#but eventually I will probably make a design for alternate felix

[soullessjack]

oh my god if alternate adrien was like That then what the hell would alternate felix be like

[cheeseeatingtrashmonster]

Who Said That Every Wish Chapter 7: Agreste Male Breakdowns

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Wayzz was keeping watch while Felix broke down. Just as Felix lowered his forehead to Nino's, Wayzz spotted a pair of people in scrubs heading their way. He ducked back into Felix's pocket. Felix patted the pocket and straightened up, wiping his eyes as the curtain was whipped back.

“Are you family?” one of the scrubs wearers asked.

“No, but they're on their way,” he lied. He still had to go face them.

They asked Felix about Nino’s past surgeries (appendix, years ago), allergies (seasonal allergies and one class of antibiotics), and other relevant medical history and Felix was surprised he knew the answers. Did he really pay that much attention to Nino?

“We’re taking him to surgery now. Let me find someone to take you to the waiting room.”

Felix expected to meet Marinette in the waiting room but found only an older gentleman napping with a book open in his lap. Felix sat and texted Marinette to try and find where she'd wandered off to. While waiting for her response, he bought a few bottles of water from the vending machine. He had been crying all day, and Marinette was sick. If ever there has been a time for hydration, it was now.

Felix waited half an hour before breaking down and calling Marinette. She didn't pick up.

“Where is she? How is she late meeting me here when she left first?” He still had to go to the Lahiffe family. He wanted to make sure Marinette was okay and sitting still before leaving.

“She's transformed right now,” Wayzz said from his pocket. “I can sense when a miraculous is active.”

“What is she doing?”

“Probably telling the Turtle's family that they need to get down here,” Plagg said.

“Of course she is,” Felix muttered.

Felix alternated between pacing and sitting, fiddling with Nino's glasses. Marinette turned up a few minutes later, sniffling and coughing and leaning on the wall as she walked down the hall at a pace that made Felix twitch with how slow it was. He got up and met her before she even entered the room.

"Well, that was one of the worst things I've ever had to do," Marinette said in a voice that told him she had been coughing too much again.

"You didn't have to do that. I could have gone."

He all but dragged Marinette to a chair and shoved one of the bottles of water in her hands. She sipped at it and laid her head back against the wall behind her. Her eyes were open though, and watching Felix. He fiddled with the glasses in his hands. Despite his best efforts, the lenses were covered in his fingerprints. Some part of him liked that he had left a mark of himself on something so integral to Nino.

"So. You went home with Nino."

Felix froze, squeezing his eyes shut. He had been hoping against hope that Marinette would forget to ask about the rest of the story.

"I did. We exchanged identities. He force-fed me popcorn and hot chocolate. I fell asleep. And apparently, he left and tried to bring Gabriel to justice, getting himself beaten within an inch of his life by the man who has been controlling Adrien's and my lives. The man who raised us." Felix turned to face Marinette. "This wasn't a battle gone wrong. If it was, Shelly would have left long before this level of injury. Hawkmoth attacked him. Hawkmoth was trying to kill him."

Marinette muffled a cough in her sleeve but didn't break eye contact. She wasn't sure if she should be surprised or not that Felix was his usual cold, detached self as he said all this.

"We're still children," Felix said, eyebrows furrowing as confusion pierced his detachment. "I know some people just don't see that, that they look at us and assume we're older. But there's no way our enemy doesn't have an accurate view of us. He targeted middle school age people when we were in middle school, and switched to high school age shortly after we started high school. Trying to kill us from a distance with his champions is one thing. Usually, he's not even trying to kill us. He's trying to incapacitate us long enough to get our miraculous. But this... this was personal. And I don't know how to deal with how that makes me feel."

"Oh, Kitten," Marinette said, taking his hand again. "For now, let's concentrate all our energy on hoping that Nino comes through this okay. We can figure out how to feel and what to do about it after."

Felix nodded and let his head drop to Marinette's shoulder. She reached up to pet at his hair, and he leaned into the touch a little. She laughed. Or, made a sound that approximated laughing that caused her to cough a few times.

"What's so funny?" Felix asked, using a finger to trace the frames of the glasses on his knee.

"Who would have thought Felix Agreste becomes a cuddly kitten in times of stress?"

"He's surprisingly cuddly all the time," Plagg said, peeking out of Felix's hood. "He just doesn't trust most people enough to let them touch him. The list seems to be Adrien, Nino, you, and sometimes Nathalie and Nathaniel."

"I hate you," Felix muttered. Marinette had not stopped playing with his hair and he found himself relaxing. Maybe it wouldn't be too bad an idea to drift off to sleep.

"We need a cover story," Marinette said.

Felix groaned and pulled his head off her shoulder. "How about Felix ran away, called Nino, Nino came to bring Felix home and got mugged before he could meet Felix?"

"And Ladybug happened upon him, called you, and you called Marinette?"

They called it good enough and Felix dropped his head to her shoulder again. He was asleep before he knew it.

"You should be the one sleeping," Felix said when an announcement over the PA startled him awake.

"I can't breathe well enough to sleep," Marinette said. Her wheeze was getting more pronounced. He felt around and grabbed another water bottle to press into her hands. "So, what else are you leaving out from your story?"

"What do you mean?" Felix asked, going back to tracing the frames of Nino's glasses.

"Are you forgetting that Ladybug can read Chat Noir like a book?" She smirked at him. "You told me the facts, the outline. Tell me the details. How did you guys react to each other's identities? How do you feel about the fact that Nino's had a crush on you since forever? Or that the crush you’ve had since forever is Shelly? What did you guys talk about? How in the world did you convince him to sneak you into his room? What were you guys planning to do before he decided to run off on his own?"

"I did forget," Felix said, not looking at her. "Because Marinette generally can't notice anything past Adrien and fashion. He's going to be thrilled when you reveal to him, you know."

"Don't try to distract me," Marinette said, suppressing a cough. "I’m missing some juicy piece of gossip right now and you're going to give it to me."

"I should go buy you some hot soup or something," Felix said, looking around for signs to direct him to the cafeteria. "And coffee for me."

"Do you have anyone else to talk to about this stuff?" Marinette asked. "Adrien isn't here, and I know you won't call him. Talk to me."

"I kissed him," Felix blurted after barely a second of hesitation. "Or, he kissed me. Both, probably?" He glanced at Marinette to see her smiling. "He was going to hide me in his room, catch me up on school work, sneak me food. I hadn't felt safe since I started suspecting Gabriel earlier in the week. Longer, probably. Since mom... Until Carapace hugged me, I wasn't sure that I ever would again. And then... he goes and does something this stupid." Felix turned to Marinette suddenly. "Did he even try to call Ladybug?"

She nodded. "He left a message basically saying, 'call me, I have news'. I was asleep. I'm so sorry." Her eyes started to water. "I need to tell him how sorry I am."

"No one blames you, Buggy. I don't even blame Nino. Much. If anything, it was my fault for telling him." He sighed. "We all know who to blame. It just... hurts."

"We have to tell Adrien." She laid her head on his shoulder this time. He moved his arm around to pull her into his side. She hadn't gotten any taller since middle school. Normally he'd tease her about how tiny she was, but right now with how sick she was, it just made his worry about her worse.

"I don't know how to," Felix said. "He loves Father. He tries so hard to be whatever he wants."

"At least text him and tell him you're not kidnapped," Marinette said. She nodded towards the small TV in the corner playing the news on mute. Nadja Chamack was reporting next to a picture of Felix. The banner at the bottom of the screen read ‘Son of designer Gabriel Agreste missing/kidnapped.’ "You know the news will get to him eventually. Assuming Gabriel hasn't called Nathalie already."

"Shit, I forgot about Nathalie," Felix said, pulling his phone out. He texted Adrien that he was okay and would explain later.

"Yes, that message will definitely not cause chaos in a classic Agreste Male Drama fashion," Marinette said as she peeked at the message over his shoulder. "I expect absolutely no panic over that at all."

Before Felix could object to the very concept of "Agreste Male Drama", another scrub-wearing person led Mrs. Lahiffe and Melanie into the waiting room. Mrs. Lahiffe looked confused and scared, but determined. Melanie was crying, using her sleeve to wipe her face occasionally. Not for the first time that night, Felix wished he had thought to grab the box of tissues he saw in Marinette's room before they left.

"Mrs. Lahiffe!" Marinette tried to get out of her chair to hug her friend's mom, but Felix put his hand on her shoulder to stop her.

"She's sick, she's not to get up," Felix said, getting up to put a hand on Mrs. Lahiffe's arm. "I'm so sorry. How are you?"

"What happened? He was in his room when I went to bed. I know he's snuck out a few times, but I let it slide. I figured he was meeting his crush or something."

"Come sit," Felix said, removing the last water bottle from the chair on the other side of his from Marinette. Melanie followed them but didn't sit, standing and fidgeting instead. Felix went through their lie about Nino coming to find him after running away.

"I'm sorry. It's my fault he was out so late. I never meant to cause you these problems."

Mrs. Lahiffe looked confused for a few moments. Eventually, she gave Felix's whole outfit a look. It dawned on her when she saw the shoes. "You're not Adrien, you're Felix." He nodded. "Sorry, I'm sure you two get sick of that."

"We actually don't get mistaken for each other often, but I'm wearing Adrien's clothes right now."

"Why are you wearing- never mind." She shook her head. "Did Ladybug give you any other information? She just told us he had been hurt, that she brought him here."

Felix and Marinette shook their heads.

"Do you have any more information from the doctors?" Marinette asked.

"Bruises everywhere, broken ankle, fractured arm, a few broken ribs, a partially collapsed lung, some internal bleeding from a shattered kidney. Surprisingly little damage to his head, just a small concussion. Whoever this was, they were vicious. Why anyone would just attack my little boy like this..."

Something about hearing it all listed out like that hit Felix hard. This was all his fault. Nino was hurt. He couldn't get enough air in. But he didn't want to disturb the three women so he sat as quietly as he could, trying to not let his increased breathing be loud. Nino was hurt and it was his fault. He wanted to get up and leave, but he couldn't move. Nino. His father hurt Nino. He couldn't hear the conversation around him anymore. He focused on the glasses in his hand, but they didn’t feel real. How could he let Nino get hurt like this? Something was wrong with him. He wondered what his father would tell people if he died of whatever this was while Paris thought he was kidnapped. Nino was hurt. He wondered who would stop his father if he was gone.

Suddenly a hand was on his back and Felix flinched away from it. Marinette's concerned face leaned in close and he couldn't meet her eyes, couldn't focus on her at all. He closed his eyes, to block her out or regain his focus he wasn't sure, but his lungs burned.

Another hand touched him, his knee this time. He opened his eyes to see Mrs. Lahiffe kneeling in front of him. She asked him a question he couldn't process. Why couldn’t he breathe? When he didn't answer, she took his hand and put it on her stomach, breathing slowly and deeply. He tried to copy her, guessing at her motives. It took a minute of focused concentration, but he managed it. When she was confident Felix could keep his breathing in check, Mrs. Lahiffe slid back in her chair and held his hand. Marinette's hand returned to his back, rubbing circles, gentle and slow.

When Felix finally felt the weight on his chest and buzzing panic in his head recede, the shame of breaking down in front of people hit almost as hard.

"I'm sorry you had to see that," he whispered, putting his face in his hands.

"Don't be embarrassed," Mrs. Lahiffe said. "Have you had panic attacks before?"

He turned to stare at her. "That's what that was?" he asked. Mrs. Lahiffe and Marinette nodded. "Then yes, apparently."

"It's you, isn't it?" Melanie asked, speaking for the first time since she had arrived. "You're the mystery boy Nino likes."

"I didn't know until tonight, but yes," Felix said. He clenched his hands to keep them from shaking. "This is all my fault."

“Stop that," Marinette said.

"He said the same thing to me tonight," Felix said with a sad smile. "He's very insistent that I'm too hard on myself."

"I raised him right," Mrs. Lahiffe said. She hesitated a moment, then put a hand on Felix's shoulder. "Will you tell me why you ran away?" He shook his head. "Do you have somewhere to go? You said you were coming to stay with us? That Nino was coming to get you?"

"My parents said they would take him in for now, until something gets sorted out,” Marinette said.

"And Adrien is still out of town?" Melanie asked.

"I'm right here."

[itsworn]

We Visit The 400-Car Property For Sale In Canada, It’s Wonderland.

For Sale: Wonderland.

Mike Hall’s 400-car collection and all the land it sits on can be yours if you dare to dream the same dream.

I’m sitting in my rental car outside of JP’s Diner in Salmon Arm, British Columbia, because JP very reasonably doesn’t open his doors before 7 AM. There’s a chill in the air as winter gives way to spring here in BC’s interior, with snow still visible on the mountains that ring the town. I’d driven up here before dawn from Kelowna, with Okanogan Lake’s 85 miles of shoreline my near constant companion just off the right shoulder, the sun creeping through the morning mist that until only a few moments ago shrouded the valley’s rocky peaks.

My contemplation of Canada’s weather patterns is broken by the sudden screech of tires and the insistent thumping of lumpy cam. A voice calls out to me from the entrance to the parking lot, a hearty ‘hey, is that you?’ emanating from the driver’s seat of a burgundy ’68 Chevelle SS. I look over at the clump of blonde dreads hanging out the window of the straight-piped muscle machine and smile. Mike’s here, and he’s now laying twenty feet of rubber on his way to the parking spot beside me.

I couldn’t have asked for a more accurate introduction to the barely contained ball of cerebro-kinetic energy that is Mike Hall. Now contemplating the other side of 60, Hall has barely slowed down in any area of his life. Alternately known ‘the Rusty Rasta,’ and ‘the Rasta Blasta,’ he still scales the cliff faces he’s been climbing since he was a teen, leading his team as they blast away dangerous chunks of rock before they can flatten tourists and locals on highways and rail lines below. With explosives. Lots of explosives. He still drives his 396 Chevelle SS with his foot flat to the floor,  and he’s still buying automobiles by the bushel.

This last character trait is a bit of an issue, you see, because Mike’s in the middle of trying to unload western Canada’s largest treasure trove of cars, trucks, and parts. Spread across three yards (and the contents of one museum) are well more than 350 of Hall’s personally-selected vintage machines, a gamut of rides that ranges from 40s-era domestics and European imports, to blistering 60s muscle, to a penchant for Sunbeam Alpines (of which he owns five).

The catch? He’s keen on selling everything, all at once, including the land and the buildings that sit on it, rather than wasting his time trying to deal the vehicles piecemeal to hundreds of potential online tirekickers. The asking price is a cool $1.4 million Canadian (just over $1 million in Yankee bucks), and it’s been nine months since the listing went live. I didn’t have a million of anything, really, but I did have a camera, and I was determined to walk it through the gates of Mike’s Northwestern wonderland before they closed forever.

It’s our first meeting in person after a few weeks of phone calls, and after shaking hands and waiting for the rest of Mike’s crew to join us, we walk into the diner and pick a table near the middle of the establishment. Plopping down beside Mike at breakfast is Felix, who confirms the Hall has done little to temper his habit in the face of the impending divestment. Along with his partner, Olivier, seated to my left, the two have traveled all the way to B.C. from Switzerland, where Felix’s custom car shop (Cars and Bikes Schaffhausen) is based. They have spent the last five days taking a serious inventory of Mike’s properties and vehicles with an eye towards buying the entire kit and caboodle.

‘Mike, how many cars did you buy even during the short time that we have been here?’ Felix asks, cajoling his new friend. At first, Hall denies having expanded the collection, but before long Felix, bright-eyed and quick to laugh behind his wild beard, has reminded him of the at least four cars Mike picked up, sight-unseen, over the phone while the duo were in earshot.

‘I’ve actually bought about 40 cars, total, since I first listed everything last year,’ Hall finally admits. ‘It’s the same old story: if I see something I want, I buy it and cart it home, no questions asked.’

It’s this take-no-prisoners approach to automotive accumulation that has landed Mike in his current predicament: what to do with so many projects, and a finite amount of time to get them all done. We’re not talking about mid-life malaise, either, although that has played no small part in Hall reconsidering his approach to car collecting. ‘A friend of mine who was in a similar situation – he spent his inheritance on a car collection – died at 65, and his wife sold everything off at pennies on the dollar. It really made me think that if I drop dead tomorrow, I don’t want to be that guy. My own wife would curse me for leaving her with that burden.’

More immediately, it’s largely about the fact that the man spends the vast majority of his time out on the road with his rock scaling business, leaving him few spare moments to restore any of the vehicles he has dragged home.

‘It’s all I ever did, since I was 18 – hang on ropes, blow shit up,’ he told me over a plate of eggs and hash browns. ‘Try not to fall – a four letter word, only happens once,’ he said, with the gallows chuckle of anyone who’s ever had to square away the realities of a dangerous job with the confidence and competence required to get it done, day in, day out.

The entire time we’re talking – shooting the breeze with Felix and Ollie about the classic car market in Switzerland (Mustangs, Camaros, and Mopars, although Felix just finished a $100k C-body restoration for a client), pointing out the framed photos on the wall of the diner of cars that Mike himself brought back to life – Hall is showing me pictures of recent acquisitions and projects-in-progress on his phone. ‘I’ve got ADD,’ he tells me, ‘so it’s easy for me to get distracted.’

That unrestrained enthusiasm for everything (especially if it’s got four wheels) shines through in the comprehensive nature of what Mike’s ended up collecting over the years. When I ask him what he thinks he has the most of, his buddy Avery, who has also joined us for breakfast, chimes in with a resounding ‘JUNK!’ There’s a roar of laughter from the group, who by now are standing in JB’s parking lot getting ready to make the 15 minute drive up to Mike’s.

By the time we get to the yard, however, my rental car panting and foaming at the mouth trying to keep up with Hall’s SS, I can easily see that Avery’s crack simply isn’t true. From the road, row upon row of Mopars, Fords, Buicks, and Oldsmobiles gleam alongside the White Post Auto Museum that abuts the most recent location for Hall’s armada, but that’s not our first stop. Instead, Mike wheels his Chevelle up the dirt path that leads up behind the museum, past two rows of shops, and into a yard framed by shipping containers on the left, and a garage on the right.

‘Welcome to the overflow yard,’ Mike says to me with an expansive sweep of his arms. This is where his latest acquisitions stop to catch their breath before being sorted and moved to a more permanent resting place, and in a word, it’s glorious. My eye darts from the late-60’s Cutlass hardtop to the pair of 67 Dodge Charger 383s sitting side-by-each, to the patina-ed Ford pickup with the bullet hole in the windshield. There’s a mid-50s two-door Chevy wagon facing off against a Pontiac of similar vintage, cuddled up to a three-door, late-60s three-door Suburban and a two-door former GMC ambulance with an air conditioner carved into the side. In short, it’s a (somewhat) moveable feast for the eyes, sitting proud in the B.C. mud.

‘It started with Novas,’ he tells me as we walk through the muddy puddles that separate the machines. ‘My first car was a ’51 International, but really it was the next one, my ’61 Alpine that got things started for me. After I ran that into the side of a mountain at about a hundred miles an hour – it had a V6 Capri motor in it – I ended up buying six or seven little 62-65 Novas, and eventually a ’67 with an L79 that I traded for my Chevelle.’  The SS has its own unique back-story, of course. ‘I sold the car to a buddy, but regretted it and bought it back 15 years later. Turns out he’d never processed the paperwork, so it was titled in my name that entire time. Technically, I’ve owned it for almost 25 years now.’

I asked him when, exactly, the tipping point occurred: the moment in time where ‘six or seven Novas’ became a living, breathing car collection? ‘Probably when it had grown to 30 cars and I had to move it the first time, then it was 60 and I had to move it the second time, then it was 200 and I came home and the gate on my farm was locked and my wife put her foot down and said “get this shit off my farm,” and then it was almost 400 and I’m like “what the fuck have I done?”‘ he replies, laughing.

We maneuver through the overflow and into the body shop, where Mike’s working on restoring a Plymouth Sport Satellite ragtop with a big block – one of the growing numbers of Mopars that he’s added to the fleet in recent years. I ask him how he decides what to buy. ‘My tastes have changed as I’ve evolved over the years, but I still like all kinds of cars,’ he says to me, pointing out the firewall tag on the car that’s hanging, rotisserie-style, awaiting paint. ‘I’ve got 59 through 61 Buick Invicta bubbletops, 60 and 61 Olds bubbletops, just picked up a 61 Cadillac bubbletop. I just love the design, that back window, man, that skinny little back B-pillar, you roll the windows down and there’s eight feet of air. Super cool!’

The Mopar angle has lead him to some interesting places, with a number of low-production Dodges and Plymouths now haunting the grounds. ‘I’ve got another one of these Sport Satellite rags, a numbers-matching 60 Road Runner 383 four-speed, two 70 Super B’s, a 70 Coronet wagon, a ’67 Formula S, a few Demons, and a Duster 340 four-speed Go-Wing car, although that one’s just a shell,’ he tells me as we walk down the dirt road from the overflow paddock to the museum. He wants to take me inside and show me some of his finished projects, which are mixed in on the floor with cars belonging to the White Post’s owners, Vance and Keri Tierney. I see an Alpine, Chevs, rods, a Model T, but the real show-stopper is a 1946 Mercury Ute – probably the only one in the country, and perhaps the only example left in North America. Originally built in Canada as a coupe, and shipped Down Under to be finished, at the time the pickup bed at the back of the Ute was the largest automotive stamping in the world. Most were Fords, but somehow, this one’s a Merc, and I’ll never see another one in my lifetime.

This Canada-by-way-of-Australia-only specimen is one of over a dozen Canuck-specific cars in the collection. Right outside the museum’s side-door is the highway-facing lot that houses the attention-grabbers in the collection, the cars that cause people to pull over, pull in, and start kicking tires. Mixed in with the Dodge and Plymouth crew are Javelins, AMXs, and a gang of Pontiac Beaumont Sport Deluxes, with the latter never having been offered south of the border. Sprouted from the forehead of the Acadian – Canada’s maple-coated Chevy II – Beaumonts were intended to tickle the premium fancies of the moderately well-to-do, becoming their own model line in 1966 and even offering big block power in Sport Deluxe trim (which also featured full consoles and bucket seats), making them kissing cousins to the Chevelle SS. The full-size Pontiac Parisienne (Canada’s B-platform, top-of-line sedan with vague links to both the Bonneville and the Chevrolet Caprice, only…different) is also represented.

Mike’s all-encompassing automotive tastes are reflected everywhere you look: a 1976 Ford Courier pickup sits in a line of retired American iron, a two-door 59 Chevy Brookwood wagon juts its fins out in a row of Invictas, a 66 Mercury Comet Caliente poses beside a Galaxie 500 fastback. At the back, along a fence, sits a wide array of trucks – a ’26 Chevrolet, an Austin panel, and wreckers from the 50s, 60s, and 70s – nestled behind a gathering of Alpines, panel vans, and a single Opel GT.

To describe each and every vehicle that I’m seeing would require an encyclopedic knowledge of the automotive landscape, but not only does Mike instantly identify, without exception, the make, model, and options offered by each of the cars in the yard, he also has their complete back-stories readily available to him via some fantastical mental Rolodex that has tracked the provenance of every purchase he’s ever made for the past four decades. The fount of knowledge and insight that pours from his mouth, without hesitation, is overwhelming as he gives me a guided tour through his ensemble of classic metal. This is no accidental accumulation, nor the tortured self-made prison popularized by a hundred Discovery Channel hoarders, but the conscious realization of a passion that has consumed most of the man’s life.

‘Every car in the yard I thought, ‘I’m going to restore that one day,’ Mike says as we pile into his Chevelle for a quick trip down the road to the field that holds the remainder – or is that motherlode? – of his collection. ‘And then you wake up one morning and you’re 60 fucking years old and you realize, ‘I’m not going to live long enough.’ You’ve have to be 300 to get it done, and you still might not make it.’

After a full-throttle run down the road, where Hall demonstrates the vibration the SS has picked up above 4,000 rpm in third and fourth gear – ‘I think it’s the driveshaft, at this point’ – we arrive at the gate to the last piece of his empire. Consisting of a restoration shop, a small house, and about 200 more cars sitting in the field just a short walk downhill from driveway, it’s where a mix of the less-common, but still solid pieces of his collection live.

‘I’m not really a car restorer, I’m just learning with these projects,’ he tells me on a quick tour of the shop.’ ‘I like buying them, but I’m going to pick easier ones to do from now on. Some of the cars I’ve done in the past should have been crushed, they were in such a sorry state when we started. But I didn’t know that, and I pushed through and restored them anyway – like that Challenger up on the wall of the diner. It was a 318 car, and we did a 340, and I lost 10k on it after I sold it. I had 400 hours of sheet metal work getting the rust out of it, and there was just no money to be made afterward.’

By now we’re picking our way down the hill – the one that made Mike quit smoking several years ago, he tells me – and I’m getting a full view of the field ahead. It’s the kind of eclectic mix you’ll never find in a salvage yard, because it takes heart, not an accountants beady eye, to gather these vehicles together and then take care of them for close to 40 years. My own peepers pick out a pair of FJ40 Land Cruisers, a Studebaker Lark Wagonaire and sedan, a mid-size Mercedes-Benz and of course another Alpine. Old drag cars, their livery faded but still boastful, sit beside a clump of Corvairs, GM pickups, and even a Simca. I’m blown away, but somehow not surprised when Mike reveals yet another piece of Canadian history – a Meteor Ranchero – that counts only 299 original brothers and sisters, with who knows how few remaining.

It’s the automotive equivalent of ‘Field of Dreams,’ only instead of corn, Iowa, and Kevin Costner, we’ve got mountains, metal, and a far more engaging leading man. I stand there in the spring silence for a few moments, gazing out at the cars carefully organized in front of me. Their doting caretaker stands beside me in a rare still moment of his own, a man whose mind is never far from this hallowed ground no matter how far his work takes him into the interior of Canada’s western-most province. For those few, fleeting seconds, I feel like I’ve tapped into that same, calming peace Mike finds here among his treasures.

We drive back to the main yard, the Chevy’s exhaust roaring and the tires squealing away from every stop. There’s more than one kind of Zen to be had out here amongst these machines, and I’m perfectly willing to accept big block bluster as an equally-restorative form of automotive therapy. On the way, Mike reflects on the magnitude of what he has to offer buyers like Felix and Ollie.

‘It’s a pretty tough sell,’ he admits. ‘Someone’s got to be as stupid as me, or as crazy as me to actually see the potential. If you picked 30 cars, restored them, you could sell the other 350 or so to fund the projects. There are a couple of huge shop buildings sitting on the land here in pieces, that could be put up to add another half a million or so to the property’s value.’

‘One guy can’t do all of this,’ he continues, a realization that he’s had for quite some time. ‘You need a team. Someone who can figure out what to part out, someone who can go online and connect with buyers. I don’t part anything – if I buy something for the shell, 30 years later, it’s still the same shell. If I buy it compete, 30 years later it’s still complete, save for a few four-doors that I’m willing to strip.’ It’s not boasting if it’s true, and I’ve just seen how much effort Hall has put into keeping his cars together, intact, and safe from the tin worm while in his care.

The truth is, there aren’t very many individuals like Mike left in the world. The stream of stories about big yards run by equally out-sized personalities has slowed to a trickle, and will eventually dry up completely as land values continue to climb and the number of people with the savvy and resources to maintain these sprawling collections dwindles away. With big-buck auctions brainwashing the masses into believing the only worthwhile classic is a 100-point restoration that doubles as a stand-in for your 401k, interest in drivers or complete, restorable cars as anything other than parts donors is at an all-time low.

Hall knows it, too. We say our good-byes just outside the overflow yard, and as I thanked him profusely for his time and generosity – I’d just been given a half-day guided tour through automotive history – he tells me how as part of the surge in attention his sale had gotten, he had been interviewed by Carol Ott on the CBC Radio 1’s stalwart ‘As It Happens.’

‘She asked me, Mike, how are you going to feel when they’re all gone,’ he says. ‘I’m sitting there in the shop looking out at all those cars, and I just started to cry.’ He pauses. ‘I realized it was like her asking me ‘how would you feel if we killed your kids right in front of you?’

For a moment his face loses the mischievous spark that’s been in his eyes ever since we met that morning. Then, almost as quickly, it’s back, and he smiles, laughs, shakes my hand again. He turns on his heel and walks back to the yard. After all, there are things to do, parts to order, phone calls to make – and children to take care of.

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