I took everything I had left.
My share from the sale of our house.
Retirement savings.
A little inheritance from my uncle.
And I rented an old two-bay garage on Linden Avenue.
It sat between a laundromat and an abandoned video store.
The roof leaked.
The hydraulic lift barely worked.
The office was barely large enough for a desk.
I repaired the roof myself.
Fixed the lift.
Bought secondhand tools.
Then one Saturday, Rick and Noah painted the sign.
The first year nearly destroyed me.
Some weeks I had two customers.
Some weeks none.
I lived on peanut butter sandwiches.
There were nights I slept in the garage because heating my apartment cost too much.
But slowly, people started hearing about me.
The mechanic on Linden Avenue who wouldn’t sell you a transmission when you needed a twenty-dollar part.
The guy who let people pay in installments w
