Just a little after Midnight
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			    Scribbled By: 
			     Phantomgraph





			     Non-Fiction

		  Rated PG-13 for sayin 'bad' words.

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Author Notes:

This is a true story about just one pile of junk. She was no pile of junk
to me.

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I think its happened to most of us at one time in our youth. We fell
in love with a machine that most people would have written off as a
pile of junk that no one else would have wanted. To me that pile was
something special.

I was working at the time, a young boy trying to make his insurance
payments and his other meager bills. I was living at home with my
folks at the time. My folks wouldn't allow me to be on their insurance
pollacy so I had to pay the preiemums of a sixteen year old that had
no one on my rider. (As they used to call it) So I just slaved away,
washed all them darn dishes. All the while I nursed the old Chevette
back and forth to work.

My father, at the time when I turned sixteen, told me I could not
drive his nearly new truck. (A black and grey Ford) Dad always had a
newer vehical, and he had to have one for his work. Fact is he didn't
trust me all that much, despite my driving twenty thousand miles on an
old yellow moped.

So when I turned that magical year I had to sit and wait for something
I could afford to come my way. It (and I repeat IT) turned out to be
my aunts Chevette. Yes a Chevette.

After I had another uncle get it more or less running I brought it
home and me and my father went about doing the father and son teaching
thing of how to change the oil.

We propped up the car on a jack and I crawled under it and wrenched off
it's oil plug. At first I panicked!. No oil was coming out! 

My father looked under to see what I was doing (thinking I took the
wrong bolt out) Then it happened. That gunk started to come out.

Nope, I had the oil plug in my hand, and ever so slowly the 'oil'
started to golop out. Blacker than night, that crap damn nearly sucked
in light in like something out of star trek. It had the consistency of
tar, if you add gravel, , lots of it, and no I'm not pulling your leg.

I found out later that the poor thing had a total of two oil changes
in it's life. The second was the one I'm regaling you with. It had a
hundred thousand plus on it when I tried to change the oil.

My father cursed, and after some time (he had left the garage) came
back and offered me a deal. "If you can keep that thing running for a
year I'll buy you a new car."

You can bet your ass I kept that piece of junk running.

The next year I got my next Chevette.

I will say that the second Chevette looked a hell of a lot better than
the first, on the outside. Some one had put one of those mirror black
paint jobs on it. I think that's why dad got it. He bought it at a
junk yard.

On the inside it was a wreck. Cardboard (Yes cardboard!) side walls on
the doors, a spray painted dash. Some idiot had 'fixed' it after a
front end collision that shoved the engine back hard enough to crack
the plastic housing that held the heater core. Nice Right!

That was my reward for keeping my first car running for a year.

So what did I do?

I sold the POS. (Yea someone bought it!.. Sucker!)

It pissed my father off to no end! In the intrem I had been looking at
a real car. It was sorry looking then, snow bound in the middle of the
parking lot, broken head light and all. To be honest it looked like a
blue version of Steven King's Christean.

I had been bugging the son of the guy that owned place to give me a
deal on it for nearly a year. We agreed to a payment plan and he drove
the bastard up to the gas station where I was working at the time for
me to sign the papers. Midnight was mine.

That night my father nearly tossed me out of the house. (my mother
saved me.. she always wanted a real car to ride in.)

I had bought a 1979 H series Chevy Monty Carlo that day. She was blue,
and I always wanted to paint her two tone. She had over one hundred
thousand miles on her when I found her, she had three times that when
I sadly sold her.

I regret letting her go to this day.

I don't think anyone ever before gave her a name, but that first day I
saw her I knew.. just knew. I named her midnight. The Midnight
Monty. She was, and always will be, just a little after midnight; just
like me.

Yours truely, Phantomgraph }:8>