new york 1:4
In downtown New York City, we had to buy a car, all the other cars having collapsed from long use and ill care. We'd had the good fortune to this point of breaking down in excellent car buying communities, near funeral homes and salt mines, that sort of thing. Buying a car on the street in Manhattan is amusing, but on the other hand harrowing, a subject lesson in the concept of an unreliable narrator. Despite the miles on the odometer, one guy said, this car has hardly been driven. Those are old lady miles and much inflated. 256 thousand is a lot of miles even if your own grandmother was driving. Certain features of the automobile were not invented before that generation's formative driving years and those parts have suffered. We found a few cars in and around Broadway that had for-sale-by-owner placards up, and I left Jack and Jill by one apiece to come running if the owners returned. I watched a couple myself and the kids from half a block away. They were not my kids.
move on...