginations of my practiced preparation. I had imagined a scenario where the salesman would be crestfallen that his price had been reduced under my relentless negotiating pressures. That he had got a few more lousy dollars than he had bargained for did slightly undermine that fantasy but under pride of ownership and possession, those concerns quickly vanished as I assured my parents that their driveway would not long be despoiled by the spiffily clean if somewhat battered wreck that reposed there. I was to leave for Noranda in two days time, and wonder of wonders I was to drive there by car…………my own car and with me at the wheel! I had become a man…………..of sorts!

And so it was that in two days hence, the sun not long up on a fresh May morning, I bade farewell to a bemused father and a fearful mother, assuring them of the care I would take on the journey to Noranda, all on paved highways I reminded them. Some nine hours later I arrived in Noranda in time to check into the office of the company that was to employ me that summer. Several days later, I journeyed further along the highway north to Taschereau where our crew established headquarters in the main hotel there, which was just about the same thing as saying the only hotel in town. Compared to my previous summers spent tenting in the fly-ridden, swamp laden terrain of far northern Canada however, this rustic, if somewhat rundown hotel was paradise.

I first suspected something might be wrong when I became enveloped in what seemed like an unreasonable amount of dust as alone, I drove down the eight miles or so of off-highway dirt roads that led from the highway east of Taschereau to the Company’s exploration property. Notwithstanding the fact that winters in the Noranda-Taschereau region are characterized by brutally cold and snowy conditions, summers can be sweltering hot and uncomfortably humid. Air conditioning not being a standard feature of most cars in those days, and certainly not in the beater I had purchased, the only recourse to combat the heat was to open all of the car’s windows and turn on the fresh air fan. It was therefore with some annoyance but devoid of suspicion, that I attributed to excessively dusty roads, dried to the texture of fine flour by the sun and churned up by wind created by the car’s passage as well as by its tires, the fact that I felt like Lawrence of Arabia during a bad day in the desert. Thinking that the use of the fresh air fan was drawing in excessive amounts of dust, I resolved not to employ it in future. When that failed to alleviate the problem, I decided to make the trip back and forth to the property site with the car windows tightly shut, reasoning that I could withstand the stifling heat and lack of fresh air for the eight miles of dust roads that had to be traversed each way.

Bloody hell! Nothing had changed and with the windows shut I had absolutely no fresh air at my disposal, being reduced to a hacking coughing wreck as I struggled to breathe and see where I was going through the clouds that whirled inside the car. Now I was really perplexed. What the hell was going on and from where were all these dust clouds getting into the car? It took the accident of transporting passengers to solve the mystery. Up to that time I had made the trip to the property each day in my car by myself, the company truck handling the transportation of the other members of the crew. This one particular day, in circumstances I cannot recall, I was to return to town from the property with two members of my crew as passengers. The hacking and coughing from the back seat plus the frantic cranking down of the rear windows reminded me that the perplexing mystery endured, although I was not to know that it would soon be resolved. Arriving back in town my passengers informed me of what the dust problem was all about. With smirks and grins barely suppressed, they emerged from the back seat each brandishing one of the new floor mats that had come with the car. Mystified I stood there like an uncomprehending dummy until summoned to view the back floor of the car. What I saw left me in shock, and sick with the realization of what had happened. Mr. Expertise, Mr. Tough Negotiator, Mr. Slick had been had, and well had, for as I peered down at the back floor I saw something else that I should not have been able to see……………….the road! On one side of the drive shaft that passed through the centre of the car, there was a hole in the floor you could just about, well, drive a car through. The hole on the other side of the floor was not much smaller. The remnants of metal that made of the balance of the floor were as thin as paper, corroded to rusty fineness no doubt by the salt laden winter roads of Montreal. Remembering that my footing underneath on the driver’s side of the car seemed to have a little more give than should be the case, I whipped off the mat there to discover a floor in an advanced state of disintegration, readily speckled with holes and ready to give way completely. No amount of window cranking or any other preventative measures would have blocked the blizzard of dust that swept through these holes in the floor like dust from the Mongol horde. Nothing in my research had said to lift the floor mats and inspect the condition of the floor, and without such guidance I had not had the brains to think of doing so on my own.

Resigned to the indignity of my failure, I nonetheless managed to find a local craftsman who assembled and installed pieces of plywood to fit as replacement flooring in the car. While not completely airtight, the problem was largely alleviated which in practical and relative terms was like having purified air in the car. I did go on to survive the summer but the car didn’t make it, and nearly took it with me. One night on the way to Noranda the transmission dropped out at sixty miles an hour and I barely managed to bring the car to a safe stop. A long hitch hike and a phone call later, the car belonged gratis to a wrecker and the details of what he did with it I do not know. I did not bother to say goodbye.

The pain of embarrassment and self loathing gradually waned over the years and was replaced by a sense of hilarity about the events that had transpired in the course of purchasing that car. I no longer fantasized about how crestfallen might have been the car salesman at being bested by the supreme expert in used car testing, and the master negotiator that I was. Instead I imagined him suffering severe abdominal cramps gained from repeated fits of ribald laughter as he regaled his colleagues, his friends, his wife and kids, and by now probably his grandchildren with the story of how he had given young Mr. Slick a veritable haircut.

As with most painful, or at least humiliating memories in this case, time heals and places a more pleasant, balanced and even amusing perspective on events long past and that reside in that very selective memory vault of the human mind. It remains but to respect the wisdom of the quote that follows and strive to achieve its standard, while at the same time acknowledging that the quote that follows that one regrettably embodies that which sometimes governs our actions.

“Humility is the ability to give up your pride and still retain your dignity.”

Vanna Bonta – American writer

“It is in the ability to deceive oneself that the greatest talent is shown.”

Anatole France [pseudonym for Jacques Anatole Thibault (1844-1924)]

Copyright © 2008 Ian de W. Semple