Old Cars and Photographs - Part Two

 Part one of this exciting saga appears here, otherwise...

The first strike against my old car came one day at my “old work.” I was up in the office, diligently working away when, at one point, I thought I heard the sudden but brief sound of rustling leaves outside. It seemed a little odd, but I ignored it until a few minutes later when one of the employees came into the office and said, “Hey, do you know there's a big branch lying across the hood of your car?” I went over to the window to look, and sure enough, a giant branch from the neighbor's tree was laying across my now dented-in hood.

Somehow, this came to the attention of The Boss. The Boss of the company was located in offices at a separate division, about a half a mile away. It was unusual for him to be involved in my division at all, and if he was, it was either because of something very good (rare) or something not very good at all (not as rare.) When he somehow heard about this incident, he decided it was important enough to make one of those rare, personal appearances at my division. Based on the previous aforementioned history, this could mean that he was either coming down to make sure that I was ok - and to give me a substantial amount of money - not only repair my car, but to also reimburse me for the inconvenience - or it might mean something else. I was pretty sure it meant something else.

Until The Boss came down the following day, I was left to guess what it was he wanted. Was he worried that somehow, I might try to sue him?  Was he worried that perhaps the tree branch damaged my car in such a way that it was now leaving unsightly oil stains all over his property?  No, as it turned out, he came down to personally convince me not to bother the neighbors by asking them pesky questions such as, who was their insurance company.

The reason for his concern was that apparently The Boss was planning on selling the building - and he didn't want me to "make any unnecessary waves" with them. (Tip: When your boss talks about selling the building where you work, he might not be looking to re-locate.) He figured, probably correctly, that when he put the building on the market, "making waves" with the neighbors might make it even harder to dump the place. From my point of view, the neighbors - or rather, their tree, were the ones making the waves. But me, being the company man that I was, didn't make the "waves" and therefore I didn't get paid - from the neighbor - or anyone else - to fix my dented-in hood. Instead, I drove around in a car with a dented-in hood for the remainder of it’s days.

Not long after, the Boss did indeed manage to sell the building - and  therefore slowly closed down my  division. This led to me starting a new job which, instead of it being a mere three miles or so commute from home, it was now a commute of somewhere around 20 to 25 miles. No big deal, but this commute meant traveling the highway, also no big deal - but it led to the second big blow for my car.