Cheap Travel Adventures

Least anybody think less of Bob, I have to state up front that he'd bought a brand new car the week I met him. He'd ordered his little red VW Bug from the U S, to be picked up in Germany. My parents flew over for our 1962 church wedding in Bad Nauheim. Bob drove that car during our nine months courtship and we tooted around visiting historic places with my parents on the first lap of our honeymoon.

My dad ran the Chevrolet-Pontiac agency in Morenci, Michigan. Squeezing his lanky six foot frame into that little car he'd say, "Now, drive slowly, Bob. I want to see first-hand how land our soldiers tore through in tanks during the war is doing. Besides, I want to tell folks back home how this little car behaves on back roads." Sure enough, the Kiwanis invited him to give a talk and the Morenci Observer quoted him, "I couldn't have picked a better husband for Carol if I'd done it myself."

We hit the autobahn hard as gas was only ten cents a gallon and hotels were cheap. We drove as far as we could each weekend and our little VW ran like a top. Or it did until we got rear ended on a two-way road while passing a logging truck. A fellow in a Mercedes pulled out from three cars back to take our turn, but we were too quick for him. A fender-bender ensued. Indignant German drivers jumped from their cars, pledging they'd testify against that-dirty-line-cutter who was sure to get points taken from his license if we called the police. He begged us, in excellent English, to let him repair our little auto. We relented, after I took movies of him beside out damaged car with a filmless camera.
The next Christmas Bob and I stopped on a mountain side in Austria to photograph a wooden bridge covered in snow. We couldn’t gain traction to continue on. Bob maneuvered to the opposite side of the road and began backing down that mountain road. A German driver came over the top, spotted our green military plates, put on his hazard lights and escorted us down hill so we wouldn't be overrun. He waved and passed on when we turned into a garage to buy chains. We appreciated the fact our green military license plates won us unsolicited aid time and again.

That summer we drove (and took ferries) to see my extended family in England and Ireland. Bob did all the driving because in England drivers must keep to the left hand side of the road and Bob, alas, had previously undetected control issues. My duty was to holler, "Bear left, bear left--don't hit that guy," every time he turned a corner. That seemed to work, so together we did it.
Our contract with DoDDS provided a free flight back to the US every second summer, We'd skipped our first chance at reemployment leave for the birth of our Jenny. The third summer we went to show her off to both families. We'd completed two years overseas so the military shipped our car to the US free. Our VW was paid for, so we drove it in the US and sold it at the end of the summer to pay our expenses.

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Then our life with clunkers began. We'd bought an old gray VW Bug we called “The Mouse” so Bob could get to the golf course and I could drive home to be with Jen after school. We had a German baby sitter come to our home and the moment Jen heard my car door slam she's set up a holler to welcome me.

The Mouse was battered but reliable. When we returned to Germany at the end of the summer we loaded up our possessions and headed to Soesterberg Air Force Base in Holland, Bob's next assignment. An ironing board surfed above our belongings, piled high behind us. Seat belts and car seats weren’t on our radar then. I held Jen as Bob drove north for 8 hours to his new assignment at the Soesterberg American Elementary School.

Holland had a severe housing shortage so it took months to find a permanent home. We'd begun our stay in a suite at the American Officers' Club but were asked to leave to make room for incoming pilots. We rented a tiny cabin with bunk beds designed for the heat of summer. By then it was so cold we had to fire up the unit's pot-bellied stove. Jen slept in a hand-me-down snow suit. Finally, newly pregnant, looking gray and desperate, I dropped Bob at school and drove to the newspaper office in Zeist to place my "rental wanted" ad. As I struggled Jen out of her flimsy plastic chair on the back floor of The Mouse I glanced up and saw the paper's secretary watching us from the window. Moments later, the letters addressed to a Dutchman who'd already accepted a house leapt into my hand, illegally but miraculously.
There was a letter offering a marvelous 2 bedroom cottage nearby. It had a fenced yard, a pond, a fireplace and lead glass windows, ready immediately. Bob said, "They'll never rent their lovely home to us, we look like Ma and Pa Kettle driving this rag-tag car. I have to think of something."

Now, I do know our children aren't perfect, but time after time, when a situation looked desperate for us, one or all of our eventual five, rose to the occasion. Jen was only eight months old but she did her dimpled, happy baby routine and charmed that elderly couple. But just to make sure, Bob said, "We couldn't possibly accept this lovely home for $125. a month. We'd be conscience bound to pay $150."
Two days later we waved them off to their home in Spain and moved into their quaint, furnished cottage. It had two brick posts at the head of the driveway. Every time I backed out I scraped it, and occasionally I banged the car door agaiChenst our house wall. Now, I figured one more scrape didn’t matter much on an already battered car but Bob noticed--every time he noticed. Then Ad Van Schaik, a young Dutch friend, who'd never driven anything bigger than a moped, tried to back The Mouse out to let the packers bring our shipped goods in. Ad scraped it too. Yahoo! I was vindicated and Bob gave up fussing over new scratches.

Because we could only use our government tax free gas coupons at Esso stations, there was always the possibility we might run out of gas so we, and most Americans we knew, carried full gas cans in the trunk. Not the safest precaution, I know, but that was 1965 and we were more young and poor than bright. We drove The Mouse to Paris and I have to say, negotiating narrow cobblestone streets in that car made driving in Paris possible, but driving home through Belgium we came up behind three Boy Scouts pushing their stiff, upright parents in a Citroen. Bob waved them over and poured our emergency gas into their tank. The scouts thanked us for the gas and the story. The father beamed as he said, "Once more Americans save us and once again we are most grateful."
We shook hands all around.

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Then we decided to get serious and return to the States. Bob wanted to give up teaching to import decorative items to sell in the US so we traveled, via train and The Mouse, to trade fairs in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and Milan to buy gift items. Bob's cards listed him as a wholesaler, in Utica, New York. We ordered samples, to be delivered in Holland, and shipped them with our household goods, thinking whatever items sold well we could import through normal channels later. We imagined ourselves entrepreneurs.

Our Mike was born July 2nd over two weeks beyond his due date. Airlines decreed babies be over a month old to board trans-Atlantic flights so our arrangements were all canceled until an American doctor, who golfed with Bob, wrote us permission to fly as scheduled. We sold the Mouse and flew to New Jersey, where Bob had shipped a brand new black VW station wagon we picked up and drove to Utica.

Bob’s family loaded our wagon with the samples we'd shipped to them, then we drove to my parent’s home in Michigan. There Bob left our little family to attend a trade fair in Minneapolis. He displayed a variety of wood carvings of Churchill, the Swiss Guard and Vikings, each about eight inches high with clever were created out of various colored woods, like a small bird perched 0n a hunter's hat.

Bob got plenty of orders, especially for Vikings, but as he returned to cross Lake Michigan on a ferry, a fellow passed on the shoulder of the two lane road, causing a woman with children in her car to skid into Bob's lane and come at him head-on.

My hero jerked the wheel hard and our new VW flipped off the road, onto its top, and back up again. The window shield popped out as his sweater and shirt ripped out at the seams. The battery splashed acid on his back, eating holes into his clothes. People stopped and picked up his wooden dolls. Somebody taped the popped windshield back in place. He called me from the ferry, "Don't worry. I didn't break anything and that family escaped unscathed. I'll be home tomorrow."

He drove the length of Michigan, to us, waiting anxiously to check he was in one piece. I ran out to meet him as he pulled into my parents driveway. That's when I saw the car door was so badly bent he'd had to steer from the middle of the seat.

Our insurance paid for a 1965 stick-shift Chevrolet with a heater but no air-conditioner at Dad's dealer’s price, but that accident cooled Bob’s enthusiasm for being a traveling salesman. He and my collegiate brother, Pat, set out for California, where they drove up the coast applying for a teaching position. Bob was hired as a PE teacher at Carmel Jr. High School because their teacher quit after the semester began and they needed a replacement fast.

I won't give you blow by blow of our time in the US except to say life in Carmel was lovely. We’d planned to open a shop, imagining that Bob could teach and I could run it with 2 babies under 3 in the back room. But after I asked Bob to watch the babies awhile and he fell asleep--Jen opened the bottom half of our rental home's Dutch door and seven month old Mike crawled down our steps and across the street. Two year old Jen woke Bob, "Baby's in the street. Baby's in the street!!" Bob reclaimed Mike, but the insanity of thinking I could tend babies and run a store at the same time, suddenly became clear to both of us.

Then the firm making the wood carvings in Italy signed an exclusive contract with a US importer, excluding us. That was a life changing blow. On consignment, our remaining items didn't sell well enough to initiate reorders. Without those carvings, our plan died a painful death. We grieved our loss until Bob ordered his own wood carving machine from Minnesota. He hopped in the Chevy to pick it up from the train and deliver it to a space he rented in an artists workspace on Cannery Row in Monterey.

There he carved owls--their shape and detailing was within his competence range. We met interesting people and our children grew, but one day Bob lent our car to an artist who overloaded the Chevy with supplies for his daughter's Cannery Row wedding. It got hung up on the rail road tracks in Monterey, stripping the transmission. We called that car The Invalid because ever after, it belched and rumbled. When we discussed replacing it it dawned on us that we’d landed in lovely Carmel about 30 years and three million dollars too soon. We needed a more affordable place.

Bob reapplied to DoDDS, but with a family of four and only a bachelors degree, they didn't pick him up. Instead, he got hired by the National Teachers Corps which offered courses in Syracuse, NY. We stored our goods and flew out for the summer. Bob's parents housed us in Utica and lent him their older Chevy to drive to Syracuse daily for training to work with minorities in inner city schools while grandparents K fussed over me and the kids.

By the end of that summer our savings were so slim we forsook the easier plane ride back to Carmel for three days on a train. (a little meant a lot to us then.) Pampers were new. I bought two boxes for each child, thinking we'd make it cross country, but by the time we reached Albuquerque we were down to two diapers each.

Desperate, Bob jumped off the train during the ten minute stopover and when it started up again I was alone with two diaper-less babies, little cash, and no credit cards. Near tears, I asked the conductor where I could wait for Bob to catch up. But then my hero staggered into sight with enough Pampers to reach Monterrey high and dry. He's jumped aboard the last car just as our train pulled out.
Bob planned to resign and join the Teachers Corps in Monterey but he'd signed a contract and Carmel's Superintendent, who liked Bob--because he kept the poop off the rest room wall--refused to release him saying, “I've seen those government programs, they go well a year or two and then they don't get funded. You're better off right where you are.” He was right, the Teachers Corps was short lived.

A friend had picked us up and taken us in, but we needed a home. We rented an apartment off-season at the Blue Sky Lodge in Carmel Valley Village. Bob drove the twelve miles to school and I walked downhill to the cooperative nursery school with Jen. Mike protested loudly from his stroller. Women told me they kept time by Mikes roars as we swept past. Though Mike was great once up, that boy was never easy to get going in the morning.

Once again, Bob filled out forms and I edited them. By the next summer he’d won a grant to attend a Counseling and Guidance Institute in Pullman, Washington. The Institute didn’t start until August, but the rental rates increased at the Blue Sky Lodge in June, so Bob signed us into married housing early.

In the ‘60’s most jobs didn’t provide for much discretionary spending and it was tight providing for four people on the same income that had sparingly supported me seven years earlier. Our $50. a month campus apartment was in a two story left over Army barracks. Our income was to be Bob's small stipend and what he earned on his carvings or won playing golf. By then, I'd been home with children for three years so, though I'd liked to have helped I doubted
I'd be hired to teach in a college town for one year. We knew we had to stretch the little cash we had.
We hitched a U-Haul on the back of The Invalid but it couldn't make it up a steep hill. Bob talked to his friends, the artists, who knew two guys who had a truck. They offered to pull the U-Haul for gas plus $100. Bob gave them $50 up front.

They drove off ahead of us. We arrived on the second day in the late afternoon. Nobody we asked had seen a U Haul. Bob sat with his head in his hands on the steps of our tiny two bedroom apartment while I unloaded the car. “They’re gone to Mexico. Everything we had is laid out on a table at some flea market and it's going fast.”

I had no answer for that so I put the kids down for a nap on a blanket on the floor. Then that lumbering old truck bounced into sight. Bob hooted and hollered as they pulled up, all apologies. "We were doing pretty good till those mountains. They were slow going. We're real sorry if you worried but we didn't know where to call."

Bob's ruckus brought out the neighbors, mostly veterans on the GI Bill, who hunted and hung deer and fowl outside their apartments before slaughtering them. They were friendly and generous, clearing a parking space for the truck, they helped Bob unload. Bob tipped the guys an extra $50. and they headed back home just before a half empty keg of beer appeared on our lawn as men hoisted our goods inside. Silly with relief, we filled one bedroom with such a stack of goods we had to set up a twin bed for a couch in the living room where our kids slept there, one at each end.

The next day I got a 7-11 PM job at the return desk of the library for $2.35 an hour. Bob claimed I was grossly overpaid because I saw (and read) books being returned with time to spare. Those wonderful books appeared to have their hands stretched out to me, like friends waiting for a good visit. That was my lifetime dream job.

Once Bob had his masters degree he was offered counseling jobs by DoDDS and another in Yakima, Washington. He asked me which I'd prefer and I chose Germany. The day he finished his masters my appendix burst. He’d forgotten to sign up for insurance in the excitement of registration and the bill was $800. the exact amount we’d borrowed to start our life anew. Could we borrow more, he asked, "My wife's spent all our money." They doubled the $800 at their amazing low rate. Our gratitude remains to this day.

We drove our non-air conditioned Invalid across country, visiting my 96 year old aunt, Sister Joseph, in the retirement section of Mercy Hospital in Des Moines, Iowa. Bob had worn Bermuda shorts and draped a water soaked towel on his head every time we stopped for gas. At the hospital we ate in the cafeteria before we went to the top floor of the Nun's retirement area. I dressed Jen and Mike in bright colors because Sister Joe could barely see, but she saw well enough to spot Mike’s bright red shorts and Jen’s multicolored dress. Finally, she leaned over and pulled the hair on Bob’s leg. “Did an accident cut off your pants?”

“No Sister, it was really, really, hot in our car coming here.”

“Did you go into the cafeteria dressed like that?”

He bowed his head and he admitted he had.

“Could you wear long pants when they serve you dinner in the Priests dining room, and when you push me into Mass tomorrow?”

Bob dug out his pants, his jacket, and a tie, too. Sister preened with pride when he wheeled her into Mass the next morning.
We drove on to my parents in Michigan and Bob’s in New York, then we shipped the Invalid and flew to Germany. We were established in Wurzburg American housing when the car arrived. It lugged us all over Europe’s narrow streets, brought home our new-born John in 1969 and delivered Jen and Mike to German kindergarten daily.

Bob and I traveled in and shared the Invalid for the 5 years we lived on post and for awhile when we moved onto the German economy. Bob’s parents came to visit us in 1974. I drove Grandpa K up to talk to my G I's about working in US factories. The Invalid bucked its way up and back. Grandpa K had never driven, but he had a lot to say about everybody's driving, except mine. He didn’t say a word to me. Grandma couldn’t believe it when I told her he'd been charming as we bucked our way up and down hill.

Finally he admitted to Bob, “I didn’t dare nag. Carol was doing the best she could in that bucking bronco of yours. I shut my mouth and prayed.” He scolded, “What would Carol's father say if he was still alive? You have to take better care of that girl, Bobby.”

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When an increase in troops in 1973 pushed civilians out of military housing, we moved to a row-house in Rottendorf, about 4 miles from post. Bob bought a 5 year old Diesel Mercedes for $4,000 then he went to the PX and bought 3 thigh-length Loden coats with toggle buttons for Jen (13, ) Mike (11), and John (4) to wear in “The Cedes.” Luckily, those warm coats had hoods, because we couldn’t figure out controls for the car's heater.

At a German gas station, Bob spotted a car like ours. He whipped over and blocked the exit to ask the driver how to regulate the heater. By then, Mike understood German better then either Bob or I, so I hopped in back. The man showed Mike the magic combination of levers that created heat. Mike fiddled and got it running. He rode shotgun evermore, a relief to me as I never was a quick navigator. Mike calmed Bob saying, "We'll figure it out Dad. Don't worry, I'm working and I'll figure it out." And he did.

The Mercedes was strong, reliable and sometimes heroic. In 1974, the first time we drove into Poland, it carried us safely to the small farms east of Krakow where most of Bob’s extended family lived. In the US, the end of a dirt road was a place where children and chickens and barking dogs waited. The family farm in Poland was like that. A cousin’s barn had burned down only 2 weeks before we arrived. The hay still crackled and popped and the stench of burning lingered. The grieving family greeted us with warmth and hospitality, serving home made noodle soup, duck, and poppy-seed cake.

Bob’s mother had sent a check for $100. to spread out as we traveled around Poland. Bob cashed it in for 100 one dollar bills. We’d driven to the mountains and back and we were about to head home with $70 of Grandma's money left. We gave it to Bob's family to haul away the burnt rubble so they could rebuild. As we left their farm we slipped sideways where the back road reached up to join the two lane main road. The car shuddered and almost turned on its side as Bob struggled to control it.

I said to the kids, “Pray quick!”

Mike asked, “Why don’t we wait to see if we really need to?”

I said, “This family believes in preventative prayer. Pray now!”

The car gave one last shudder and made it onto the paved road. It carried us safely through the magnificent Tetra Mountains. Several times it slid, but it always righted itself. We gained confidence and became just a tad cocky. About 8:00 PM, as we neared the Czechoslovakian border, black smoke began belching out our exhaust. It couldn't be ignored, but where in Poland could we find a Mercedes mechanic?
Bob located a taxi driver who knew the way to the one man in the region who repaired Mercedes. We followed that taxi to the outskirts of Katowice. A large, gray, two story house surrounded by a nine ft wall with huge gates on the back wall appeared. The driver pounded on the house door to rouse the mechanic, who waved us inside his courtyard. He closed those gates tight behind us.
Jen (13) said, “They could kill us and keep our car. Who could find us?”

Bob answered, “Don't worry. Their government is so tough people don't dare fool around with foreigners.” I prayed he was right, I was scared, too.

The mechanic and the cab driver waved Bob out of the car. Mike (11) said, “I’ll go with you, Dad.” I watched with my heart in my mouth as my two heroes walked away hip to hip. Mike returned, jumping with excitement. “That guy's wall swings around, just like in the movies. He's got shelves packed with smuggled parts!”

When Bob pulled the car into the barn, I saw only a large empty room with a hoist in the floor. We were to ride into town in the taxi and return for the "Cades" the next day. Jen asked, "Dad, you gave away our extra money. Will we have to drive back to the burned farm and ask for enough money to get home?"

"Don't you worry, I'll figure something out. Go through your pockets and find every Polish, German or American coin you have. The Polish uncles gave you kids coins to take home and Mom always carries some German money in her bra, just in case. Pool it and I'll see what we have to do."

The taxi driver not only didn’t overcharge us, he took time to draw a map for the taxi we’d have to take back for our car the next morning. Ever quick witted, Jen grabbed the kielbasa, bread and poppy-seed cake we'd been given at the farm and passed it out. We couldn't afford to eat in the fancy hi-rise hotel for foreigners where the driver dropped us off. We were embarrassed to walk through the lobby with food, but faced with necessity we all folded something inside our coats and smuggled our picnic upstairs.

Our hotel room had two big double beds and a modern looking bathroom. John checked around. “Look, there's no running water, Dad.” Bob called downstairs and it seems the hotel had a leak in their pipes. Water was shut off so they offered seltzer water, kept in the room for foreign guests, free of charge. Mike pulled out his ever ready Swiss Army knife and we relished the bread and kielbasa washed down by fizzy water that tickled our noses. The kids giggled when Bob shaved with it in the morning, complaining loudly, “Oh no, it's cold, it's sticky, oh no.”

By the time we returned to the mechanic’s, his garage didn’t seem so spooky. It turned out that a diaphragm separating the oil from the gas line leaked, creating the black smoke. That honest fellow replaced the part and did the work for about $40.00.
Mike always had something salted away he wouldn’t admit to till the situation was dire, then he’d give a disgusted sigh and say, “You two…” as he pulled out his stash. Once again Mike, the money man's foresight saved the day.

We had enough, at .10 cents a gallon, to drive all the way through Czechoslovakia and over the border back into Germany at Hoff. At the American post in Hoff we cashed a check and once again, our cheap travel turned into adventure.

The kids were great all the way, but at home John (4) kicked the back wheel. “I hate this car. I never want to ride in it again.”
I said, “That’s too bad, we thought as soon as we unpacked we’d take a ride to your friend Mark’s house.” John jumped right back in.

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A year later, as we prepared to return to Poland, Mark’s dad, Jim, asked if their family could follow us into Poland. Jim Ando was Japanese--Mari (12) and Mark (5) resembled him. His American wife, Marj, was our reading specialist so we were all friends. Bob and I knew having Mark to keep John company and his sister, Mari, for Jen would be helpful, so we led the way and they followed in their red, Thunderbird, limited edition Mark IV sports car.

Ando's Mark IV was very low to the ground. We traveled the back roads of Poland and everywhere we stopped that car caused a sensation. When people interested in that unique car saw the family exiting it--with Mark an adorable 5 year old and Mari a pretty pre-teen as an extra visual bonus, Poles were open-mouthed. A road gang set down their tools to press their faces to darkened windows. Jim put down his window and graciously allowed them to gawk at him, then he turned up the music on his tape deck, truly astounding them. They laughed and gave repeated knocks on the hood of the car. Later, when we came out of a restaurant, Jim found two grown men lying on the snowy ground looking at that cars underside. He waited patiently for them to have a good look and scoot out from under, thrilled that they'd seen such a sight, before he opened his door.

We had a wonderful visit with Bob's relatives, but in Zakopane someone slid into our parked car and broke the tail light. Bob took it to a garage. The landlord of our Bed and Breakfast came to tell us a mechanic was driving around town with the windows down, music blaring. Jim drove Bob over to pick it up. The parts they put in worked, but didn’t fit exactly. Bob worried we’d be accused of, and maybe jailed for, a hit-and-run. The Polish mechanic wrote and signed a statement for us to carry in the car, “just in case” we were stopped and questioned.
Heading back to Germany, we drove through mountains with three ft high snow mounds lining the two lane road. A bus full of workers headed home for New Years threw slush up under our car. The Mercedes was heavy enough to hold the road.
The low riding Mark IV took a flying leap and wound up, right-side-up, wheels spinning, on top of the snow mound. Just as we realized they were in trouble, that bus stopped. Polish workmen hopped off and surrounded the car. They gave it a great heave-ho and set it back on the road. Jim fumbled for a tip, but they were so pleased with the whole adventure they refused his money. Those Polish workers had seen-a Japanese man in a sports car. It was too good to be true. Bob heard them laughing about the Christmas story they'd have to tell--and they weren’t even drunk yet.

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Both our Mercedes and our Chevy held steady through the ‘70’s when Germans had to conserve gas. German law limited car use to every other Sunday. We caught dirty looks because the Chevy guzzled gas and was too large for narrow streets. Wurzburg High School had a shop class and our young mechanic's learned how no car should ever be treated.

On Sundays Bob drove to the golf course in Kitzingen so he drove the Mercedes. I drove The Invalid, which belched and shuddered but labored on. Finally, on a Sunday in its 13th year I headed for a friends home up a steep street and pieces of metal spit out from underneath. I felt the brakes go and I had three kids in the back seat. As we started to roll, I saw elderly Germans on their Sunday walk on the sidewalk directly behind me. I pulled the wheel so hard I hung the car up sideways, blocking a driveway, unable to go another inch. I was so shaken I couldn’t move.

One of the elderly Germans I'd avoided, picked up pieces of steel off the road and tapped on my window to say he and his ancient friends would push us across the street where we would be sideways and unable to roll downhill. The kids climbed out of the back seat, clicked their heels and shook hands to say, “Dankashorn.” The elderly corps pushed us to a safe perch. We all shook hands again, then walked on to our destination.

Bob donated the carcass of that car to the shop class, and an Army tow-truck pulled it away. We wondered if we shouldn't hold a funeral for our good and faithful friend. Instead, Bob bought a big old enclosed truck (a Ford Combi, a German edition of a van from the 70's) that I refused to drive. It could make it up the hill to school and back and even the 12 miles to the golf course in Kitzingen, but if we needed to go anywhere else, the Mercedes did the job. That truck limped, but it moved.

When preparing to drive into Poland for the third Christmas, Bob said he needed the Mercedes to pack for the trip (he got home before I did.) I reluctantly climbed into that truck, whose gas gauge never registered. I drove across Wurzburg to Hindenburg Casern to teach soldiers from 1:00 to 5:00 PM. On the way home, on the busiest bridge across the Main River, just east of the central police station, I ran out of gas.
The teacher riding with me sat in that truck as I jogged a city block to fill our ever ready, but empty, gas can. I'd blocked an entire stream of traffic through the heart of Wurzburg, at 5:15 on the Friday before Christmas. By then I was trembling so I couldn’t twist the gas cap off when I got back. A University student set down his books, opened the cap and poured the gas for me. I could have wept with gratitude, and I swear, not one German driver honked during that excruciating ordeal. I contemplated stabbing Bob with a dirty fork when he said, “Oh, I thought I told you you might need gas.” but I restrained myself. After all, he was our driver inside Poland because I couldn't read the road signs.

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Mornings I drove the Mercedes, which I parked in the paved front of the school. As the union representative, Bob was entitled to reserved parking in back. On Thursdays the kids rode in the Combi with him to throw our bagged garbage in the large dumpsters behind school. Bob usually lumbered over the pitted back dirt road to avoid waiting behind unloading buses.

But one morning he got inspired to race a bus, coming up the road parallel to him through the housing area into the parking lot behind Wurzburg High School. I'm told Mike, by then 15 and John, (8), were thrown from their seats. Jen (16) hit her head on the roof, but nothing deterred Bob.

One hundred yards onto the dirt road, the bus pulled ahead. When a rough spot appeared, Bob drove right over it. A terrible scraping sound emitted from the bottom of the van, but John screamed, “Keep going, Dad. Keep going, they're beating us!”

Bob cut onto the pavement of the parking lot and pulled into his prized spot, beside his secretary, Frau Bauckhaus. brand new Mercedes. He'd smoked the school bus, which upon making the final turn onto the school's property, was jammed up with all the other buses. Those on the bus were forced to witness the Combi pull in beyond them.

The victory celebration was short-lived, as Jen, Mike and John grabbed bags of garbage to heft into dumpsters directly in front of the unloading bus filled with vanquished but vocal opponents.

John crossed the street to the elementary school but Jen and Mike headed for their math class that didn't begin on time because their classmates had spotted our burning Combi from the classroom and abandoned the halls for a closer look. About 8:45, a crowd of students loped back into view behind Mr Manwaring, who put down his fire extinguisher to unlocked his door. He spent the next thirty minutes explaining how gasoline from a ruptured fuel line, leaking onto a hot engine was a ideal opportunity to set a car ablaze. The Knych kids were particularly attentive. I was working on the opposite side of the building so it was all over before I heard about it.

Bob's reprimand said that the Combi fire nearly took out Frau Bachaus Mercedes and was a treat to life in the school and the buses unloading students. The event was fully discussed in the school paper along with accompanying photos showing the bus, Bob, the smoke billowing above the roof line of the school and, of course, the charred Combi.

A group of Army mechanics claimed they could get it back into working order and put it to good use for their church activities. Bob handed over the keys and wished them luck.

Charlie and Andrew were the children of our old age, born while we were both in our 40’s. Details like the cars we drove those years blur in my mind, except for the station wagon that threw young children across the back seat if they weren't sitting firmly shoulder to shoulder.
Anyway, you get the picture. Large families and reliable cars didn’t often go together, in those days, or at least they didn’t for us. Bob still insists on driving a clunker. The worse they are, the more attached he gets. Last year they told him he’d have to pay $800. to fix his back turn lights on his old Buick. He bought a battery and jerry-rigged it so they work when he hooks it up. That arrangement caused a fire in the trunk the last time I drove it the short block to my friendly bakery. I'd conveniently left it unlocked, with the windows opened, so they could get the registration and knew who to page. The excitement of our needing the town's largest firetruck had died down by the time Bob arrived to pronounce it, "Not all that bad."

"Oh yea," says I, "will you won't get me to drive that car again, either."

Now Bob's bought me a beautiful 2001 Jaguar with 86,000 miles on it after I’d totaled my Toyota due to undiagnosed sleep-apnea that caused me to land in a small ravine. I'd taken the insurance and borrowed a bit more to buy another good used Toyota, but Bob found the Jaguar.

He got the price down to what I’d intended to spend.

I said, “But Bob, we aren’t Jaguar people.”

He said, “We’re both over seventy and we’ve had clunkers all our lives. Why can’t we be Jaguar people, at least for now?”

The cost of repairs should have come to mind, but it didn't, and honestly they haven't been too bad. So off we go, sitting tall, just waiting for more adventures.

The truth is though, we had more fun and met more friendly people when we were driving clunkers.