The Adventures of repo man

Some of you may know that I restore old cars, and do mechanical work in my shop, what you may not know is that I also work for a trucking company some. My wife is the parts manager in a large truck shop, they buy, sell, and repair dump trucks, over the road tractors, and trailers. I occasionally do work for them, as well as pick up and deliver trucks, sometimes my job consists of repossessions as well. Often, people don’t like it when you take a vehicle back, even when they have been served papers, and they know I’m coming. Many wonderful, and fun adventures ensue at odd hours of the night.     This tale takes place along the border of Va/ W.Va, often, the exact state you are in becomes blurred up in the hills, and I am convinced many of the locals don’t know where they live. We sold a car to an employee, I’ll call him Cracky Mcsmokin(get it?), well, he decided to amble back to his hillbilly hideaway with the car. But he forgot to find a new job, or make the payments on his fine automobile, so, guess who gets to try and find him and bring the car back? I’ll give you three guesses, no, really, take your time. After some letters, phone calls, and Internet searching, I get in touch with his mother-in-law. She tells me where to find “the worthless bastard”, (her words, not mine), and the car.

   She gives me some directions, and an address, the latter of which map-quest promptly spit out and laughed at me. The words ‘YOU CANT GET THERE FROM HERE’ appeared on my screen. Goody.

I Googled Hillbillyville WVa, and finally got some directions, but they weren’t much better.

Follow st rt 460 until it ends.

Turn around and go back .5 mile

Turn left on the gravel road

When you get to the “State maintenance ends” sign look for a green mailbox

Turn right and proceed through pigwump holler

Approximately 37 miles past BFE you will come to a single-wide on blocks with several dirty and possibly naked children around it playing with tires and tractor parts.

This is not the place, but you are on the right road.

Proceed carefully, as several small streams cross the road/path, as do many farm animals.

The Mcsmokin residence is on the left, approach with caution, old man Mcsmokin may think you are ‘revenooers’ and shoot.

Offer him a chaw, he’ll be fine.

    The road to this guys house winds through about four counties, and goes back and forth between states at least five times. The other driver I took with me nearly got carsick because the road was so curvy. Some of the turns were so sharp, I swear I could see the taillights on the car I was driving twice. I don’t think UPS would even deliver there, and they go everywhere in the world. The Clampetts, before the oil strike, lived really good compared to most of the folks up here.

   You never know what to expect when pulling up in a strange place, as far as dogs, hostile people, etc, but this place took the cake. I pulled in the yard/driveway/road, as there were no delineating marks to separate the three, and as I stepped out of the car, a pig came running at me squealing angrily. They have a guard pig, great.Pig really isn’t what this thing is, more like hog, about six hundred pounds worth from the looks of her. Just then some little kid wearing bib overalls and nothing else yells out ” she wont biiiitechew mister”. Whew, mauled by a pig is not on my list of things to do, the pig loses interest and wanders off.My buddy is afraid, he wont get out of the car, and I keep hearing banjo music(think Deliverance).

    The little boy walks up and asks me “are yew gonna take my paws car mister?”, to which I reply, “Yep, is he home?”. I guess the pig alarm woke Cracky from his nap, and he comes outside raising cain, cursing, and ranting like a madman, wonderful, he’s been hitting the pipe. Now I have the whole clan outside, a crackhead, and a frigging mad pig, my day just couldn’t get any better. *clunk* What the hell?? My jackass buddy just locked himself in the car, correction, my day just keeps getting brighter. I was determined to A) not die here, and B) leave with the car, so it was at this point that I decided to show the whole family my shiny .45 automatic. They were very interested in it, I think the shine distracted them.

    Cracky speaks up and informs me that I cant shoot someone over a car, to which I replied, “no, but I can if my life is being threatened.” The shiny began to wear off, and they focused on me again, so when gramps(I assume) picks up a stick and starts around the car I did the only thing I could think of in a moment of desperation. That’s right, I pointed the gun square at the pig and yelled “okay, anybody screws with me and the pig gets it, I swear, I’ll make bacon out of her fat ass!” With that Cracky decided to lay the keys on the trunk and back away from the car, and the whole family ambled back up the hill towards the house.

   We hightailed it off the mountain, and pulled over about thirty miles down the road to go through the car and put a transport tag on it as his were no good. My so-called buddy found a crack rock and a roach in the ashtray, which we promptly threw out, and the rest of the trip home was uneventful. It was late when we rolled back into town, so I just drove the car home, and took it to the shop the following morning. Upon my arrival, I find a crudely drawn picture taped to my truck window of a guy in shades holding a shotgun on a pig, and below it the caption reads “The Baconater”. It seems that the crackhead called the shop and complained that I threatened to shoot his pig if he didn’t give up the keys. The boss thought it was hilarious, and was happy that the car came back in one piece, he seemed unconcerned about my well being, or that I was nearly attacked by a band of inbred hillbillies and their pig