Trip to junk yard ends with purchase of an American dream

Editor’s Note: This story originally published June 10, 1996.

The American dream came to Khursheed Alam two weeks ago.

It is a yellow 1972 Olds convertible with a white top and 442 horses under the hood.

They don’t make dreams like that anymore.

For two weeks, Khursheed has walked around in a slight daze, a smile fixed on his face and his eyes glittering.

His dream cost $150.

It started with a broken adjustment bolt for the power steering belt on his 1985 Toyota van. No, I don’t know what that is — the bolt, I mean — but Khursheed does.

Khursheed took it to a dealer who said they just don’t have bolts like this any more and that Khursheed should go to an auto graveyard to find a part.

The adventure began on his day off. He went with a friend to the Victory auto salvage yard in Bensenville, the one that advertises in late-night commercials on TV.

Yeah, said the guy behind the counter. They got a bolt. Ten bucks plus tax. Ten eighty-eight.

Ten eighty-eight for a bolt? questioned Khursheed. He wanted to argue. But the man behind the counter pointed to a cardboard sign on the wall as though he was pointing to a place in the Bible: “Minimum purchase $10.”

Meanwhile, the guy behind Khursheed wanted attention. “Hey,” he said to the counter man. “I got a car for sale.”

“Does it run?” the counter man said.

“Yeah. I drove it here.”

“Can you bring it around the back so I can look at it?”

Khursheed, left with no one to argue with as the counter man drifted to the back, bought the bolt for $10.88 from the second counter man and started out.

Then he saw the American dream as the owner climbed into the car through the passenger door because the driver’s door was stuck. It was yellow with a white top and the leather upholstery was split and taped and covered with cloth and there was a little smash in the front end and it was incredibly, unspeakably beautiful.

“What is wrong with this car, sir?” Khursheed asked the convertible owner. “Is it for sale?”

“$150,” the owner said. “Yeah, the driver’s door is stuck and I can’t open the trunk and the top doesn’t go up with power anymore, you have to use your hand. That’s it. Motor’s fine.”

Turns out the seller bought it for his daughter who probably got the ding in the grill end and that convinced Dad to get her a lesser car. He just wanted to get rid of the thing.

Khursheed is 34, works in a downtown parking garage as superintendent, learned about cars while doing books for an auto repair shop, comes from Karachi, Pakistan (in 1984), is married with two kids and is paying the mortgage on his own home in west Rogers Park on the far North Side. He loves the country. And he certainly loved that yellow convertible waiting for the counter man to claim it. But the counter man was slow in getting to the back so Khursheed pulled out his wallet and pulled out $150 in cash. The owner said he had the papers and began to sign them.

“The counter man came up and he was angry and told us to get off his property. So we went on Green Street. I drove the car a little and then I gave him $150 and he gave me the title. And now I own it,” Khursheed said.

Khursheed’s friend drove his now-despised van back to Rogers Park and Khursheed drove his magnificent yellow convertible. He told me how fast he went to try it out but I won’t tell you. He said it was very fine with 123,000 miles on the odometer and that the motor was original.

When he got back his kids giggled at Daddy’s car and his wife smiled because Khursheed was smiling so much and neighbors offered him up to $3,800 for it as-is. He did not take the money. You cannot sell a dream easily.

At the moment, he is still puzzling about the locked trunk. “One man wants $40 to open the trunk but I only paid $150 for the car,” Khursheed said. He fixed the ding in front and he fixed the driver’s door but the trunk remains a mystery. He even gave me his phone number — (312) 743-8169 — for anyone who could help him open it. I joked about the dead body that must be inside and he took it as a joke — “Chicago always makes these jokes,” he said.

He said he will fix the car, bit by bit, over time. In the meantime, he drives it to work. A police officer stopped him once just to get inside the car and luxuriate in the dream.

“He did not give me a ticket or ask for registration, he just wanted to sit in the car,” Khursheed said. He said it happily, a man sharing a dream.

Only in America? I said to him, sharing his smile.

“Most definitely, sir,” he said, nodding. “Only in America.”