"Oldsmobile To The Crusher, Raleigh, North Carolina" (c) 2011 Stu Jenks
Due to tens of thousands of unpaid medical bills, Pamela Jenks' estate will not administered. (My sister was given free health care for her cancer by a great oncologist, and was on Medicaid at the end of her life. The $55,000 of outstanding bills came from one ambulance ride, one emergency room visit and an operation on a fractured foot. $44,000 for a foot.) She had little assets besides some money in her checking and savings accounts, a few pieces of sterling silver, some nice contemporary pottery, and an old piece-of-crap '92 Oldsmobile, with a shaky front end, bad brakes and crappy tires. I planned on giving the Olds to a Raleigh organization that gave cars to the needy, but since Pamela's estate is not being administered, there was no way I could sign over the title to me, and then to the poor.
My first solution of taking the car to a vacant parking lot, taking off the plates and leaving the keys in the ignition was po-poed by my attorney. ("Mr. Jenks, I advise you not to do that," she said. "It may be an inconvience to the police," I replied, "but they would just find it registered to a dead person. And maybe someone will steal it and get a car out of the deal." She didn't find this funny.)
My attorney did suggest taking the car to the scrap yard. A good suggestion, for I needed to get the Oldsmobile off the Amherst property, come hell or high water. High water would have worked.
It was very sad to throw away a perfectly good automobile, but I did. Very strange, to see it taken away by a forklift, seconds after I vacated the car. Very bizarre, to then call a cab from south Raleigh to take me home to North Hills.
I got $300 for it.
Comments