Before and After

There is a really awesome song by Sons of Maxwell called "United Breaks Guitars." It's about a musician's struggle to get United Airlines to pay damages incurred when they broke the neck of a very expensive Taylor guitar. It's been going through my head all day. Here's why:

Anyone who's known me very long at all knows that I have a cute little car, a 1958 Nash Metropolitan that is very special to me. I've named him Little Sweetie and he was a 20th anniversary present. It took us four years to get him to the pristine condition you see below - which is also the photo my insurance company has on file. Thank goodness.

My regular readers might recall an earlier post about Little Sweetie being packed up for shipping. In that unedited post, I expressed concern over the packing arrangements. The driver assured me he's "done this a hundred times" and I shouldn't worry about it.

It seemed a bit squeezy to me, but the addition of the blanket between the metal deck and the roof of my car were meant to reassure me.

Fast-forward to July 24. The long-awaited day finally arrives and I can get my car back. Oh yeah, and our other stuff. But the happy reunion was as marred as my car... Jim took this pic with the car in place in the trailer, showing the crease the decking made all the way across the roof. The shippers who offloaded our goods - and I feel it is important to note here that they were NOT the same guys who loaded everything up - were also taking pictures and calling their boss. They took a picture with a tape measure to show how close the other guys had installed that deck above the roof. Three and a half inches above the roof. And I'll also note that they were measuring from the top of the roof as it is *now* which means it was closer to the roof before it was caved in.

There are huge pieces of missing paint, and you can see how deep the crease is. In a car with little headroom for the average person to begin with, you can imagine what this feels like when you're behind the wheel now.

And this... This huge scrape on the driver's side fender is all the way to bare metal. Past the NEW PAINT JOB, past the original paint, past the primer, down to bare metal. It's more than a foot long and about four inches tall. And that black dot near the end of the fender panel under the scrape? That's a puncture. What in the Sam hill punctures a metal car all the way through?

And then there's the body damage on both sides of the front, under the bumper.

The white line you see across the truck top is a scrape.

I had a complete meltdown. On my knees, in the parking lot, sobbing.

I'll have to get some estimates to have it fixed and I hope to start on that on Tuesday.

Now, I hope you notice I haven't mentioned the name of the carrier responsible for this damage, and I also haven't mentioned the name of the umbrella shipping business who contracted out the services of the person responsible for it. I'm going to wait on that to see how they handle the situation and if they make right the damages they caused. Since the car isn't the only thing they damaged - just the most dramatic thing - we're still taking photos of other broken and ruined items as we unpack.

If they don't make this right, maybe somebody can write me a song to go on YouTube. Now go listen to "United Breaks Guitars." You know you want to.