March 28, 2008
So, I mentioned that Music Man and I were taking the kids to a museum yesterday.
We did. We drove down to the Detroit Science Center, which was totally packed because of it being Spring Break for a goodly number of school districts in the area. Music Man dropped us off so we could get in line to buy tickets, and he drove off to park.
The parking lot for the museum was completely full, with a line of cars waiting to get in, so Music Man drove around and parked on a surface street. As in most large cities, the "good" areas often butt up to the "bad" areas within a block of each other.
He said, jokingly, to my eldest daughter as they walked over to meet the rest of us, "I hope the car's still there when we get out."
Well, it was, and that was good. But when my Music Man pulled up the car to pick us up outside the museum (it was raining/snowing so he was playing chauffeur), I heard the loud rumble of an engine. I climbed in the van and said, "What is that noise?"
Music Man sort of rolled his eyes and said, "They took the muffler."
And indeed they had.
And so we had a 45-minute drive home with the roar of the engine in our ears.
The second installment of the Gardella Vampire Chronicles takes Victoria to Venice and Rome.
My novel, 
March 28th, 2008 at 10:34 am
They took the muffler??? How weird is that?
Was it one of those gold plated mufflers? SNORT. Weird.
March 28th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Ah, so you’re the one that makes all that awful noise!!
March 28th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
No way… O_o It’s terrible to go around without a muffler: I remember when it broke down on my mother’s little car, every time she approached it sounded as if she had a Ferrari, while actually she had a little Fiat.
March 28th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Good grief! How bizarre. Does insurance pay when they steal just part of your car???
March 29th, 2008 at 10:55 am
Yeah, many of our detroit neighbors have become commodities brokers, dealing in copper from buildings and street lamps, brass from commercial equipment, and selenium(?)/ aluminum from mufflers. There are very good with a saw-all, performing muffler-ectomies in less than a minute. That was why all those people were waiting to get in the lot.