What's It Going to Take to Make the Bastards in Finance Pay?

Gunther can make you feel like crawling away through the crack under the garage door, or make you feel like popping him in his unshaven jaw. However, one thing Gunther will not do is cheat or overcharge you. Another thing he will not do is let a vehicle fail state inspection. Just about any vehicle that can be pushed into the garage's oily littered gloom will roll out the other side bearing the great state of Virginia's stamp of road worthiness. As the owner of an ancient rotted out, Toyota truck with bald tires, Gunther's got my business for life.

Beyond all that, Gunther is of a vanishing breed. He's one of those crusty homegrown experts who will expound on everything, from the vicissitudes of the stock market to America as an emerging police state:

"It starts with car exhaust standards, and ends up with me having to pay for anti-terrorist training, so I can get the new license you gotta have now to tow cars. Just in case you hook up to a car with a goddamned bomb in it." I recommend that you not ask him about it because the entire tirade is almost forty minutes long.

Last time I was there, Gunther was reared back in his one-armed swivel chair, behind a desk piled with 7-Eleven sandwich wrappers, rusted obsolete tools and cigarette butts, holding forth on the stock market. Gunther plays the market in a small way, small enough that his broker never returns his calls.

"I'll tell ya what the stock market game is all about."

I didn't remember asking, but I knew I wouldn't get my turn signals fixed unless I listened.

"Used to be that a guy would pick a stock based on the facts. After a while, it got so that people looked around to see what other people's average opinion was, and they bet on that. Nowadays you look around and try to guess what the average opinion of the average opinion is. If you can guess enough other people's guesses about other people's guesses, then you bet on that and you make money. Don't fucking matter if the stock is a dog. The stock market now runs the whole damned economy based on what fools believe other fools believe other fools believe. Run by a bunch of economists who figure that if they make enough fools believe the stock market is OK, then the economy will be OK. What if I ran my business that way? What if all I had to do was make people believe their cars was fixed? I'd go broke."

"You are broke, Gunther."

"That's beside the point."

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Studs Terkel once said that writers often portray working folks, such as cab drivers and garage mechanics, as having too much worldly wisdom. Given that advice from a lifelong role model, I have always tried to avoid romanticizing such people for the sake of a good column. Still, there is always the danger of overdoing even the best advice. The fact is that grizzled old tradesmen do get in a good lick now and then. And Gunther gets in more than most, especially about politics and the economy.