Sunday, April 10, 2005

On the Road Again: Flash Car Lot

So yesterday I went down to my boss's place, a horse ranch south and east of here, past Ravensdale. The drive is through the leading edge of the development wave, so you have malls and subdivision giving way to scattered farms and new development giving way to lumbered areas, watershed, and gravel pits (sign in front of one of the nearby houses declared "400 trips a day is too much", which I think is a reference to the heavy trucks on the road.

But the thing I noticed on the way down on a Saturday morning was the impromptu car lots that have sprung up wherever there are clear spots along the side of the road. I first noticed one of these out on the peninsula, across the street from one of the casinos, about a dozen vehicles, parted diagonally, backed-in, to show off their profiles. At the time I made obvious conclusion that the cars were for sale by unsuccessful dice players. Now I'm seeing them a lot more of these Saturday morning car lots, and a lot closer. The cars are all for sale by owner, apparently driven to a central location and parked there so your random drive-by shopper can find a whole mess of them at once.

I've been thinking that the area has been recovering from the latest recession, but the sudden blooming of these lots gives me second thoughts.

More later,