THE RACER Chapter 35

Moving a House
courtesy photobucket.com

 

One thing Lucas had not figured on was the attack that ushered the USA into the war. He had planned on it taking a longer period of time.

The next day after the attack, even before the President declared war against the enemies Lucas placed a large order for new cars.  He managed to get a commitment from the manufacturers before the announcement that all future vehicles would be made for the government.

The announcement caused the cars to be worth almost twice as much than before.

Then the office of the O.P.A and the associated services stepped in and put price controls on almost everything including tires, automobiles, shoes, nylon, sugar, gasoline, fuel oil, coffee, meats and processed foods.

This cut down on the profit Lucas could have made, but regardless, he still made a good profit.

The used cars he was selling brought in more profit than the new cars.

He was selling all the cars as soon as they were finished.  Little by little his lot was empting out and the supply of cars had dwindled down to no more than one or two a week.  His new car dealerships were out of new cars and the used ones never made it to the lots.

Lucas now had to depend mostly on selling parts for cars.  The one thing he had was a mountain of used casing and with the advent of synthetic rubber the retreading of tires business exploded.

He made a deal with a retreading company for the lowest price available.

One by one he had a crew inspect the casings and separate them into groups. They were divided by the ones that were perfect and those that could be repaired and the ones that were sold for making different useable items.

It seemed that even though sale of cars had all but stopped, people would bring in their old tires they had laying around and sell them to him for cash.

The dealership’s stock of parts was running low and Lucas couldn’t replace    

what he sold, so he combined everything that was left into one big lot and sold it to another dealer.  He kept one maintenance man on for both dealerships.

In order to keep his franchise he placed an order for the next new cars to be built after the war.  This assured him of not losing them due to no activity.

Leslie had another announcement and Lucas had an idea what that was going to be. “We are going to have a new baby in about five months so that means we have to move or build on to our house.”

This presented a real problem for building materials were hard to come by. Usually you could wave some extra money in front of people and you got what you wanted but because of the government controls you could end up in jail for breaking the law.

Then it occurred to Lucas he knew where there was a practically new house that the owners had left and went to the west coast to work in the ship yards. It took some time but he located them and bought the house because they had no intention of returning.

Lucas spent the better part of a week studying the house, and finally put his engineering skills to work and came home to tell Leslie he had got it all figured out.

He thought to himself, "All I have to do is to get the material for the foundation and the rest will be just a matter of hard work."

 

He said, "Both houses will fit together if we take off the back room of this house and the side room on the new house.  We will save all the materials to use for other projects."  He continued, "I have it all drawn out for you to see."

“How are you going to get it moved?” she asked?  

He said, “There is a house mover who has been trying to get some tires and other parts from me and I have made a deal with him.  He said he will start raising the house tomorrow and by the weeks end it will be here. 

 

I have to get a crew over there and remove the side room and come here and remove the back room.  When we get finished our house will be almost twice as big as now.”          

 

To be Continued