July 7, 2008: Gas Money From The Garage Sale

Story and Photos By Joe Zlomek

Linda Ritchie's husband left their Birdsboro PA home early Saturday morning (July 5, 2008) to pursue his passion: fishing. That left Linda to tend to the couple's advertised garage sale, and talk happily about a passion of her own.

She didn't mind babysitting the sale. It attracted a customer now and then, slowly depleting the Ritchies' bargain-priced inventory of furniture and knick-knacks. Given a chance, though, Linda admitted, she'd rather be out on the road "with my baby."

No, not her aforementioned husband, but her previously cited passion: a car.

Not just any car, either. Ordinary cars, Linda will tell you - the currrent crop of those pushed by General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, Nissan or name-the-brand - seem like such soulless shells of metal and fiberglass. They lack personality. They lack cachet. They lack kick-butt engines.

"Wanna see it?, she asked a garage sale patron with whom she'd struck a conversation. "Want to see the car?"

Absolutely.

Linda led the way into an adjacent garage, one separate from the sale, and approached a vehicle enveloped by a snug-fitting, oatmeal-colored cloth cover. The car so filled its storage space that Linda had just enough room to get by on the driver's side.

She rolled the fabric forward, first off the front grille, then away from the hood, then above the windshield. The performance constituted a sort of strip-tease, featuring smooth finishes and shiny chrome as the objects of lust.

Beneath the dust blanket lay a fully restored 1968 Dodge Charger R/T, painted a bright lemon zest yellow and featuring its original pebbled black vinyl top. Its hood hid a well-muscled motor of more than 300 horsepower: clean, oil and grime free, and painted the same shade of red as fire trucks it surely could pass with little effort.

Beautiful.

"People don't understand or appreciate what it takes" to bring a 40-year-old automobile like the Charger back to showroom-quality life, Linda said. She is its fourth owner, and together with her husband they worked on the car for years. "I spent an entire winter just sandblasting the undercarriage," she explained.

She spent a ton of money too, Linda concedes. The scarcity of needed original parts and the custom fabrication of substitutes makes any restoration an expensive proposition.

She replaced the cloth cover using the same care and deliberate slowness with which it had been removed. It was time for the garage sale visitor to go, and in probably an hour more the sale itself would be history.

Her husband would be back later in the day, she said, and she knew a classic car show was scheduled to be held in the evening in nearby Pottstown. Then it might be time for a ride. She sold the departing customer an old camera; they agreed on price, and exchanged goods for cash. "Gas money," Linda observed, smiling.