Chronicles of Craigslist: A Meatspace Adventure, Part II

Long overdue, but delivered as promised.

I give you the second part and thrilling conclusion...to the Chronicles of Craigslist.

Check it out from the Omnibus
**********************************************

Jerry met me at the door. I walked past his white Saturn, noting the ominous presence of a huge muffler. It wasn't just aftermarket huge it was redneck spent money on this instead of his mortgage huge. Jerry's ‘house’ was the bottom floor *cough, basement, cough* of a modest home on the ragged edge of the wasteland that is Kannapolis, NC. It reminded me a lot of our basement back at the Overbrook house.

Floor coverings included some of the TP-thin gray carpet you would find at any state sponsored college dorm room. There was also a weird patchwork quilt of red and yellow deep pile shag that described a sawed off circle around the bed. The sheer amount of random crap laying around was staggering and it took a few minutes to take it all in.

Jerry was there with his wife, two fierce looking husky type dogs with pale blue eyes and the vacant affect of furry feral killers heightened the mood nicely. His wife had long straw colored hair. She was seated in front of the computer with about 4 feet of the stuff dangling down the back. No bra, holding a lit cigarette as I arrived. Didn't even glance at the newcomer as he stood there trembling.

Jerry was my height, significantly built with some of the most venal looking forearms I have seen on a human being. He beckoned me inside. Strike that, he was looking intently through the window when I stepped into line of sight. So already he caught me smugly chuckling at his personal conveyance.

Great first impression.

Beyond the dogs, the lazily unaware wife and Jerry’s machine gun fire talking there were action figures, empty aquariums, unstuffed bean bags and a tremendous collection of literature *ok it was mostly comic books and old playboys* around the place. A cardboard box full of computer stuff lay on the bed. A huge pile of similar looking boxes lay off to the side.

Man this guy has even more esoteric tech crap than I do. See, why would anyone need a whole box full of external 56k modems?

“This here’s yer shit,” he said. “I threw in a 2.4 celeron…(burp)…case you need it.”

“Always collecting,” I said. Bad move. He spent ten minutes trying to sell me external modems, PCI video cards and 10/100 low profile Ethernet cards. 10 bucks a pop each. There is no fucking way I am going to touch this crap but I try to be polite about it.

“If you sold that stuff on ebay you’d have a couple hundred bucks,” the wife says. I can see she's working on a PowerPoint presentation of some sort. My attention sweeps her profile, call it a typical male scan for viability, and notice what she’s smoking. It’s a Virginia slim 120 and 6 inches of little white tube dangle from her lip. I said her hair was straw colored. Her face makes me want to grab a pitchfork for...other reasons.

“I think I’ll just stick with the motherboards I need,” I say. She shrugs and goes back to her powerpoint.

“She’s going back to school,” Jerry tells me. “Me I’m a self taught man. Half the shit in here comes from all these fuckin’ rednecks we got around here. Man I love making money off those idiots but ho-lee SHIT are they dumb. God I hate them rednecks.”

Oh god. The irony is paralyzing. Must not laugh hysterically. Hold it together now, it’s all good.

“School for what?” I ask. I have to fake a cough and bury my hand in a smile. I wish he could see how ironic this was.

“I want to teach English to middle schoolers,” she says. A long drag on that 120 later and she points it at me. “I am really good with kids. “

I nod and open my mouth to get the transaction going. A millisecond sooner and I could have pinched the whole snafu off right there. Before a word escapes I hear the dreaded words of a redneck in denial, who fancies himself an expert in technology.

“I wanna show you sumthin.”

Crap.

This ‘sumthin’ turns out to be a whole menagerie of pointless broken crap acquired via craigslist. I get to watch him show off an old projection TV without a mirror. That’s cool, I lie. He’s also got the back half of a speed boat and a massive multifunction printer/copier circa 1995. It’s about the size of a walk-in fridge tipped over prone. I can’t imagine how he managed to get it in there.

“Also, you’ll wanna check this out.” He beckons me over to bend down and check out something tucked away in a cardboard box. I squat next to him, glancing over at the escape r…door. One of the dogs is staring at me. A chill runs down my spine and jerry rips open the cardboard. I notice something tucked into the back of his pants.

It’s a .38 special. I am going to die here.

He catches me staring and looks back, as if he couldn’t feel the 4 pound hunk of steel stuffed down the posterior side of his ultra-tight jeans. Like the dogs, for a moment his face goes slack and unreadable. I truly think my heart stopped for a second or two.

“You like it?” he says. Up close his breath is like exhaust from a chewing tobacco-fueled dump truck full of burning manure. “My deddy gev it to me just before he died.” He reaches back with a smile.

I should be choking him or something. God damn rednecks.

Jerry pops the wheel and shows me that it’s empty. He laughs long and hard, slapping at his thighs all the while.

“Gawd damn, son. I thought you was gonna shit yerself. Hey honey!”

“What?” the wife called.

“This boy thought I’s gonna shoot him, he he he.” If she responds I don’t hear it through the torrent of blood foaming through my skull. I want out, I’m getting out. I stand up to leave.

“I gotta get going,” I say. Subcon tweaked my accent towards the southern drawl. I only notice after I speak and it annoys me. “Can I grab those…” Jerry shakes his head.

“If you go now, you gonna miss the best part. Check this out.” He gestures at the box, it’s in the shadow of the mirror free tv so I have to squat back down to see inside.

Oh, well that’s normal. Let’s see: stuffed crow with no feet; antique bottles of some brownish liquid; allen wrench; empty shotgun shell casings and a plastic bag full of gold. . . teeth! Those are fucking teeth.

“Guess where them teeth came from?” Jerry asks. All eight of his teeth are showing as he grins ear to ear.

“I am so sure that I don’t want to find out,” I say. Hopefully he has a dentist friend but…

“Them’s teeth from the jews. Dubya dubya two my grandeddy drove a tank right over hitler’s personal car. Lifted these here teeth from one of them…concentrational camps.” I nod slowly.

“You’re so full of shit,” the wife says. I hear her lighter flick again. She's something of a chain smoker. No wonder the air visibly agitates when home boy and his freak show move around.

We go back to the main room and I take another look through the box of stuff. It’s all older socket 478 mobos, exactly what I need. I rifle around and notice that jerry threw in a couple extra parts for the heck of it. Easier than taking them out to dump I guess.

Now an interesting smell catches my attention and I turn back to the wife. Instead of a massive narrow cigarette she’s puffing on a fucking joint. Her left hand holds it above an ashtray while the right works out some tricky text spacing for her power point project. The topic of the presentation is “Innovative Methods of Education for Preteens.” The irony is like a vise I can’t squirm out of.

Luckily for me the tale ends pretty much here. Yes there was a moment when Jerry tossed his .38 onto the bed which caused the dogs to freak out and growl at me. But I paid my 40 bucks, took my box of parts and stuff and headed out. The wife popped out for a second. Jerry watched her intently from the window.

“Hey kid, you wanna buy some weed before you go?”

“Fuck no,” I say. That’s it. I throw it into reverse and haul backwards ass out into the road, barely looking or stopping and put as much fucking distance as I can manage. I was more than a little freaked out until I got home and started testing the stuff.

Not a single piece of equipment works.

Fucking rednecks.

Chronicles of Craigslist: A Meatspace Adventure, Part I

For those sad few who have never charted the rocky waters of online commerce I suggest that each and every one of you resist the urge to scour the likes of Ebay and take a gander at the darker, dingier analog that is Craigslist.

For those in the know it’s an awesome way to get rid of stuff and acquire everything from Arcane Miscellenea to Unobtainium. All transactions are encouraged to be cash, local and (barring the initial contact) exclusively meatspace transactions.

It’s a great way to meet Shady Characters and to spice up the otherwise mundane task of buying or selling goods and services. Huzzah!

Now I have plenty of fodder for Meatspace Adventures that delve into the seedy secret society that is embodied by the 'list. So for now I will designate this an open ended series to be expanded on and fleshed out as temporal constrictions allow.

My early dealings would not have been possible if not for the computer I acquired during my junior year in college. It was a Dell Dimension 8250.

At the time it had all the latest psychotic gains in silicon technology: 2.66 ghz P4, 512mb of 533 mhz Rambus, 128 mb AGP video card…it beat the unholy shit out of my old laptop. Now computers age like eggs so after a few years and a few upgrades the thing was getting pretty ripe.

Here’s the problem. At the time one of the selling points was the comparatively fast Rambus. Regular old DDR only clocked out at 400 mhz and DDR2 was not yet available. So when I got the box it was cutting edge though the tale of Rambus is one of woe and tragedy. Suffice to say it was crushed by cheap and abundant DDR2 shortly after it’s inception.

I had 4 slots, each with room for 256 megs but only 2 slots were populated. Circa 2006 when I wanted to bump up to a gig it would have cost about 250 bucks JUST for the ram. I was appalled though I didn’t know enough about PC’s yet to risk getting a new mobo and reincarnating my aging PC.

My friend, we’ll call him Kenny, was a network tech for a local company and I confessed my plight to him. He nodded, dragged off his cigarette (one of mine, recently bummed) and smiled.

“I think I have some Rambus in my van.”

Thus 512mb became 768mb and all was happy in the world. Later, once I started my life as a disgruntled IT guy, thoughts turned back to upgrading further. My new boss, we’ll call him Twinkle Toes listened intently as he frowned at my cigarette.

“I think I have some Rambus in my truck.”

Score! 768 mb became 1024 and all was rosy. With a better video card I could now stomach the idea of keeping the 8250 for a while longer.

That all changed the first time I got to play with dual core computer. It was high time to ditch that old beater and get me some quality hardware. As luck would have it the local CompUSA was closing up shop and they had some awesome deals. I scored a mobo and a case with a 500watt PSU for only 80 bucks. Now all I needed was a video card, processor and some new RAM.

A further perk of working in IT is that coworkers always have leftovers. I was able to secure 2 gigs of Dizzle Dizzle Rizzle 2 riz-am on the dizzle lizzle *that's down low.* I had to purchase my dual core Athlon and a decent video card from my favorite online retailer. I also got a hold of another case with a motherboard sans guts.

After the build and a few more parts acquisitions I found myself with a surplus. Having built computers day in and day out for my first 2 weeks with my company I had the confidence to tackle a little Frankenstein work.

The bottleneck was the Rambus of course. I was able to rescue the CPU and video card but had no idea what to do with 4 sticks of low capacity obsolete Ram. And I couldn’t bear to just throw it away. A further stroke of luck was that my soon to be father in law ALSO had a Dimension 8250 so I traded 2 sticks of Rambus for some filial kudos.

Cheeky.

Now on a lark I was checking out Craigslist and noticed that someone had posted a desperate plea for, you guessed it, Rambus. I don’t understand why but the guy I sold it too was willing to drop 100 bucks to pimp out an older P3 system. It was lunacy, for about 300 he could have rocked out a brand new box and wouldn’t have had to continue suffering with Windows 98.

Remember this happened in 2007, he was using a P3 and a decade old OS. But whatever, money is money.

I met the first fellow at 5am in the parking lot of the Red Lobster near Concord Mills Mall. It was freezing and so early I could barely keep my eyes open. Yet once he pulled in with a mid 80’s burb beater I knew that we were go for launch. At this point I did not know what to expect but suddenly I felt like some kind of drug deal was about to go down.

The guy gets out and I nearly shit my pants. He’s almost 70 years old and wearing a really funky looking hat. Check that he’s wearing lumberjack grade hearing protection and orange safety glasses. That’s shooting gear for you gun control types.

“Got my ram?” the guy asks brusquely. He pronounces it 'ray-am' in a thick southern drawl. I nod, wondering if this is prelude to an untimely death. Like I would be up so friggin’ early and forget the Ram. I flopped my hands into my pockets and had another mini heart attack. No ram!

“Must have left it in the car,” I say. I do one of those nervous giggles that’s 3 octaves above helium-addict. The guy just scowls at me.

In order to get the ram I have to turn my back and bend over. I am already keyed up but this ramps the queasy feeling in my gut. Luckily I quickly nab the ram in it’s electrostatic bag and hold it up triumphantly. Two sticks. I hand them over, fully ready to trade them for leaving without gunshot wounds. The guy doesn’t pull a piece or point a sawed off at my head he just takes the ram and scrutinizes.

One, two. Yep, two sticks. He grunts and hands me a was of cash. It’s all 5’s and 10’s but what the hell ever. I do a cursory count and BAIL like OJ on the place. I ride the adrenaline all the way home and duck back into bed for a few hours before work.

Now I got into bed freezing and jittery, wanting to wake up the wife and tell her about it. I leave her alone and when I wake back up my feelings have changed. I just scored 100 bucks for obsolete hardware and all it cost me was 40 cents worth of gas and a few minutes of paranoid terror.

I could get used to that.

My confidence soars as I do a few more deals. I trade a few more parts, a PSU here, a hard drive there. One of my Frankenstein computers goes to my best friend. Another earns me a buck fifty *meaning 150 dollars* and some little girl gets her very own recycled Turing machine. Ain’t life grand.

Now my brisk dealings, while mostly uneventful, quickly deplete my stocks. I still have loads of hardware but whenever I have cases I need PSU’s and whenever I have extra CPU’s I need Mobos and so I generate a list of stuff I need to complete cheap ass PC’s.

Almost any working computer that can run XP would sell for between 100-200 bucks depending on the deficiencies in the hardware. At that cost, since most of my parts came from salvage I could invest a little here and there to fill in inventory gaps and still make a tidy profit.

I was just reevaluating my stock one day when I came across a post for “3x socket 478 mobos, various floppy and CD drives, and some random other parts.” That might sound like geek to you but there was an odd synchrony with my needed parts list. All that stuff would allow me to complete 4 boxes for my next batch. I negotiated with ‘Jerry’ to spend 50 bucks on the lot.

Little did I know that this transaction would lead to one of the single weirdest, most unsettling nights of my adult life thus far. Yes the guy selling it was a complete redneck and it was a little strange that he had so much stuff but lived in some lady’s basement but I gave that little thought.

However the second I stepped foot into the smoky, dim basement that I knew I might not make it out alive.