Grease Monkey

both had a choice to make: do I trust this person to make a deal or not? If I judge wrong, I could be out a lot of money, but if I judge right, I could win. Yuliya would be selling the car for more than the tradein value and I would be buying the car for less than the dealership price.

Yuliya broke the text silence first. She wanted us to go to her bank after Grease Monkey to deposit the check. I took down the car VIN and ran my own independent CARFAX. I saw the clean title, mileage and even her oil change history. We both agreed to meet at Grease Monkey.

After several hours of driving, my brother and I arrived in rainy Seattle. Yuliya arrived fifteen minutes later, with her Shih Tzu in one hand and her phone in the other. She was wrapping up a Zoom call on her phone. As the mechanic inspected, we went to the lobby to look over the paperwork. I found out Yuliya was a single mom of an 11-year-old just like me, and we both worked remotely. We had both mastered quick laundry loading in between Zoom board meetings, and she too was about to buy her dream car. But here at Grease Monkey, there was just one problem. She had brought what she thought was the title but was in fact the title application. She thought the real title might be at her house, so we followed her there. My brother and I sat in his car continued on page 14

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POST... ADU, TINY HOMES, & GUESTHOUSES... OH MY!!

This week I want to talk a bit about some hot terms in real estate. With the market being so lopsided right now, many people are looking into alternative housing options, but what are they? What do they mean? How does it work? Well, of course I have information on this, and yes, of course I am going to share it ALL with you!

In early April, I had the opportunity to do some filming at, and talk with a couple of wonderful companies in the Battle Ground area who are at the forefront of this type of housing. My first stop was at RG Construction off of 72nd Avenue. I met with Richard there to talk about the differences between ADU, Accessory Dwelling Units, and Guesthouses. It was really interesting because while I know how ADU’s work, I learned quite a bit about the others.

continued from page 12 outside her house while she looked for the title. After half an hour of searching, she said she would have to get a new one from the department of licensing in the morning. She said she felt horrible for the distance we had driven, and then she said something that shocked me and my brother. She asked if we wanted to sleep on her couch for the night and then complete the transaction in the morning. My brother and I looked at each other. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, we had friends of all races but we were also aware there was a line most people didn’t cross. You could come to the birthday party, but you weren’t being invited to Thanksgiving. Yuliya had broken the line. We chatted for a bit and decided the best thing to do would be to drive home, then back up again when the title was ready, and Yuliya would pay $100 for the extra gas. On the way home, the first topic of conversation was Yuliya breaking the line. “I had a baseball cap on,” my brother said. “I can’t believe she offered to let us spend the night.” I thought about a cartoon I had seen once, of hate being derived from fear heating ignorance to boiling. In the Grease Monkey lobby, a completely different mixture was being concocted. Was it the moment Yuliya showed me her meticulous oil change schedule or was it the moment I showed her how to call banks to verify cashier’s checks? Or the moment we both joked about mom-juggling? At some point we had both let our guards down and realized we could both benefit from trusting one another. Now driving back to Vancouver, my only fear was one of the other buyers raising their bid on my dream car.

In the week that followed, more people did reach out to Yuliya about the car, but she told them she had already found a buyer. The day after the title came, I caught the 7 am Greyhound to Seattle. Yuliya picked me up from the train station in her new car, a black-on-black Tesla. It had pushbutton doors and a sleek wood-grain dashboard. Yuliya was my car-style twin. She welcomed me into her home and we did a car deal at the kitchen table, with no plaid suits around. We completed the paperwork quickly. I handed her the check and she handed me the keys. And at the last moment she pulled out $100 cash. I had no way of getting home unless I bought the car, but she still followed through on her promise. I told her to call me in five years—maybe if things kept going well for both of us, we could do a Tesla kitchen table deal.

As I drove home, I thought back to the moment Yuliya and I first exchanged names via text, and how far we had come in such a short time. Prejudices are safe and familiar spaces, but an incredibly beautiful path is forged when we break the line. We find kinship and encouragement as we journey forward. We all win. And while I’m not necessarily endorsing rushing into any Craigslist transactions, I am encouraging all of us to examine how we view people and to consider taking more risks. If you are ready for a world where all people are judged, not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character, and a world where single moms drive Teslas and latemodel SUVs, then I invite you to meet me at the Grease Monkey.

Muyoka Mwarabu lives in Vancouver with her daughter Ajuna. She is a business relationship manager for Capital One, and a writer after bedtime. Yuliya lives and works in Seattle with her son and elderly mother. She was a stay-at-home mom, who, after a divorce, went back to school and now works in the IT field.