Statler’s Rogue Valley Views

My ‘92 Olds 98 got new struts on Friday. Wow, what a nice ride. For a large car it corners pretty nice. I’m still having trouble imagining myself as the owner of the car. My image of myself is of a person who drives a truck or a van, or some beat up sedan. This new image is definately taking some getting used to.

The new image includes:

A very short hair cut.
A luxury sedan, albet an older model.
An extended visit to a day spa to treat my skin.
Skin care products sitting in my bathroom.
A man who is sure to win a seat at the Medford City Council.

All in all, a very exciting beginning to my fifth life. I say fifth life because I had the middle-class life of a child, the life of a disenfranchised young man, the life of a drunk, the life of a recoverying drunk and now the life of a mature social justice worker.

Now, if I can just keep up with myself I’ll be fine.

John

Well, I’m a bit nervous today. Tonight is the formal kickoff of my campaign for Medford City Council. Like anyone else preparing for a party in their honor I’m worried if anyone will show, will I be gregarious enough, and of course, do I have to make a little speech and how will it come off.

I’m sure we’ll have fun. We expect maybe 35 people to pass through at one time or another. Some supporters are out of town but they let me know they support me.

I’ll write later.

John

I bought a new car. It is an Oldsmobile 98 Regency, built in 1992. It has 138,000 miles on it. It runs great, has all the luxury features, cloth seats, gets 27 mpg and by all guestimates it still has at least 60,000 good miles left on the engine. I got the car for $3,105 including licenses.

I had a good friend Troy take me around to new car dealers. What Troy said to each salesperson was very interesting. He said, “We are looking for a car under $4,000 and preferrably $3,000. If you start showing us cars over $4,000 we will walk off the lot. Do not hand me off. If you hand me off we will immediately leave the lot.” These sentences created an amazing attitude in the salesman.

The “do not hand me off” phrase told the salesman that we knew their tactics and we would not stand for them. The “walk off the lot” phrase told them we were serious in our proclaimation. Immediately after making these statements the salesman went inside, talked with their supervisor, and returned to walk us to the back of the dealership where several cars were stored that had been recently received in trade in.

We visited several car lots. The biggest (Lithia Motores, once a local family dealer but now a giant nationwide dealter) was the most horrible. Our first salesman at Lithia was nice, but when it came time to talk money about a car the ‘negotiator’ treated my friend Troy like he was ignorant and didn’t know what he was talking about. That’s another story…Troy held his own and I learned about assertion. Nice lession, but like I said, it’s another story.

Back to buying a car, I looked at three web sites each time I found a car I might like:

CarFax.com to which I subscribed for 30 days (cost $20). At this site I could enter the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) and get a history of the car. I could learn if it had several owners and when title was transferred, as well as in what state the transfer took place. I could learn if it had had any major accidents or other indicators of abuse.

Edmunds.com where I was able to get a professional review of the car and read comments posted by the public. Amazing the difference between one car and another.

FuelEconomy.gov where I could learn the EPA rated miles per gallon for a given car.

And, finally, KellyBlueBook.com where I could see the Kelly Blue Book prices. I was told that if a car is over 110,000 miles then finance companies will not lend, so the dealer price should be the ‘private party’ price listed in Kelly Blue Book.

So I checked out a bunch of cars and the Olds 98 won the prize. Perhaps I’ll write more on this subject later because there were several interesting adventures.

For now, I’m happy…nice car.

John

It’s been some time now since I posted here. Some interesting things have happened so to at least keep this as a low keep journal I might as well write something.

First of all, for the Fourth of July celebration I marched in the Ashland, Oregon parade. I had a spiffy costume made by Wendy that consisted of cutoff and hemmed black sweat pants, and cutoff and hemmed blue T-shirt that had gold buttons sewed on. I bought some long knee-high baseball socks and created a tri-corner hat out of my Dad’s old straw hat. Our little group had a flute player, drummer, flag holder (using my Dad’s old fringed flag), six of us dancing, two CIA-dressed-with-earphones, and a stuffed King George. We overthrew the King after dancing to Yankee Doodle. We overthrew the King about a dozen times. Exhausting but a lot of fun.

Last of all, the biggest news from my perspective, I am an official candidate for the office of City Councilor in Medford, Oregon. I got my twenty-five valid signatures and signed the form that asked me if I would “qualify and serve” if elected. I’m still not sure what the “qualify” part is but I think it relates to the swearing in.

My friends Christine, Andrea, Joe and Rich have formed the Elect John Statler Committee and we have collected $300 in just a few days. One friend, Mike, showed up at my door before noon on the day he received the fundraising letter and dropped off his donation. Now, as a candidate, that excited me!