Writing ‘hooks’ pays off in car deal

By Frank Cerabino

Monday, Sept. 22, 2014 | 2:02 a.m.

A 93-year-old man put his creative writing class to good use, good enough to reunite him with his beloved car.

For three years, Lyman Trescott has been taking a creative writing class at the Mid-County Senior Center in Lake Worth, Fla. This is where he has been learning things such as putting “hooks” in his writing.

He tried out some of those hooks recently. And instead of just sharing them with his fellow classmates, he got to showcase them in a letter to a car dealer.

One day last month, Trescott went into Palm Beach Toyota to buy some touch-up paint for his Toyota Camry and to ask about a letter he got in the mail encouraging him to trade in his car for a new one. He ended up driving away that day in a new Camry on a two-year lease.

When his family members realized he had taken a leased car in exchange for the one he owned, a hybrid 2007 Camry with only 33,500 miles on it — a car partially purchased by a son who would eventually inherit it — they told him he had made a terrible mistake.

“I have tried to explain my actions that day, but I come up with a blank,” Trescott said. “Some said it was dementia. Of course, I denied it, but there didn’t seem to be any other answer. And the more I thought of the terrible deal I got myself into, the more depressed I got.”

So he decided it was time to write a letter to the dealer. That creative writing class was about to pay off. First order of business was to scribble down some hooks.

“It couldn’t hurt to mention I’m 93 years old with a touch of dementia,” Trescott said.

He wrote that down as “Hook No. 1.” Yes, playing the dementia card would certainly be an asset.

“Mention how depressed you are,” Trescott wrote. “And what goes along with depression? Suicide, of course. Mention that.”

Trescott, a former television salesman and repairman, said he has never been suicidal. But as a hook, suicide’s tough to beat.

“It is the first rift in the Trescott family in 93 years and has terribly depressed me,” Trescott wrote in his letter to the car dealership. “Thoughts of suicide keep entering my head, and I don’t want to end my life that way.”

He figured I would serve as “Hook No. 3.” You see, Trescott is a regular correspondent.

And in December, I wrote a column about him when he unwittingly drove his beloved Toyota into the middle of the Lake Clarke Shores holiday parade. Rather than panic, Trescott decided to just go with the flow, pretending he was part of the parade by rolling down his window and yelling “Merry Christmas” to everyone.

Copying the letter to me was almost as effective as a suicide threat, he figured.

He sent me a copy of his letter a few weeks ago. I wished him well.

Last week, he told me it worked. The letter, combined with an in-person conference between his son-in-law and the sales manager, had reversed the month-old car deal.

“The family matters were causing undue stress,” sales manager Brian Childress told me. “His children gave him so much grief, because his son was losing equity in the car, so we gave him his car back.”

Childress said Trescott isn’t the oldest customer he has put in a new car.

“He was a shrewd negotiator. He wasn’t a lay-down,” Childress said. “He came in with a flier and was curious about his options. He got interested and wanted to get in.”

These days, Trescott is just glad he got out. He wrote the dealership another letter, this time a thank-you letter.

And on Tuesday afternoon, he drove his newly returned Camry to his weekly creative writing class, where he read to the class the story of his letter-writing experience and his joy in having his old car back.

“It’s mine and I own it, even if I live 10 more years (ha!),” he wrote.

How was the feedback from the class?

“They loved it,” Trescott said. “They clapped, and the teacher said it was one of my best.”

Frank Cerabino writes for the Palm Beach Post.