The LBC Lie

One of the most ridiculous lies I ever told my wife pertained to my 1974 MGB. Now, I know what you’re thinking… “Not many husbands actually confess to lying to their wives…especially in print.”

Terry hides his Moss catalogs in another well-known publication, to keep his habit of buying parts from his wife.
– Photo by Susan Motander

I use the word in the plural as I have two wives, yes, ‘tis true. My mother-in-law lives with us. I only let her as she too is a car nut, and loves my B almost as much as me.

On this particular tall tale occasion, about a year ago, I told my wife I had an unusually hectic list of assignments for a  Saturday (I’m a photojournalist) and informed her that’d  I’d probably be home late that night. Being the ever-so-trusting wife, she took me at face value.

This is where the plot thickens.  En route to my “unusually hectic list of assignments,” I had to buy gas. Stupidly, I used the joint Credit Card. The credit card bill came in four weeks later and duly noted, “Someone has charged $40 for gas in Buellton on our card.”  This caught my wife’s eye since we live in Los Angeles and haven’t been up North recently.

With a careful bit of devious quick thinking, I made up some lame excuse like, “OMG someone must have got our account #…I’ll call the bank Monday….”  Usually, when I’m buying MG parts it’s local and petrol charges are never an issue.

The awful truth of the matter was about to be revealed. “I don’t think I’ll get away with this one,” a little British voice said in my head. It was time to fess up and admit to my wife that I had driven hundreds of miles for a secondhand set of wheels for the B and two badly needed seats which I found on Craigslist. I admitted that it was I who bought the gas for said voyage.

There was a pause, a deadly loud silence suddenly hit the room and a glazed look came upon her face. She then burst out laughing, saying, “You drove all that way for your girlfriend’s seats?”

She continued to laugh for what seemed like an eternity while I was waiting for the lecture on being truthful at all times to one’s spouse.

It took a while, the laughter did diminish, but not my guilt.

Ultimately, it was my wife who got the last laugh as the seats I bought in Atascadero were not nearly as good as I had initially thought. Perhaps driving several hundred miles affected my vision when I said “OK, I’ll take the seats.” Like the old yellow pages ad use to say, I really should have let my fingers do the walking. My good friend and expert MG mechanic, Ed Shamon, took one look at them and said “they need to be rebuilt.” So not only did I spend hours and hours driving on US 101 and a couple of hundred bucks for the bad seats and tires, I basically wasted a day, lied to the wife and got busted to boot. I guess there’s a moral in this story—what that is fails me at the moment.

OKAY,  I admit it, I’m an addict! I’m totally consumed by the love of my 1974 chrome bumper MGB and the seemingly never ending quest for new and improved parts that keep the B buzzing along southern California roadways.

This is where Moss Motors  comes into the picture:

The never ending knocking of the UPS man delivering yet another marvelous box full of MGB toys from Moss Motors, has perhaps gone a little too far and has given rise to my wife’s nagging suspicion that I might, in fact, love the B more than she!

My wife of 14 years is normally tolerant and understanding but the Moss catalog drooling leaves her cold.

When she sees me salivating over the pages of a Moss Motors catalog, she sometimes laughs but mostly shakes her head in disbelief…especially when I ask if UPS has delivered a package yet.

“What’d you get for your girlfriend this time?” she’ll ask.

It got really bad in the summer, when I needed to change the starter, thermostat as well as seemingly endless bulbs, odds and ends, etc. The Moss catalog was on the bedside table.  Some say the addiction is now getting a wee bit weird.

After a few times being “caught” reading and inwardly digesting my Moss Motors catalog, hearing the inevitable… “So, what does your girlfriend need NOW?”  I decided to use a new, albeit diabolical ruse. In order to read my parts catalog in peace, using my new tactic, I carefully place the catalog between the pages of Playboy magazine.

My master plan is an enormous success and I can now “read the articles,” quite literally. However, those ‘articles’ contain precious information that only my UPS man and Moss rep. truly know for sure. And when my wife thinks I’m looking at a lovely pair of headlights, I really am looking at, well, headlights!

I may, however, have to inaugurate the Moss deliveries to the office, to avoid being caught in this deceptive quest for the perfect B, however.

Each time another box arrives, my wife laughs…and the old “ what d’ya get for your girlfriend this time?” …it is becoming a bit of a drag. Sometimes I’ll call from the office to ask how she is (when I really wanna know if the package from Goleta arrived).

As a side note, I was born in England, a mere 19.2 miles from Abingdon. Perhaps this has a deep, significant impact on me. However ‘twas not until I moved to the states that I acquired my first B.

I’ve seen my doctor about the “B-Dilema” but he has advised me to see a specialist as there’s little he can do.  He drives a Porsche!

By Terry Miller