This entire thread is going to sound like an ad, and for that I apologize, but today I’d like to talk about Mr. Price V. LeBlanc, founder of Price LeBlanc Toyota (and now Price LeBlanc Nissan, etc.) in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Price Leblanc Toyota was a staple of my childhood, as was “Mr. Price.” Mr Price was old even when I was young, and he starred in all the commercials. His whole thing was that if you were a kid, gave him a low five, and said, “Dahlin!” (his catchphrase), you got a dollar. Every time. Needless to say, Mr. Price was a hero to young jake regardless of whether he was a good man. Luckily, by all accounts, he was indeed a good man.

One such account is my mom’s. So, back story: My first dad died when he was 30 years old, killed on his way home from work by a drunk driver. Mom had just turned 29 two days prior, my sister was 3, and I was 1 year old. Mom and First Dad had moved to Louisiana from Missouri about five years previous after Borden Chemical took a chance on First Dad’s draft number not coming up towards the end there. They didn’t have any family in the area.

So after First Dad died, Mom bought a Peugeot. There was an ad that showed a Peugeot rolling down a hill and coming out unscathed, and, well, I guess we can understand why that would appeal to Mom. She says that car was absolutely gorgeous . . . but it was also a lemon. It broke down all the time. Matter of fact, we weren’t allowed to buy Peugeot bikes when we graduated to 10-speeds because the brand was so toxic to Mom; I still knee-jerk hate it despite not remembering this car in the slightest. Anyway, a while later, Mom brought the Peugeot in to Price LeBlanc Toyota down the road near Gonzales to trade in for a bigger, more reliable car (a Cressida, which later saved my sister’s life, but that’s another story). Mom is a bit stiff-necked, so she told Mr. Price the whole history of the car. She warned him! But it was a beautiful car in pristine condition, and Mr. Price was confident he’d sell it for way more than her trade-in. He even promised to give her half the profits.

The day came that Mr. Price called Mom at the nearby high school where she taught and told her to come pick up her check. She went to do so, but she had to ask: “Mr. Price, I noticed the car is still here?” And Mr. Price admitted that the lady who bought the car didn’t even make it off the lot before it broke down. “But,” he said, “A deal’s a deal.”

Now, Mom claims she tore up the check, but Mom also claims she never smoked pot in the 60s. I don’t really believe that (and more the fool her if she did tear it up, recently widowed schoolteacher with two toddlers!), but I do believe that Mr. Price was a righteous person.

He’s been dead about 15 years now according to this obituary, and the folks at Price Leblanc Toyota Nissan don’t know me from Adam, but I choose to believe they’re keeping up Mr. Price’s legacy, because they could not have been kinder or more ethical when I frantically brought them my vehicle prior to traveling a few weeks ago.

And here’s where I want to go off on a tangent about how I bet Mr. Price was a Republican, back when we just thought Republicans were pitiless, and speculate about what he’d think of today’s party, but nah. I didn’t actually know the man. He might have been terrible (in which case I apologize for all of this). He was probably a mixture of good and bad like most of us. But it says something that when I think “car salesman,” I don’t think of a shyster; I think of Mr. Price . . . Dahlin’.

Oh my gosh, y’all, I forgot about the sausage!

“If you don’t care about others, how can you care about yourself? . . . I want to be remembered as a man that cares about others and is thankful for what he has, and thinks he’s just a really lucky guy.”

Be kind to yourselves and each other, Avocados, and have a good Thursday!