It’s a trope, “special price just for you.” It means you are about to pay too much for junk. Neesha’s brother had a line on a Nissan Frontier. He was going to buy it and drive it to the farm. All good, right?
Nah. Maybe other writers can get paid for the proletariat struggles of a collective farm. Not me. My sights are still aimed at the wolks. Not just any wolk, though. The scolds who go viral because their look is confusing and their words drip with disdain.
So . . . Nissan Frontier. Easy transaction, right? You read this space. What do you think? Exactly.
Wolks Sale
City folk go to a dealer and spend a half-day financing the purchase of a new farm truck at usury interest rates. It’ll be wonderful, with all the necessary tech and cup holders. Within a year it will be at CoPart after getting repossessed.
This Frontier, to urban wolks, is a nightmare. There is no screen, no Android Auto or Apple Car Play, the cup holders are busted out. Electric windows? busted. Examine it with rural eyes. It has a manual transmission and four-wheel drive. It’s a 2.5 liter, four cylinder diesel. The stock bed is replaced with a flatbed. Knowing eyes will recognize the welds as expert. Also the wear on it indicates it’s been worked.
The seller is a friend of her brother. Another difference between Esserville and Richmond. Wolks pay the posted price. Esserville does not. Esserville and Blackwood dicker. One more. Blackwood auto sales are private sales.
Special Price Just For You
The special price? Free. Why? If it’s free there is a reason. Loner that I am, free makes me suspicious. But I grew up in Gloucester County, NJ to engineer and social worker parents. To me, the way you buy a car is in that chair at the finance manager’s desk. I trust that. A hard-living looking man handing me keys and a title? Not my world.
A half-hour away from many cities and the land becomes rural. Only 3% of our land is urban. That 3% is the tail that wags the dog. Two characteristics of the 97% is that relationships are worth more than money. You can live without money among the 97% if you have good friends.
Neesha made a common mistake. She saw the money Ophie gave to the farm and felt like it was limitless. Popeyes paid her every two weeks. So her event horizons matched her pay schedule. She and I share a deplorable reputation. So running out of money with no one to ask for help is a rough place to be.
Fast Money Ways
I don’t know the percentage of the 3% that ricochets between money binges and begging for help. I am one of those who cycles between cash flow positive and “oh shit”. So I can relate to Neesha.
My son is grown and I am divorced from his mother. I aged out of those worries. So my fast money ways annoy my friends and frustrate my son. In five years Uncle Sam will give me a stipend that enables my financial foolishness. I just have to hang tough until then.
True if I keep my fast money ways. Fast money isn’t healthy. It traps us in escalating negative consequences. We become mice habituated to surviving on institutional cheese. It is a life. It is not a good life.
Orthodox Normal Isn’t
Neesha has two kids. They need stability. Clanging between a payday binge and a long span of begging hurts them. The farm is a windfall and a challenge. It can do what she needs but keeping it demands change.
There is another way. It’s not new or radical. Not sexy either. You won’t get cooing approvals from your bff’s for it. It is how the majority lives. The 97% who live in rural areas keep money around. They maintain enough cash to get them through lean times.
It is the way of those who walked away from the bureaucrat who pitched them a contract to guarantee automatic delivery of government cheese. We declined a regular job for entrepreneurship. Getting paid is a dice roll for us. So this habit: windfall/binge, beg for help, rinse repeat doesn’t end well.
Full Throttle
Race cars and drivers are designed to be run at full-throttle. They compete at a pace that is at the edge between competitive and wrecked. It’s a pace that has to be learned over thousands of ours. Along the way there are failures. Some of them cause the driver to question his choice to race.
Full Throttle faith/life has a high chance of crashing and burning. I’m the idiot that is attracted to it like a moth to a lit bulb. Also the old man who is tired of it. My Dad managed his money during his working years so that when he retired at 55 he had enough. His way is wise. Mine is gossip worthy. I make good copy.
Neesha’s kids are the reason she calmed down. They fell in love with the farm before it was renovated. Her daughter took after the chickens. Goochland schools were a welcome culture shock from the True Wolks battleground of Richmond. The daughter is old enough to know about personal finance. So she figured out the spending binge and became impossible at home. Promises were made and kept. Ten tenths became a balanced budget.
No Secret
What the 97% practice and I do not is a slow and steady build. We need a bass clef with our binge/cry melody. In crying times things are opposite. Instead of budgeting 80% of what we net for living, the available funds are 20%. Painful and necessary. Neesha is ahead of the curve on this. Her tolerance for risk isn’t as high as mine. This is good.
I’m better. I haven’t worked in almost a year. I’m in that 20/80 budget. Living with that is still unnatural to me. My normal ratio is 150%/oh crap. Neesha’s ratio is similar.
Farm Truck Frontier
The Nissan Frontier was part of an estate. The wife passed and her husband preceded her. She left behind a single-wide in Norton. Both her husband and her were packrats. The kids had the sad chore of cleaning the place out and selling it. Say what you want, but selling Pappy’s truck to a stranger just didn’t sit right. The church didn’t want it.
Her brother Lucas and his friend offered to help empty out in exchange for the Frontier. It’s tires were flat, the brakes rusty and all the fluids needed changing. But after some work it fired right up. The brother traded a few days work for the truck and some cast iron cookware. Not bad.
This happened. Neesha ordered dinner through DoorDash. The driver was an hour late. She didn’t tip in the app when she paid for the delivery. Her daughter’s chicken fingers were half-eaten and the fries had spilled to the bottom of the bag. She tried talking to support but that became stupid. Door Dash support is racist.
Lucas texted her, “what’s up?” “Door Dash is racist.”
“What now?”
“The driver ate some of my chicken tenders.”
“That sucks.”
“Yep. Nothing in the house to eat. What am I supposed to feed my kids with?”
“I’m almost there with the Frontier. Want me to pick something up?”
“Yeah. We are really hungry.”
“What’d you order?”
“Grilled cheese meal, and two boneless wings meals.”
“Zaxbys?”
“Yep. You are awesome!”
Lucas drove up with his friend following in an F150. They stayed overnight and left the next morning. It was a good visit.
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