Haresh Shah

You Are What You Drive

buickcrash3

“That damn Buick of yours. As much as we have paid to transport it all over the world, the company should own the damn thing.” Exclaims my boss Lee Hall. So it should. The company could have even bought two of those damn things. But what was I supposed to do?

I had applied for a job at Playboy at the same time as I did Time. I have had a perfunctory interview with the production boss John Mastro. Nothing came out of it while Time offered me the job in Chicago. Now four years later when John does offer me the job, its over the phone – the one that would take me to Germany. And wouldn’t you know? He wants me yesterday.

Its Thursday October 26th 1972. This is how the conversation goes.

‘When can you start?’

‘As soon as I could.’

‘Can you leave in a couple of weeks?’

‘That might be a bit tight. I still have a job, I need to give them notice first,’

‘You need two weeks for that. If you give them your notice tomorrow, which is October 27th. You should be free by November 10th. Can you leave on November 11th?’

‘But I also have a whole household and the lease to worry about.’

‘Let’s not worry about all that now. Once you have done the next issue, you can find a window of time and come back to Chicago for a couple of weeks and wrap things up’.

‘And I have just bought a brand new car!’ It just slips out of my mouth. I hesitate to mention the woman I was in love with.

‘We could ship your car along with your personal belongings!’

Wow! Though I don’t say it. I am tongue tied. It would be something to drive around in a big flashy American boat of a car in the cobblestoned streets of the city of Munich. Well, why not?

This is my first new car and I have madly fallen in love with it. I have dreamt of her sleek, sexy and streamlined shapely body for sometime now. It’s a bit shorter than the long phallic Oldsmobile Cutlass I owned, but somehow classier. I can still ill afford to buy a new car, but one fine morning I find, or more accurately, don’t find my metallic gold  Olds on the street twelve floors below my South Shore apartment on the 67th street and when it’s determined that it’s irretrievable gone, I have no choice but buy another car in a hurry. My job at Time is totally dependent on my ability to drive. So I decide to take a plunge. And as long as I am buying a new car, I decide to buy its top of the line model in gleaming white color and the mottled chocolate-brown vinyl top. Air conditioned and with factory installed AM/FM stereo, rear defroster – automatic transmission of course, slippery sleek beige vinyl interior, power steering, white walls and all. The only thing I miss out on is a cassette player. Eight tracks are barely out of the door and the cassettes are just about to make their tepid entry into the market, having one installed in my car  doesn’t even occur to me. Something that would soon sting me. But not even having to consider leaving behind my Buick makes me enormously happy. It also means that Playboy does things in style!

So on Saturday October 11th, I check into Frankfurt bound Lufthansa flight and arrive in Munich on Sunday the 12th. Work on the Christmas issue, make a short detour to Milan, Italy and return back to Chicago to wrap up my life of four years, bid farewell to all my friends and board another trans-Atlantic flight and return to Munich.

When my stuff and the Buick arrive in January, my friend Dieter (Stark) rolls his eyes and calls it a tank. Dieter’s swanky Opel Sports was my envy when we worked together at Burda in Offenburg, five years earlier.  Dieter now lives in Munich. Amazingly, he works in the second wing of the same building on Augustenstrasse for the graphic reproduction company that does Playboy Germany’s color separations. He rolls his eyes again, pouts, and adds, so ein lastwagen! What a  truck! And then when we would drive around, amazed at my parking skills, he would go, jests du hast zwei parkplätze weggenomen! Now you have taken away two parking spots. But as skeptical as he is, he gets used to my tank-truck, while now he himself is driving a Volkswagen Bug. A perfect city car. But when you’re in love with your chariot, you don’t think of minor details like ease of parking!

My Buick is also talk of the town in our office building where they have given me a parking spot on the lower tier, which when the upper parking ramp is lowered, leaves only about an inch or two of space between the trunk of my car and the bottom of the metal ramp. Why they didn’t consider giving me the upper tier, I don’t ask, because somewhere along the line I see it as a challenge to be able to park my car just so, to keep it from crushed under the rough bottom of the ramp and the weight of the car up above. Soon my sassy American car becomes a sight to behold in the home town of the mighty BMW.

●●●

Another person I reconnect with in Munich is Marianne (Thyssen-Miller). Someone I had only met once years earlier in Krefeld and on whom I had developed an incredible crush. She too is now living in Munich. That gorgeous summer afternoon, she has invited me to join her and some of her friends to a picnic at Perlacher Forst – a forest preserve not too far from the center of the city. Marianne has given me very specific directions on how to get to the picnic grounds. I make it out of the city and reach the general neighborhood of where they had all gathered. And then as it often happens. I must have taken one wrong turn or missed a single direction, and after more than half an hour of going around in circles, and finding myself at the same crossroads for the third time, I am now feeling frustrated and quite frazzled. There are no other cars to be seen, no people walking around, no one I could stop and ask.  I look left and I look right and I look straight and then on impulse decide to turn left.  Right in front of my big hunk of white pointed metal, a Volkswagen Bug seems to have materialized out of nowhere.  By the time I see it coming towards me, it’s too late.

I see a very old couple occupying the front seats. They look scared and totally disoriented  behind their tiny windshield. I jump out of the car and run to make sure that they are okay.  There is no visible physical harm done to them, shook up, the woman keeps saying “it wasn’t our fault, it wasn’t our fault.”  “No it wasn’t”, I try to calm her.  I tell her that the most important thing is that they are okay, that it was my fault, and that I have proper insurance to take care of whatever damage the accident may have caused.

The couple must have been in their late sixties or even early seventies.  They are driving in from Dortmund to spend some days with their daughter who lives in the Munich area, not too far from where we have collided.  The loud thud of the collision has brought out the people living in nearby houses.  The old woman calls her daughter from one of the homes.  A few minutes later, a balding young man – their son-in-law shows up in his big boxy Mercedes Benz.  He introduces himself to me as Rudolph Geisler. I am bracing myself for his outburst and anger. I am in Germany and the cars mean a lot to the people. And they are attuned to doing everything in very official way. I am preparing myself psychologically to kiss my picnic goodbye. And the hopes of breaking away from the group in the evening and ending up at some cozy romantic restaurant alone with Marianne.

But the wonder of all wonders, instead of being angry and irate, Rudolph begins to apologize to me for the accident, telling me that he has often told his father-in-law that he was too old to drive, but he just wouldn’t listen – but this would teach him.

I re-confirm to Rudolph that I have international insurance and everything should be taken care of, that maybe we should call police and make a report.

“Let me just get my in-laws home first and then we will worry about that.  Let me give you my phone number and let me have yours and then we will work it all out.” This is very highly un-German way to behave. But haven’t I been told that the Bavarians are different?

We together move the Bug out of the way. There is hardly any damage done to my car, except the driver’s side of the door has shifted back a couple of millimeters, making it hard to open it completely, in contrast, the front end of the little Volkswagen looks like a battered bellow of an  accordion. Rudolph gives me proper directions on how to get to where I was going. He throws a perfunctory glance at Buick, as if saying: nicht schlecht! – not bad, and off he is on his way with his in-laws tucked safely inside his Benz. Sure enough, the picnic grounds aren’t far from where I am. I meet up with Marianne and her friends and join the fun.

I call Rudy the next day.  I tell him I have reported the accident to my insurance agent, and he  has assured me that everything will be taken care of.  Rudy doesn’t seem in the least concerned about the details.

“Listen, we will be busy the next few days with my in-laws.  I really don’t think the old man should drive anymore, so we will just put them on a train on Friday.  Why don’t you come over to our house over the weekend and we can settle things over a nice Bavarian meal?  I am sure Uschi, my wife will enjoy meeting you.”

So I go for the dinner. Uschi has cooked delicious Schewinsbraten with Knödel and sauerkraut.  I no longer am in touch with them, but they become very much a part of my social circle for as long as I still lived in Munich.

© Haresh Shah 2013

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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Next Friday, October 08, 2013

IN PRAISE OF MY BUICK PART II

My move from Chicago to Munich happened so fast that there was no time to consider the practical aspects of taking my Buick along across the Atlantic. Had I known, what I was up against, I certainly would have sold the car and bought myself a new one in Munich. Probably my favorite Audi 80. But there are also rewards for having done just that.