Tip's Truck Mart 1: The Tow Truck

Back in 95, I was living in Crackville, and my relationship with the girl I was living with was pretty much in its last throes. It got to the point that a rain day from work wasn't much of a bonus, given that I'd have to spend it with her. So when, on a rainy Friday morning, "Jim" called me up and proposed a harebrained scheme that would net me two hundred bucks, I said "sure!"

At the time, Jim was working at an auto auction. Dealers would buy used cars at the auction, then rent a car hauler to get them back to their lots. If there was an odd number of cars, though, they'd pay someone to drive the thing there. It was good money, if you could find a cheap way back.

That was to be my job--following Jim to Topeka KS in his mother's car, picking him up, and driving him back to Oklahoma City. HIS job was to drive a 1978 Chevy 2 1/2 ton tow truck. When he came to pick me up, he insisted on spending fifteen minutes digging through my tape collection, because he thought he'd seen a tape deck in the thing. While he did so, I perused his "contact sheet," a printed order showing the address and contact info. The vehicle was going to Tip's Truck Mart, and the blank beside "contact" was filled with "Max Mart." I made sure there was a phone number.

On the way to the auction lot, Jim told me how it was gonna go: we'd drive up there, drop the truck with a guy named Max, who lived behind the lot in some sort of shack at the top of some wooden steps. Max would give us cash, Jim would give me two hundred bucks, and we'd drive home. The whole exercise should take no more than thirteen hours, including the drive both ways.

Of course, I wasn't foolish enough to believe it was actually going to work like that, but it was attractive because a) it got me out of the house and away from a clingy girlfriend, b) it was a road trip, and c) it paid two hundred bucks. In no time, I was following him out of town.