Wed. funny.....Haulin' dead folks..... [Archive]

Thumper

12-16-2015, 10:10 AM

Ha ha! Reminds me of a Thump story!

In the very early days of my working at Cadillac dealerships (I was in high school), I had a job at the Memphis dealer, basically, parking cars. There were 3-4 of us "car-jockeys" at the time. When a car was dropped off for service, the Service Advisor would write a ticket, then we'd take the car to the lot and park it. Whenever it was to come in for work, we'd go get it and bring it to the mechanic. When he finished with it, we'd take it back to the lot. Mechanics were specialized, so this process would be repeated many times (a mechanic for tune-ups, a mechanic for an oil change, electrical, trim, front-end alignment, etc). The dealership actually sat on the side of a hill, so to get to the parking lot from the service drive, you had to make a 90-degree right turn, go about 20-30 feet, then make a 90-degree left, go down a long, steep ramp toward the basement, then out the back door, across the little street in back, then into the parking lot (which was also where the body shop was located).

One day we had a hearse pull into the service drive and there was a casket in the back. They were transporting a body from Mississippi to someplace in Arkansas, had car trouble and had to stop at the dealer for repairs. Well, one of the car-jockeys was a young black guy. We all loved the dude, but he was terrified of "ghosts" (bodies, whatever ... like the people in that video). When it came time to park that hearse, of course we planned it where we were all "busy" and he'd have to park it. It was a bit of a battle, but we finally convinced him his job depended on it. As he climbed into the driver's seat, I slipped into the back where the body was, slowly slid the little divider window open between the back area and the front seat, then just as he started to pull toward the ramp, I reached through the window and grabbed his shoulder!

Now this is where things got a bit crazy! He jumped out of the frigging car and ran screaming down the ramp and straight out the back door! I was in the back of the hearse ... which was still in drive and headed straight for the brick wall at the top of the ramp. LUCKILY, I was just a skinny h/s kid and could squeeze through that little window just far enough to reach the gear-shift lever and slam it into park. The car finally came to a stop just inches from that wall! I'd have been in deep shit if I hadn't been able to stop that thing!

I remember Bobby Smith, our body shop manager, coming over to the service department and asking WTF was going on? He said that guy came screaming all the way across the parking lot with eyes as wide as saucers, ran into and across the body shop, busted through the door into Bobby's office and was cowering on the floor behind his desk shaking like a leaf! I'll bet it took us close to an hour to convince him to came back to work! ;)