Wow!!! Who would believe someone would buy a second hand benzine/gasoline/petrol engine of any kind, without first starting it to see how it starts and runs??? This just proves how desperate comic book story writers, who earned pennies more per day than 3rd World hunter gatherers were, to find new ironic story endings, because they needed to crank out so many stories per day, just to scrape enough money together to pay rent and, at the same time to purchase enough food/calories to barely stay alive.
That desperation for stories with ironic twist endings reminds me of The O'Henry story of the penniless young married couple, who desperately want to give each other fabulous Christmas gifts, but having no money, can only dream. The husband earlier, had refused to have her beautiful, long hair cut short, to raise enough money to pay their rent. On the sly, he pawns his only heirloom, his grandfather's pocket watch, to secretly buy her a fancy hair comb. His wife, wanting to reward him for his wanting to please her by not allowing her to cut her pride and joy, has her hair cut, and spends it on getting the pawned watch back from the pawnbroker, thinking he pawned it to pay their rent. So, the ending is ironic because, instead of ending up with "fabulous" gifts, the husband ends up with nothing he didn't have before, and the wife ends up with an unusable gift, because she has no hair over an inch long, that can be combed.
Link to the book:
Meet Merton 1
