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This ‘Boat' a real cruiser, but not for teens
By Carole Cloudwalker
This document was published online on Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Sometimes hand-in-hand with being an elected official comes the heart-wrenching responsibility of making decisions that can have long-term impacts on many people.
Park County Clerk Kelly Jensen says she is facing one of these at the moment, and it's threatening her good health and perpetually pleasant mood.
The problem?
Just how to market for sale her almost-deuce coupe, a kinda-cherry 1976 Oldsmobile 98 Regency with original paint and vinyl, a classic 8-track player and AM radio.
Yeah, well, not everybody has the same level of difficulties in life, you know.
OK, OK -this is NOT the “Little Deuce Coupe” of story and song, notably that surfer-era song by the Beach Boys.
They bragged about having “the fastest set of wheels in town,” adding that, “When something comes up to me he don't even try, ‘Cause if I had a set of wings, man, I know she could fly.”
So fine, there's no “flat head mill” on the Olds, and Kelly's coupe may not “walk a Thunderbird like she's standing still.”
Who cares, though, if the Olds coupe is not “ported and relieved and she's stroked and bored,” or if “she'll do a hundred and forty with the top end floored”? Really, in a hundred years, will it matter?
Toss in the fact that there's no “competition clutch with four on the floor,” just an automatic, and Kelly may have a tertiary coupe, but not a deuce. At least it's a coupe. And it's for sale, once Jensen figures out just which primo features to brag about in an ad.
“I was 15 when that car was built,” she confided recently. “I was about ready to drive. That could have been my dream car. It was thought to be pretty fancy in its day.”
But dreams, like days, change. Calendar pages turn, years march past, cars rust.
In Jensen's case, the coupe's original-equipment 8-track player no longer plays, though a box of 8-track tapes may be included in the sale.
But the original AM radio is reliable, at least: it can be relied on not to work, especially if you like the tune that happens to be playing at the time you turn it on.
Sadly, the original paint and vinyl have seen better days. Way better.
“The fanciness has since dimmed,” in other words, Jensen confessed to a reporter just the other day.
The wheeled boat-behemoth that once carried entire extended families down the pike (“It can sleep seven,” Jensen estimates, going by rough calculations of its square footage) has, well, frankly lost some of its luster.
The tan paint that once sparkled is now flaking off. The car's once-firm metal body is dinged, and its former glitz has de-glitzified.
A fuel tank that proudly held an infinite number of gallons of regular gas (or unleaded. It can go either way, or as Jensen says, “It's a hybrid”) and could affordably be filled to the brim for $20 in the past, now is not satisfied with a modern paycheck's worth of fuel.
Once filled, the coupe gulps down so much gas that you can barely make it to Meeteetse before the thing needs a refill. That puts you in line for a bridge loan at the bank until your next paycheck, and that's just to get back home.
“I put $35 worth of gas in it once,” Jensen reminisced. “The tank level barely changed, and my boys were yelling, ‘Mommmm.'”
In fact it was for those very boys - now about the age Jensen was when the deuce coupe was new - that she purchased the car in the first place, not so long ago.
“I thought it was cool,” she said. Her boys apparently are more discriminating car buyers.
In honor of its vast length and weight - that particular model is known for being the “longest and heaviest Oldsmobile ever built” - Jensen slapped down $30 extra when licensing the vehicle and bought vanity plates bearing its new official name, “Boat.”
“My friend who borrows it all the time calls it ‘Boatie,'” the clerk added.
And if the car won't fly, Kelly is pretty sure it will float.
Her dilemma has horns - which reminds her that the coupe would make a fine Cody Nite Rodeo ride, with a longhorn's headgear mounted on the bow.
The dilemma is, should she sell Boatie by the pound or by the foot?
Either way, the completely decorated miniature Christmas tree that reposes in the stern goes with the deal.
“I was going to leave the tree on the doorstep of a friend at Christmastime,” Jensen explained. “But the wind was blowing, so I stuffed it back into Boatie's trunk.”
At least that makes Boatie fair game for those famous words all car salesmen favor:
“It's fully loaded.”
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BYG wrote on Feb 21, 2008 4:12 PM: