My car conked out on me. I had it towed to a mechanic that I'd never used before. I'd talked to him once prior and I had a good feeling about him, but when he told me how much it was going to cost to fix I had a immediate reaction to it.
"That sounds high." I said.
"I know," was his response.
I have an older car, and the parts are hard to find. In this case I needed a distributor. I asked the mechanic if I could find the part myself. He agreed to it.
I found the part for less money on the internet, but something felt funny about buying it on the internet. I wasn't sure what the exact part was, and I didn't want to buy it blind. I decided to check with a neighborhood Latino shop that did me right once before. They deal with starters and alternators, but I thought I'd ask if they had distributors. The man at the counter said no. But then he added, Yoonikee.
Yoonikee?
He wrote down a number on a scrap piece of paper and sent me on my way. I called Yoonikee. He said he could rebuild it at a real fair price, half of what the mechanic was going to charge me. I picked up the distributor from the mechanic and took it to Yoonikee's. It turned out Yoonikee is Unique. The man at the counter had his doubts about rebuilding it. He made a phone call and talked to Unique and told him I was waiting for him.
When Unique walked in he seemed to circle around the distributor and eye me at the seem time. He picked up the distributor and examined it closely. He turned to the man at the counter and said a few words in Spanish. He was still holding the distributor in his hand. I was getting a sinking feeling, like he wasn't going to be able to fix it. The the man behind the counter translated for Unique, "It's going to be a little more, the parts are hard to find"
Then Unique spoke to me in broken English. "I've been doing this for forty years. I gave you a good price." I nodded my head in agreement. Unique was wearing a Dodgers cap. He had small eyes, and a big heart. I felt like the cosmos had cradled me in its arms.
