Not exactly, but this project is pretty dang close to the go kart my dad got me in trade in about 1978. It was a 3.5 horsepower, 28 mph piece of awesome for me.
My dad, Tom Emig, was a guy who liked wheelin' and dealin', as we called when I was a kid, in the 1970's. He was a draftsman/engineer by trade. He designed machines, and drew huge pictures of machine parts, by hand, pencil on paper, in those pre-computer days. Those huge drawings, often 3 by 5 feet, were taken out into the factory shop, and machines were built from his drawings. That's how he made a living.
But dad had been a wheeler and dealer since childhood. He'd find deals at garage sales, fix or repair something, and then resell it for some extra cash. In his years after high school, he lived with his parents in Wadsworth, Ohio, and would buy and sell guns, cars, motorcycles, Vespa-type scooters, boats, and whatever other mechanical things he came across. He graduated high school in 1955. By the time he married my mom in1964, nine years later, he had owned 40 cars.
Here's my dad in front of one of his favorite cars, a powder blue, 1957 Ford Thunderbird, and a shot of the T-bird itself. My dad owned three T-birds, a red 1955, a white 1955, and this one. These classics sell for $35,000 to $50,000 these days. Wish he'd passed one down to me.
The car buying slowed down when my dad got married. By the time I was a kid, old enough to remember, my dad was buying selling guns from gun shows, he was an avid target shooter. He also bought and sold bicycle parts, small appliances, and whatever else he could find a deal on at garage sales. As my mom, dad, little sister Cheri, and me moved around Ohio in the 1970's, cabinets full of random tools, broken appliances, and random junk filled out basements. Dad fixed stuff at times, but was always buying and selling little things. In today's world, that's starting to become popular again, as people look for "side hustles" to earn extra money. What my dad called "wheelin' and dealin'" in the 1970's, is known as "flipping" today.
Of all my dad's deals when I was a kid, one was my favorite. I was about 12, so it was 1978, I think. My dad worked at Plymouth Locomotive Works, in Plymouth, Ohio, a company that made custom railroad locomotives, like this one.
Like all factories, the shop floor at PLW got cluttered up with random boxes, scrap metal, unused pieces of machinery, and other junk. One day, the owners walked through the factory, and and told the shop foreman to clean the place up, get rid of all the random junk. So a list of stuff was itemized, a memo was typed up, and everyone in the company could bid on the stuff they wanted to get rid of. My dad didn't want any of the big stuff. But he knew the shop foreman well, and said, "Hey, I'll give you $15 for the junk pile in that little corner over there. To the foreman it looked like a few old boxes, and some scrap metal. The foreman said, "Deal, get it out of here in the next couple of days."
So my dad backed up his 1968, black, Mercury Montego, that my sister Cheri had named Herbie, after seeing the Herbie the Love Bug movie. Herbie dutifully carried the junk to our house, and I helped my dad unload it into the basement. My mom was not happy with my dad bringing home "more junk," but then, my mom wasn't happy very much anyhow.
First we sorted out the scrap metal, pieces of copper, aluminum, and steel. I went with my dad to a scrapyard that weekend, and he sold the scrap metal for $45. Boom! triple his $15 investment back in a week. So my mom had a little more shopping money, and the additional junk was forgotten by her.
Over the next several month, my dad and I sorted out hundreds of assorted nuts and bolts, small machine parts, and other stuff from the $15 purchase. On the weekends, I'd ride with my dad around to little junk stores, independently owned hardware stores, and other small businesses as he tried to sell or trade the stuff. In the course of about a year, my dad made another $400 from the parts, little by little. On one of those Saturdays, my dad and I stopped at a random hardware/junk shop not far from Shiloh, Ohio. My dad talked to the shop owner, as I eyed three go-karts,hanging on wall. My dad wound up trading some things called series parallel switches for a little money, and a brand new, $150 go-kart for me. My dad was hoping for more money, but the owner wasn't in a buying mood. But he saw me checking out the go-kart. My dad and the shop owner talked, argued, told jokes, and wheeled and dealed for 45 minutes or so. We left the shop with about $20, and the go-kart. I was beyond stoked to have my first motorized vehicle.
We lived on a rural gravel road, with very little traffic. The perfect place for a 12-year-old, like me, to race a go-kart around. I had a lot of fun on that go-kart, and learned how to slide a car, which came in handy driving in snow in Idaho, years later. I even accidentally tipped the go-kart over once, while giving my sister a ride to her friend's house. If you ask Cheri, she'll say I rolled it on her. It wasn't that dramatic, it just kind of tipped over slowly, like Fred Flintstone's car when the big ribs are put on the tray. But me and the go-kart, pretty much landed on Cheri, which was funny. She still won't let me live that one down.
The moral of this story is, with a wheelin' and dealin' attitude, a flipping mindset, my dad turned a $15 junk purchase into about $450 cash and a go-kart for me. Flipping is fun. As our country drops into this crazy depression (yeah, that's what it really will turn into), a lot of people and businesses will be selling millions of items super cheap in the next few years. It's a great time for flipping. Keep your eyes peeled for deals near you.
