A little over a year ago we started cleaning up our family ranch — which in part meant selling memories. Of course we’ve also sold a lot of junk, construction materials, car parts, and random items accumulated over the decades. Craigslist has become my new best friend as we sell everything from old ovens to generators.
But some of the things we’ve sold are filled with memories. The premier example is the early 60’s dune buggy my Uncle George gave me when I was fourteen. It seems like an outrageously generous gift, but the motor was blown, there was no key, the tires were flat, the transmission slipped, and nobody bothered to tell me it was a 6 volt system (I blew the entire electrical system when I hooked up a 12v battery).
Naturally it was a great project car. There wasn’t much I could do to make it worse, and even my mistakes (like the 12v battery) were easily fixed later. I worked on the car for months just to get it to run. And once I did…well, it was a blast!
I tore up the pastures with the buggy, let my high school sweetheart (and future wife) burn out the clutch, and rebuilt the engine three times. Dozens of my childhood friends remember hours of fun with the buggy. Even the times we worked on it together are great memories.
It never was reliable, so it eventually broke down and I didn’t have the time to make repairs. It sat unused and undriveable for a few decades, and it was time to let somebody else have a fun project. It’s not original, nothing on it works, and there’s nothing especially collectible about it. Still, I was OVERWHELMED by the inquiries within the first hour of posting it on Craigslist.
The first person to contact me was named Ernie, a good sign as that’s my Grandfather and father’s name. Unlike a lot of Craigslist buyers, he came when he said he would, paid in cash, and got the buggy towed away promptly. He was great to work with.
Of course it wasn’t easy to see it go. It’s never easy to sell memories. But it is nice knowing the new owner is going to restore it and create his own memories. Who knows, maybe his kids will write a blog about it in 40 years!
