On Sunday, January 30, 2022, my brother-in-law Angelo Dilena, 70, was one of 456 Americans to die from Covid-19. He was vaxxed and boosted but had numerous co-morbidities that made him especially susceptible to the virus.
My sister was widowed in 1993 and married Angelo in 2003. He really brought the sparkle back to her eyes, took away the sadness in her voice, the Mary Ellen I had grown up with had suddenly returned with a warm smile and a renewed zest for life. For that alone I will always honor Angelo.
Ahh… but there was more…
Angelo was the “Car Whisperer”. He had an amazing gift.He could go to a used car lot, test drive any number of vehicles and pick out the one that was going to last the longest and need the least maintenance. If he had wanted to and had marketed himself he could have done this for a living at a few hundred dollars a day. But he was a carefree soul who was happier building a pizza oven in the back yard and spending undisturbed time with my sister than in navigating the maze toward success. Retired on disability he seemed to have a new (used) car every few months. He went thru at least four cars a year many years. He’d get bored and knew all the ins and outs of trading them in for peak value on a purchase of one he had test drove and knew to be in great working order. It was a skill of his of the highest order.
My wife Leigh was in the market for a used car in 2009 and, having heard of his prowess on the lots we asked for his assistance. When we got to his house he had print outs of the latest holdings of local used car lots, he was as in his element as a quarterback before the big game, as a journalist on deadline with a breaking story. We drove from La Mirada to Hawaiian Gardens, then up to Pico Rivera and over to Whittier. At each lot he would start up the car for sale, open the hood while it was running, take in deep breaths to smell things, drive it a block or two and return. Then a quick “Thanks but no thanks” and the search would continue. He was on the prowl seeking big game, a moment he lived for, a hunt at which he excelled.
When we were back in our car he would explain the ten or twelve problems with the car. A clean, low-mileage Ford Taurus with a tow hitch in the back — looked practical, right? Angelo quickly deduced that it may have worn out the car if it had hauled too much stuff too many times. He drove it in reverse twenty feet and then back, got out and shook his head. A soliloquy on the mortality of drive trains followed. A cute blue four door something with a big trunk would have been perfect and was in our price range. Angelo drove it around the block, parked it and with the negine running checked under the hood. “I wouldn’t buy it for half this price, the transmission is leaking, you can smell it burning, that fluid has as distinct smell.” These are talents for a master chef in the kitchen and he was in a used car lot maximizing them to save us from the headaches of a lemon.
One day I needed a car and had saved five thousand dollars. We went to a Buena Park Honda dealer and the second car he test drove he told me “that is the best car on this lot” — an endorsement like that from him would be like the Pope saying “Here’s the priest you want baptizing your kids”. But he had bought a few cars from them before and explained that when I went in the office I was to tell them “I have five thousand dollars. I don’t have $5100 dollars, I don’t even have five thousand and one dollars, I have five thousand dollars. You can have it and I get the car or I can leave here with it all.” That sales guy had more whistles and bells and theft protection plans to upsell me on and sitting across from him i just repeated this mantra of Angelo’s and after saying it three times he said, “You sound like a pro,” and finished the paperwork up and the car was mine. When I sold it after six years, the only thing I had spent on it was for gas and oil changes.
But back to that afternoon looking for a car for Leigh. We ended up on the dumpiest lot in South Whittier with a sleazy car salesman trying to push us to test drive a junky BMW when Angelo pressed him to move one car and bring out a white 1990 Ford Escort. This was as bland a car as has ever been put on the road. It’s only feature of note was a zebra-skin-patterned license plate frame. One test drive and Angelo gave us a discrete thumbs up. We haggled them down to $2,300. We thanked Angelo for the time, tried to give him a few hundred bucks which he politely but firmly refused.
Can you see this as a teevee show? Like he goes out for the day, finds the car and then they check back six months later and the people say “Wow, it really runs well!” and a year later and they say “We definitely got our money’s worth!”
My wife drove that Ford Escort for over five years. One day she got an offer to buy her stepfather’s Acura for a thousand dollars. It was a huge upgrade, a much nicer car. My brother has a machine shop nearby, I asked if anyone who worked for him might want to buy Leigh’s Ford Escort. Once i told my brother that Angelo had picked it out he told evryone who worked for him and one guy bought for $300. It was clunky and looked like crap (except for the license plate frame) but for $300 what the heck. Leigh enjoyed her Acura for six years until it finally died and she donated it to KCET in 2020. We are down to one car — my truck — and loaded it up today with pillowcases of laundry. As we drove down a block past my brother’s shop this afternoon, there was the Ford Escort which Angelo had approved of thirteen years ago, parked on the street, still running to this day, zebra stripes and all. It’s enough to make you cry so you just have to laugh and say Rest In Peace, oh great Car Whisperer. If Cal Worthington is in heaven he’ll never sell the saints a lemon with Angelo there.
RIP • ANGELO DILENA • 1951 — 2022