What Some Folks Do

Reed's Automotive has gone out of business. I guess that might have been expected with the numerous little auto shops in St. Johnsbury, an excellent one being right across the street, and several more along that one same stretch of road alone.


Mr. Reed was a nice fellow though--his little, smoke-filled, cluttered waiting room a virtual library of children's books, his grin of a rather contagious grandfather sort, and his elderly hard of hearingness, of his own admission, a help for passing inspections.

But perhaps of greater note to the town, Mr. Reed did car oil undercoating--that sort of robbing Peter to pay Paul thing of protecting your possession to the tune of more oil drips on the road, running down the ditches after a rain, and making its way into our streams and ponds and lakes. And Mr. Reed was the only business of that sort in St. J.

I am conflicted. But what is one to do with the clean underside of a little eighteen-year-old Geo Metro that is valiantly fighting corrosion from the salty winters and the dirt-road-sealing summers of Vermont?

Perhaps it wasn't my idea, but as all twelve feet, six inches of my car passed inspection today with a clean blue streak, and as my mechanic, the guy across the street from Reed's automotive, humphed and gave his approval at the low mileage and the fresh oil undercoating job in need of some good dust, I could only chuckle and heartily agree.