Meanwhile, In My Old Neighborhood

Man shot, killed at Maryland Heights tire shop after argument with coworker.

I used that auto shop when I was in Casinoport both times I lived there–it is on the corner of Dorsett/McKelvey, which was about half way between the apartment where I lived before I got married and the house we would later buy. It was in the same plaza as the Gold’s Gym where I was a member for a while between stints at the YMCA (which was down McKelvey). I was a customer there until they recommended I replace the exhaust manifold on my Geo Storm, and I had them do it, but it resulted in the car stalling out on me at times when I was first accelerating from a standstill, like when turning onto busy roads.

Of course, if the shooting had occurred at the ITD shop across Dorsett, I would have been a patron of that establishment, too, briefly, when it replaced the fuel pump in the very same Geo Storm with a fuel pump that I could hear in the cabin. Friends, have you ever heard your car’s fuel pump? Well, I have, and no matter what the shop manager said about how everyone can hear them, I made them replace it with something probably not out of a salvage yard while I watched, standing in the shop with crossed arms, until something moderately better was installed.

So somehow a headline turned into a musing on car shops I’ve known. I haven’t known the mechanics, per se, but the guys out front. And I’ve seen some turnover in the shops, and I tend to stick with a shop until something egregious happens. Knocks on wood. I’ve been with the shop we use now, a nice five mile walk away, for five or six years now. May they continue to not disappoint me.

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