Driving the Mercedes out of town. Getting on I-5 and heading south today. I guess you could say I planned it. I don't remember thinking about planning it. But I must have.
I must have because here I am. Camping gear stowed in the back, Money from the CD and the retirement plan and the IRA and all that stashed and hidden around the Mercedes in traveler's checks, cash and gold and silver chains.
This is the Mercedes. It is blue. It is a '66. It is a 230. In Mercedes language, 230 has nothing to do with body style. In 1966 they made a Mercedes 200 and a Mercedes 190 that both look exactly like my 230. I think the 190 has a diesel engine and the 200 has a four cylinder regular gas engine. My '66 blue Mercedes 230 has a six cylinder regular gas engine. If you put an S after the 230 in 1966 then your Mercedes would have the same basic body style as mine but would have leather seats, dual headlights and the custom bumpers. If you put an SL after the 230 in 1966 then your Mercedes would be a little two-seater sports car with a completely different body and a removable hard top. My '66 blue Mercedes 230 doesn't have an SL or even an S after the 230, so it has vinyl seats and single headlights and the standard bumpers. My Mercedes has a four speed stickshift on the column, and sometimes it will just kick itself out of first gear when you let up the clutch at a traffic light and then it won't want to go back into first gear for a few moments, so you have to wait for it. My '66 blue Mercedes 230 without the SL or even the S after the 230 looks like somebody's grandmother's car. Looks a little like a '57 Chevy only Benz wimped out on the tail fins. The Mercedes just has these little almost funny sort of proto tailfins, or maybe not proto but that other word that means it's something useless leftover from earlier evolution. Every other car manufacturer in the world had dumped tailfins as a design concept by 1964, but Mercedes made this one model that still had them, even if they were kinda sad and shy tailfins. In 1967, Mercedes had a whole new design, and none of their cars had tailfins anymore.
The Mercedes is blue. Not that kind of dark electric blue that makes you think of driving fast down wet streets at night, or that sort of French racing blue that makes you think of LeMans and banners and hay bales on narrow winding roads by the Mediterranean. It wasn't that sort of midnight blue that almost looks black until the light hits it right or that royal blue that seems like the president of something or other, or even that teal color that looked so good on '57 Thunderbirds before Ford ruined the Thunderbirds by turning them into fat ass luxury cars.
The Mercedes is a kind of faded chalky blue that could be called powder blue. The paint is old, faded and chalky on top of the color being faded and chalky looking to begin with and it does not inspire images of racing or night or romance or luxury. It inspires images of going to the Kresge's or the B.P.O.E. Ladies Auxiliary monthly meeting and having some other old lady in a piss yellow '63 Buick LeSabre back into your front left fender in the parking lot. The Mercedes has a big dent in the front left fender.
The Mercedes has a sun roof, but the handle broke off one day so you have to use a vise-grip on it. The Mercedes has a wimpy heater with controls that make no sense and seem to have no effect on the operation of the heater, except that the fan switch does work.
The Mercedes has a headlight switch you turn and a windshield wiper switch you pull, exactly opposite the controls on a '66 Mustang. The Mercedes leaks water in around the doors and the floor behind the driver's seat is rusted through and is only held together by the insulation and carpet. The Mercedes has a Kenwood stereo that I won in a drawing in 1979 in Florida and the Mercedes is the third car it’s been in since then. The stereo, I mean. The speakers are mounted in plywood boxes I made so that you could finally hear some bass after two years of them just sitting on top of the rear deck because the metal of the rear deck of the Mercedes is about as thick as armor on a tank and I didn’t want to try to cut through it.
The Mercedes has tan vinyl seats and door panels, and the door panels at the bottoms are moldy and don’t stick to the door anymore and if you put things in the door pockets they either fall through or get moldy or both. The things you put in, I mean.
The Mercedes does not have power steering. So after driving for a few hours, your arms feel like you went to the Nautilus club and only did the arm machines. Like you went there after work and put on your sweatpants and your old Bud the Party Animal tee shirt and your New Balance sneakers called tennis shoes everywhere but the northeast even though you don't play tennis and never even want to and all you wanted was something to work out in so the guy at the sneaker store sold you these things called cross trainers but nobody calls them that once you get out of the store anyway. So you're all dressed and you go out into the workout room where all the Nautilus equipment is, but these huge guys who look like life-size rubber action figures someone pumped too full of plastic are on all the leg machines doing 'reps' whatever that is, and the upper body machines are full of women wearing white and red and yellow thong workout suits over black tights and they are all breathing carefully and trying to sweat without running all the makeup they are wearing and the stomach cruncher has everybody else waiting in line after they did the arm machines so you have to do the arm machines first. And then there still isn't any other machines to do, so you do 'reps' and after about an hour doing reps on the arm machines you can't even lift your arms to take off your Bud the Party Animal shirt. That’s what driving the Mercedes is like.
Maybe that's not a good analogy.
* * *
So I am driving south on I-5 in a blue Mercedes. It’s June and the sun-roof is open. The radio is blasting Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
Okay, so that about covers How. The next big question would be Why. And after that, Where.
Where can take care of itself. Where is never where you expect it to be, or plan it to be, anyway, so trying to explain where before you get there is an Exercise in Futility. That's the Nautilus machine between Head Banging and Leg Pulling.
So back to Why.
Good Question.
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