Well, it’s true. I’ve arrived at the conclusion that they really are the scum of the earth.

My father in law bought a 2002 Dodge Grand Caravan Sport from a used car dealer locally. The night he bought it home, we took my wife’s grandmother out for dinner. Afterward, he took me over to the van to show it to me. Truth is, it was in awesome shape. Clean as a whistle, well kept, and so on.

“I have one problem,” he tells me. “I can’t seem to get the dashboard lights to come on.”

Thinking this was a simple enough request, I head over to the car. I plotz into the driver’s seat, turn the nob, and bammo. Nothing. Not a single light to be had. I played with buttons, switches, clickers, and everything else for twenty minutes and ended up not figuring it out. Not wanting to be the one to let him down, I was as persistent as all hell, but gave up when I realized that Grandma was waiting to get in the van and be driven home. He told me he would check out the owner’s manual when he got home, and if that didn’t have an answer, he would visit the dealer.

Made sense to me. The dealer would know.

Yesterday was grandma’s 95th birthday. Sam and Helaine (my mother and father in law) took Beth and I up to New City to the cousins that were having the party. On the way up, I asked Sam if he had gotten an answer from the dealer. He told me, “The dash doesn’t light up. That’s why the dials are white.”

I almost punched my fist through the window I was so angry.

I told Sam that I thought it was one of two things. Either a bulb, or a fuse, and that tomorrow (today) we would check out his car after I went to church.

We went to the party, and when it was time to leave, we all piled back into the van. Sam readied everything, and we headed off. In the suburban “no-streetlight-town” of New City, there was no light whatsoever to be found anywhere outside, making the unbelievably dark inside even darker. It was at that point, I realized something.

It wasn’t a bulb, it was actually a fuse.

If it was a bulb, the console lights would be on but not the dial lights. As it was, everything was out. I told Sam that, and promised to keep my appointment after church today. After church today, I grabbed lunch, then went over there, meter in hand, to check the fuses. One by one I pulled them, while reading the list of what they were on the lid of the panel. Finally, I saw a relay that said “Accessory Relay.” JACKPOT! It was the oldest looking one in the panel. I pulled it, looked it over, and it looked okay, just old. I took the relay and jammed it hard back into the panel, got inside and turned on the dash lights.

Guess what?

They lit.

As it turns out, the dealer lied, and the relay was either bad, going bad, or just poorly seated. Not wanting to find out which, we went to Pep Boys and picked up a new one. I opened the hood right there, put the new relay in, and voila. Everything works beautifully.

What annoys me most is the way my father in law was taken advantage of. He didn’t know any better, so he took the dealer on his word. I guess the dealer didn’t want the car to appear defective, so he just bs’ed his way out of it, and instead of taking a look at it and finding out it really was just a $10 part, he left my father in law to drive an unsafe vehicle.

Honestly, I now understand quite clearly where these guys get their reputation from. Used car dealers are the scum that they’re portrayed to be. Anyone who would let a 65 year old man drive a car with no console lights and tell him that’s normal, is scum. Period.

My father in law is quite happy now, and I scored major son in law points.

All in all, a very productive and rewarding day. I even suggested that Sam take the van back to this jerk at night so he can see the dashboard lights all lit up, exactly the way he said they weren’t supposed to.