The engine of progress

The air of my European vacation lingers, leaving me unmotivated to write. I've also been, in the words of Professor Hinkle, busy, busy, busy. No sooner had we landed at JFK than we went to see the hilarious Altar Boyz with Cathy. A few days later we went to a wedding in the Berkshires, and this past weekend we visited friends in both the Berkshires and the Catskills, putting many miles on Luis's dreamy '72 blue Mercedes. At first I felt unworthy driving in it unless I was wearing white gloves and a Sunday hat. Luis didn't like being called Hoke. The car sometimes gets angry and overheats when it has to idle for a long time in the summer heat. It took us more than an hour to get from Park Slope to Williamsburg--less than 5 miles. We had to pull into a McDonald's in Greenpoint for half an hour until the engine cooled off.

Luis got the Mercedes from his elderly aunt, whose late husband bought the car when it was brand new. When Luis got the car, the odometer had only 30,000 miles. Most drivers put that kind of mileage on a car in a year or two. There was no sign of age when we got on the open road. The car's V8 engine kicked the asses of younger whippersnapper SUVs.

The Mercedes had some innovations that you don't see on modern cars. For instance, Luis was driving the car and noticed that the windshield wipers wouldn't stop moving. Oh, great, he thought, the mechanism is broken. When he pulled over, he noticed that the wipers had stopped. When he started driving again, they started moving. He sort of shrugged and kept going. Hours later, he realized that his left foot was pressing on a button on the floor next to the brake that controlled the wipers. Ingenuity, '70s style.

I like being in the country, but I'm a city kid. I'm not one of those New Yorkers who beat anything that moves to death with a stick or, conversely, run out of the woods screaming like a girl. I used to go camping (the kind with tents) at Lake Minnewaska when I was a Cub Scout. I've blazed trails (except in fashion), and I know how to build a fire (Duralogs and a lighter). Every time I think about living in isolation I get hives. I have flashbacks to my 12 years in suburban Virginia (which was not that long ago), when I had to rely on a car. I didn't get my driver's license until age 25, and I didn't get my first car until 32. Neither of my parents drove a car, though both tried when they were younger. My mother slammed into the back of a boat--attached to a car--when she was learning to drive, and my father lost his brakes going down a hill when he was learning. Neither of them ever got behind the wheel again. Frankly, in Brooklyn we never needed to. In the country you either drive or learn subsistence farming.

The Mercedes has no cassette deck or CD player or cup holders, so we had to improvise. How do you play an iPod without an audio hookup? Altec Lansing's In Motion portable speakers. The slim, white, compact box opens up to expose an iPod dock between two small speakers. At first I thought, How tinny will these sound? But after a minute of listening I was hooked. They sound better than speakers 10 times their size. The unit itself runs on 4 AA batteries or an adapter. The battery life depends a lot on how high you crank up the sound. We used the iPod cigarette lighter charger to keep the iPod powered. The speakers sat up on the dashboard, where they stayed perfectly still even on the tightest turns.

Apparently no one drank coffee in a Mercedes in 1972. If they did, there were tears. Or they hired someone to hold the cup.

Then there's the issue of seat belts. Today's one-piece shoulder belts hold you in with just the right amount of tension. The Mercedes has a two-part belt--one for the lap, and one for the shoulder. The buckle of the shoulder strap fits into the lap belt. If you lean forward, you can strangle yourself. Every time I leaned over to pick up something on the floor I had to unhinge my shoulder belt. If you like bondage, this is the seat belt for you.

As we made our way along country roads and little towns, I tried to follow along on the map that Luis's aunt had left in the car. Some roads were missing or changed. When I looked more closely, I saw that the map was put out by Esso, precursor to ExxonMobil. A blurb about New York City mentioned the "newly completed World Trade Center." The map was as old as the car.

A lot has changed since that map was published, but driving through the mountains and valleys in a car as majestic as the Mercedes with the one I love never grows old.