The first car that I bought when I came back from Korea was a silver 1980 Dodge Omni. I paid $6000 for that car out the door through the military overseas car program. I thought I was getting a good deal. Wrong. Hindsight is always 20/20. You heard that here first. Keep that in mind for later. I ordered it for delivery in North Dakota and that’s where I took delivery. The body style I purchased was a two-door hatchback. The car hauled all the junk that I had at my folks’ house plus all of the luggage my wife, daughter, and I brought back from Korea. So, it could haul quite a bit of cargo. That impressed me. I should mention that was all that impressed me about that car. The engine only produced 68 horsepower. I would pay for that later. I would pay dearly. I’ll get to that. Another thing I noted about the car was that it was built primarily out of plastic. Damn near everything on that car was plastic. If it wasn’t plastic, it was beer-can aluminum. Plastic and aluminum were its two primary components. Imagine a beer can and how easily it would wrinkle, crush, and tear. That Dodge Omni was exactly the same. A small fender bender would crinkle and crush it like a beer can. Case in point, a lady backed into me in a parking lot and caused $800 worth of damage. She backed into me. She was doing all of about two miles an hour. Imagine the kind of damage she would have done if she were really moving. She would have totaled the whole damn car. That’s right. A ten mile-per-hour accident had the potential to total the car. That car was a jinx. I ain’t lying. Three times, that car was hit while sitting in a parking lot. Once when the lady backed into it. I already told you about that $800 fiasco. A second time, a lady plowed into the car from behind and caused $400 worth of damage. That time, the lady claimed her brakes didn’t work. I think her goddamn brain didn’t work. You know. That was just a case where the owner didn’t know how to operate the goddamn car. Kinda like somebody bought a box of crackerjacks, and the toy surprise inside the box was a driver’s license. Yeah. That’s how they got their goddamn driver’s license. You got the straight scoop. The toy surprise inside the box of crackerjacks was a driver’s license. Cuz that lady could not drive to save her ass. Her brakes didn’t work, my ass. She couldn’t use the excuse, “The sun got in my eyes.” Because it was foggy. Fog equals overcast sky equals no sun. The third time was the prizewinner, though. I was living in Denver, and it had snowed overnight. I was going to school for the Precision Measurement Equipment Specialist Course (calibration school) at Lowry Air Force Base in Denver. I was attending the A-shift, which ran from 6:00 AM to 12:00 PM. My car was parked in the parking lot in about six inches of snow. I had deliberately parked at the far end of the parking lot away from every other car just so nobody would hit it. Why? Excellent question. Cuz most idiots can’t drive in the snow. And contrary to popular belief, most drivers are idiots. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking this is Denver. Everybody in Denver can drive in the snow. Not so. Denver, contrary to popular belief, doesn’t get a lot of snow. The Rocky Mountains to the west stop a lot of the snow from hitting the city of Denver, itself. Never assume that the idiots living in a certain place have a certain skill just because they live in said certain place. Cuz usually they don’t. This is especially true if those idiots are imported (along with their cars). Sure enough, one of the imported brands (and driver) managed to slip, slide, and skid his car half way across the empty parking lot just to slam into the side of my car and cave in the side. How in the hell did he do it, I will never know? But he did. Then, to add insult to injury, he left the scene of the accident without bothering to report it or to find the owner of the car. Instead, he left a note saying, “I hit your car.” And he signed his name and he left his room number in the barracks and his phone number to contact him. That accident cost his insurance $1900. Have you done the math on the accidents yet? Yeah. A cool $3100. A little over half the cost of the car. And these were just fender benders. They weren’t even serious accidents. Every damn one of them happened in a parking lot with the goddamn car sitting still. It wasn’t even moving, for Christ sake. Now for the biggest joke of all, the 68 horsepower that I was telling you about. The car slightly struggled when I moved my family and all of our stuff from North Dakota to California. It struggled the most when we went through the mountain passes between Montana and Wyoming and again between Nevada and California. But where I ran into real trouble was when I moved from California to Colorado to attend calibration school. That car could not climb a hill to save its ass. When we got up to altitude, first in the Sierra Nevada mountains, then, in the Rocky Mountains, whenever we began to climb, the engine would bog down so badly. I had to downshift into second gear and the car could only go 15 miles per hour. That was its top speed. A whole whopping 15 miles per hour. It took forever to get anywhere. And for a tiny ass engine, that car drank gas like it was going out of style. The engine only made 10 miles per gallon fuel economy. Those goddamn chipmunks in the engine drank more than a bunch of goddamn alcoholics in a bar. And for all of the goddamn gasoline that they drank, those worthless ass chipmunks didn’t do a damn thing. It felt like we were stopping for gas every 45 minutes. Everything on that car was tiny. I had to get a replacement vehicle damn quick. I started shopping around in Denver the following Christmas. My first requirement was that the vehicle had to climb hills. My second requirement was that the vehicle had to be able to haul a lot of shit. My third requirement was that the engine had to have some power. My fourth requirement was no goddamn plastic, period! Other than that, I didn’t have any requirements. I walked into a Chevy dealership and started negotiating for a Chevy van. The Chevy dealer had a red Chevy van that I really liked. But the dealer only wanted to give me $5000 for the Dodge. Kelly Blue Book was $5500. I went over to the Ford dealer and negotiated with them. They offered me the Kelly Blue Book trading price for my Dodge Omni as a trade-in for their van. But I really wanted to buy the Chevy. So, I told the Ford guy that I would be back. I told him I had to think about it. I went back to the Chevy dealer and told him that I really wanted his Chevy van, the red one that is. But I also told him that the Ford dealer was willing to give me $5500 trade-in value for my Dodge Omni, and I would take my business to the Ford dealer just to make a better deal, even though I didn’t want to buy a Ford. I also mentioned that the Ford made better gas mileage. The Chevy dealer gave me some bullshit about how he could not make that kind of deal with me because he was into the van for too much money, and he started to waste my time. I told him, “You know, you’re pissing down my neck and telling me it’s raining. But I ain’t buying the bullshit. Either you’re going to sell me a van and you’re going to give me the price I want and trade I want, or I walk, it’s that simple.” He started in again, but I stopped him. “No. You have got two minutes to give me a yes or no answer. Then I walk.” He walked into the back and came out a few minutes later with an older guy that I assumed was the manager. The manager came up to me and introduced himself and said, “Mister Masters, you drive a hard bargain. But you got yourself a deal. Assuming you agree to take delivery today.” I replied, “I ain’t been the problem. I told the dude I wanted the red van all along. Can we check one thing?” “What is that?” “I forgot to check the heater earlier. My wife, my daughter, and I are taking off for North Dakota tomorrow morning to visit my folks for Christmas, and we’re going to need a heater that works. I checked pretty much everything else, but I don’t remember checking the heater.” When we checked the heater, it didn’t work. And they had to take one out of another van to fix it. But in the end, I got my red van and unloaded the worthless, jinxed Dodge Omni. When I bought that red van in Denver in 1981, that was the beginning of a beautiful 15-year relationship with the vehicle. I only had two minor warranty issues with the vehicle in the whole time that I owned it, and virtually no other mechanical issues. It was one of the best vehicles I ever owned. My family and I drove that vehicle all over the country several times over. That first winter while we were in North Dakota, the temperature dropped to 65 below zero. All the other vehicles at my parents’ house would not start because it was too cold. And most of those vehicles were plugged in because the engines had core heaters. That van was the only vehicle that started. Guess what. It was the only vehicle that did not have a core heater for the engine. It just started. And it could climb. When I bought it at the dealer, they explained to me that it had a high-altitude carburetor kit for the engine to give the engine power. That all sounded like mumbo-jumbo. And I really didn’t care how they did it, just as long as they did it. But it got the job done. Where that Dodge Omni had proved to be a huge exercise in futility, that red Chevy van was a dream to drive.
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