I spent half a day at work today. Pretty much everyone did. We're all off tomorrow and Friday. I spent the rest of the afternoon with Elaine's grandmother, Frieda, who is a truly remarkable old woman. And I have bought her truly remarkable old car. I don't know what got into me, but I now know a really nice lady in what I suspect are the last years of her life, and I now have a grand old car with what I hope are the better years ahead of her.
I called Elaine's grandmother this afternoon to see if it would be possible to move up our appointment for me to look at her Mercedes-Benz, and she was quite happy to do so. I went over in the skateboard. Frieda (her last name was very long and very German and I can't remember it just now) lives alone in a very atypical house in Hoffman Estates, a really large place that she has people come in to take care of.
"Well! You are the writer and artist from the place of Elaine's work?" she asked me. I said I was, and introduced myself. I sort of expected her to show me to her car and be all businesslike, but instead she insisted I sit down and have some tea with her. She had some Christmas cookies out, and we sat down in this very warm-feeling living room.
"Elaine has said that you are an unusual girl," she said (I'll have to ask Elaine what "unusual" means).
We talked for a little while, and what struck me was this woman's animation. She was, by my guess at that time, 72 or 74, but she lit up like a small child when she talked. She moved in that careful, delicate way that some older people do, when it seems as though every part of them is brittle with age and they need to be cautious about every movement. I think I understood why she didn't drive any longer. She told me a little about the house -- her husband had designed it, though apparently his real business was designing watches. She herself was Swiss, she said, and she had met her husband in Zurich in 1937. She spoke clearly but her accent was distinct. Light, not heavy, as if she had kept a certain echo of it to remind herself that Illinois was not her original home.
I found myself listening, and asking a few questions. Frieda told me a little about her husband and their life. She was, in fact, 81. She had been born in one of the Swiss cantons during the First World War, and her family had moved to Zurich in 1929. She met her late husband, who was Austrian, in 1937 when he was in Zurich learning to make watches. They were married in 1938, almost the time of the Anschluss, and she said he never returned to Austria. They stayed in Zurich through the Second World War, keeping a watchmaking business, and having several children, and in 1948 they came to Chicago. He had several jewelry stores in the 1950s and 1960s, and after selling them in the late 1970s they retired. That was also when they bought the car.
I looked around the room, and after hearing that he was a watchmaker I suppose I expected to see lots of clocks and things, but there were none. I noticed this out loud at one point, and Frieda said, "no, he said that after fifty years of being at the mercy of timepieces he was not going to have any more of it." Until he died (I think around 1987) he never even wore a wristwatch, she said.
She asked me about my writing, about some of the design and artwork I've done. I felt pretty ashamed that I didn't have much more to talk about than writing the pieces in the last year for the local papers, and didn't bring up this diary. I told her a little about me, and I had the sense she was sizing me up a little, like I was auditioning for something. She lit up again when I mentioned oboe. She herself didn't play, but she mentioned, a little coyly, a young man she had known in Zurich when she was seventeen or eighteen who was "a marvelous violinist," but apparently her parents didn't want her to have anything to do with a musician. I gathered they were delighted she married a watchmaker. Parents do that, I guess.
After a little more, she stood slowly up, and she announced, "I think you should look at the car."
The house had a large garage a little ways separated from the house, a three-car garage with a large, large tree hanging over it. We walked slowly out to it -- she was hanging onto my elbow with a grip like a pair of pliers - and she pushed a button to open the door, and there... was this car.
It was a fabulous forest green, it just looked perfect.
It was a station wagon!
Elaine hadn't mentioned that. I had figured it'd be like the Mercedes-Benzes you see out on the Dan Ryan, these things that look like suppositories and are always carrying some guy with two cellular phones and one of those little stick-up notepads on the windshield. But this car was nothing like that. It was very formal, a dark, dark green with tan leather interior. It had a sunroof, and a roof rack, and it just glowed. Frieda's eyes lit up again.
We walked slowly around it and she explained that they had bought it in Europe in late 1980, drove it all over the continent on vacation, then had it shipped back here. It was a special model that wasn't sold here. It literally looked as if it had just been made. Not a scratch on it. Not a mark. Not even, really, any dust.
"I cannot drive this car any more," she said. "I cannot trust to drive any car. I have someone take me where I must go now. To the doctor, to the stores. But the car must be made to drive."
The car must be made to drive.
For you technical types, I looked at the owner's manual, but it was in German and my German isn't quite good enough to manage those nouns. The car is a 1981 Mercedes-Benz 300TD, which is a five-cylinder diesel station wagon with a turbocharger. I was amazed to find it had a manual transmission. I expected to find an automatic, since she would have been, what, 63 at the time he bought it for her? It has radial tires and a Blaupunkt stereo that looked original. The odometer registers in metric.
We talked a while longer, and she reached up to a hook on the wall (really!) and took down the keys and suggested I take it for a drive.
Now, think about the idea that I had totaled my own car just a few days ago, and here this old woman was trusting me with this car that she had lived with for nearly 20 years! I was really nervous about it. But the car started up (after Frieda showed me how you start a diesel car and let it warm up). I took it out into the neighborhood, which for once had straight streets and the houses were spaced apart well.
I cannot describe what that car felt like. It was astonishing. It was like a really smooth watch, like a really excellent oboe or something. You think about what you want to do, whether it's stop, start, turn, whatever, and the car just... does it.
I indulged myself and opened the sunroof, even though it was kind of cold. It was a really intoxicating experience, having this gorgeous old car around me and the wind blowing the top of my hair around.
I had it out for maybe ten minutes, and when I got back, Frieda was sitting on a bench between the garage and the house, sitting very formally, looking out over the lawn toward the west. The sun seemed to be getting a little low, but I checked my watch and it was only 3:15. She didn't watch as I pulled up and shut the car off. The doors were like porcelain, they clicked shut when I got out.
She turned to look at me, and I guess I was smiling like a fool, because she lit up again and I think she knew I really liked it.
"The car, what is it worth to you?" she asked me after a moment. I was without words, because I hadn't actually thought about it. I assumed that she would tell me what she wanted for it, and that it would be far, far too much, and I would go off and resign myself to another nice-but-collapsible Honda. She answered her own question, sort of.
"I have enjoyed this car. I cannot enjoy it now, and want that it be with someone who will use it, yes?" I nodded. "I think you shall be this person who will use it. I see in your eyes."
Four thousand dollars exactly. For four thousand United States dollars, I became the owner of that elegant green station wagon that was powered by the gods.
I made the check out, she spelled her name carefully, and then she told me, "you know, my grandson [Elaine's brother] asked me about this car, and I told him I was going to be buried in it!" She started to laugh. Elaine told me about the approximately dozen cars her brother has trashed in his short life (I think he's 27) and I was sure Frieda knew everything she needed to know about that.
Frieda said that it would be easiest for her to leave her license plate on the car so that I could go over and register it (the office was open until five) and all I needed to do was call my insurance agent and ask them to put the car on the policy. I made sure they put all the coverage on it I could get, but the premiums were still lower than the Honda.
I called Maureen and asked her if she could help me by driving the skateboard back to O'Hare, and she was happy to do it because she had to catch a flight out tonight and being able to drop the skateboard off meant she wouldn't have to pay for a cab out there.
I picked her up after going to the Secretary of State and putting the new plates on, and Maureen was really pleased I liked the car. She also commented that if we ever add a harp player to the quintet, I can help haul it around. Right.
I drove back out to Hoffman Estates, introduced Maureen briefly to Frieda, who thanked me again and made sure she had my number and such, and then the skateboard, Maureen, the green Mercedes and I all went off into the world.
It's the most comfortable car I have ever been in. One of my aunts, the overweight one in Lockport, used to have a big Cadillac, and that car always made me sick when I was a kid. It was like riding in a big silver marshmallow. This car is so instantly comfortable, so comforting, that I've already felt like I've gotten used to it. I guess I'm going to Minneapolis after all.
I'm really, really happy with this. I picture myself, at age eighty-one, passing this car along to a 29-year-old whose parents haven't even been born yet, but it'll have a lot more miles then.
I drove out along the lake north of downtown, off Sheridan. Not fast, not trying to do anything but get used to the car. I never pictured myself as a station wagon person. I never figured on a Mercedes. Things happen sometimes.
It's misty out tonight, and the car wanted to go forever.
I have no idea where you get diesel fuel.