Chapter 19 … The Big Shabby

I was in “take no prisoners” mode. In terms of moving the Morris family back to Vermont my guiding principle was “if it t’were done, ‘tis best done quickly.”

I bought a house in downtown Randolph. I say “I bought a house,” because I made the offer before Laura even saw the place. It was a big, old clunky Victorian with beautiful woodwork, large, high-ceiling rooms, a falling down barn, and even its own gully! I thought it would be a fun place for the kids to spend their high school years.

Laura, as always, was a good sport about it. Oh, there were a few eyeball rolls, but she was really good at being flexible. Pretty soon she was supervising her construction crew of Bernie and Tim. We tore down the decrepit barn, put in a basket hoop for Patrick, created a band room, and remodeled the kitchen. The kids picked up where they had left off with their friends, and the big porch shrouded by this vine that had huge leaves proved a hilarious gathering spot for the teenagers of Randolph. We deemed the house The Big Shabby, and it was just that.

It was the most fun house in which I’ve ever lived, including the cottage at Post Island.

There are many stories associated with The Big Shabby. Here’s the one that best summarizes the experience, even though it’s not about a house, but rather a car.

Memories of Mercedes

Part One- Things Are Good

A Mercedes Man. Admit it. It conjures up certain images. A propertied man, perhaps a little gray around the temples. Imposing and yet elegant. Someone who swaddles himself in performance and the precision of German engineering. Moneyed, yet tastefully so. Understated because he can be. A Mercedes Man.

These are the memory synapses that flashed when I drove past the farmhouse on Camp Brook Road, enroute from Rochester to Randolph on a sunny day in May. It was the kind of day that makes Vermonters finally feel secure in the fact that they have broken the stern spine of winter. The leaves pop, the juices flow, and the male of the species contemplates his vehicular status.

Camp Brook Road is not generally a place to go car shopping, especially for a Mercedes, but Vermont is a place where magic happens. I had been passively car shopping for a third family vehicle, one designated for the two teenage members of the family. The criteria were simple enough—safe, reliable, in good running condition, and cost NOT TO EXCEED $3000. Thus far we had considered, and rejected, a Chevrolet Celebrity wagon with lots of rust, a majestic 1972 Lincoln Continental coupe that stretched halfway from Randolph to East Barre, and a slew of Japanese gazukimobiles with a zillion miles on their respective odometers.

Never, in our wildest dreams had we considered a Mercedes. Yet, suddenly here was one, a stately machine the color of aged burgundy, dappled by sunlight. its hood ornament glinting proudly for all to see. And it had a For Sale sign on it! Although I barely caught it out of the corner of my eye, for a male in a car-heightened state, it was long enough to fall in love.

In the next nano-second my mind processed information as follows. A Mercedes? Naw. Don’t be ridiculous. Besides this one looks too good, and good means expensive. Still, who knows? And it doesn’t cost to look. A Mercedes? Nah. But it is good-looking. No, I’m running late. I can’t be frittering around looking at cars, BUT it would save time to just cross it off the list now instead of making a separate trip back.

I braked, fatefully, made the U-turn, and went back.

This was a stunning car—a 1975 280-C two-door coupe, a deep wine color reminiscent of Chateau Lafite-Rothschild at over a hundred bucks a bottle. It had a bright red accent stripe, with a hood ornament that reeked of old money, and the Mercedes logo emblazoned on all four hubcaps. It was one of the best-looking vehicles I had ever seen. The body was close to perfect, with only few tiny rust spots. The owner came out and yakked about the engine and mechanical condition. Only 42,000 miles on the odometer, which the owner admitted didn’t work. There were even remnants of a decal for the Mercedes Club of America. “Please” I said to myself, “say the magic words.” It didn’t take the seller long. I think it was his third sentence.

“And it RUNS GOOD,” he said.

“Runs good.” Could there be two sweeter words in the English language? Not when it’s a sunny day in May, and you have discovered the car of your dreams in the outposts of Camp Brook Rd., halfway between Bethel and Rochester.

I countered with my own sweet words, at least for the other guy:

“How much you asking?”

When he replied $3500, I tried to contain my surprise. A price of three times that amount would not have surprised me, but one that was within a scant $500 of our target price was unbelievable, too good to be true. And what’s five hundred bucks these days, with the stock market near an all-time high?

The car was inspected, registered, and ready to roll.

I played it cool, and said that I would need to show it to my son, Patrick, who was nearing the end of his junior year in high school. Although young and relatively inexperienced in the vehicular ways of the world, when I told him about my discovery later that evening, he immediately grasped the significance. He would have the only Mercedes in the high school parking lot.

As we prepared to set off for a test drive, my wife (who is not a member of the male species, and therefore woefully incapable in matters of this sort) tried to insert a note of rationality. Shouldn’t we have the car checked out by a competent mechanic? Isn’t a car like this likely to be very expensive to maintain? Is it a gas hog? What’s its maintenance history? And shouldn’t we a least see if the seller will accept less?

I patiently pointed out her inexperience in these matters. A mechanic would charge $150 just to find something wrong with the car, and who couldn’t find SOMETHING wrong with a car built in 1975? The car was already six years old when its driver-to-be was born. But hey, we’re not looking for perfection here. And the guy already told me it RUNS GOOD. We’re just looking for reliable transportation, and Mercedes are renown for their longevity. And safety! Let’s not forget the all-important safety factor. Sure the price is a few bucks more than we intended to spend, but THIS…. IS….. A…. MERCEDES. A car of this vintage will maintain its value and undoubtedly be worth more in two or three years. And did I mention the guy told me it RUNS GOOD?

For once my teenager and I (the other son was still at college, but would be home for the summer) were entirely in sync. The car, he agreed, was a classic, and therefore a sound investment, worth it for the value of the hood ornament alone. A short test drive later convinced us further of the merits of our decision. Sure, it was funky to drive, but hey, what do you expect of a car that was made when Gerald Ford was President?

We decided not to dicker to price, because horse-trading is beneath the dignity of a Mercedes owner. If we needed to be concerned about a few hundred bucks, then we shouldn’t be buying a Mercedes.

Part 2- Things Get Bad

The seller insisted that we pay him cash, which seemed odd, but, frankly, he wasn’t a Mercedes kinda guy. He was probably selling the car, because he couldn’t handle the prestige.

The first premonition that maybe, just maybe, this was not the greatest idea came about ten minutes after our packet of cash was exchanged for the key. My son was driving, and I was following in the family van when a giant cloud of blue smoke emerged from the exhaust. I choked my way through it. Probably just a few errant drops of oil, I reasoned.

For the next week or so we strutted the car around to the friends and neighbors, so that they could see first-hand the vehicular acquisition that had catapulted us to new social standing. We tried not to let our core values be changed by our new status. We shouldn’t abandon our friends, I explained to my son, just because they didn’t own Mercedeses.

A second glitch occurred two weeks into the honeymoon. We were sitting with a group of friends on the front porch when the Mercedes, carrying my son and his girlfriend, made a majestic entrance into the driveway. The entrance was punctuated with a resounding “pop” followed by the hiss of steam, and the acrid smell of anti-freeze boiling as the contents of the radiator spilled over the engine and down onto the driveway. No big deal, I said, probably just a broken hose. It looks worse than it really is.

The girl friend, however, had a different view. “I don’t ever want to ride in that piece of junk again!” she declared, adding that she was humiliated whenever the car belched one its blue clouds. Clearly, she was not a Mercedes kinda girl.

The broken hose, in fact, was no big deal. What were big deals, however, were the facts that my son now had to choose in his love life between his car and girlfriend. An even bigger deal was the fact that the mechanic who fixed the hose, Chip Milnor of Chip’s Tire & Auto informed us that the floor beneath the driver’s side was rotted out and that there was no way the car would ever pass inspection again unless fixed.

Was this anything he could fix, I asked? He made one of those faces where you put your teeth together and inhale sharply. He gave me the names of a few people who specialized in sheet metal work. The smug, I-told-you-so look on my wife’s face didn’t help matters, but hey, I told her, this is only July and the inspection is good until December.

As the summer limped by, however, the frailties of the car became more apparent. The clouds of blue smoke became more frequent and more noxious. The heater appeared to be permanently stuck in the “on” position. Horsehair stuffing from the leather seats fell onto the backseat floor where it combined with incoming water from the leaky floorboards making a sticky, brown goo. I never calculated the gas mileage, but it was surely in the single digits (high-test, no less), and the oil consumption was nearly the same.

Increasingly, my son avoided the car like the plague except on those occasions when he and a bunch of male friends would go for a toxic joy ride. They discovered that the cloud of blue smoke was particularly impressive after descending a steep hill. Somehow, what was humiliating to the girl friend, became a barrel of laughs when the car was filled with his bonehead friends. My lectures about how a vintage car needed regular maintenance fell on deaf ears. Worst of all, summer turned to fall. And what happens in Vermont each fall?

IT GETS COLD!

Never too proud to admit a mistake, especially when the reality of it is squatting in the driveway every day, I put “For Sale” signs on the car, and hoped to find other Mercedes Wannabes whose quest for status would supercede their common sense. To my chagrin I discovered that everyone in town was smarter than I was. Perhaps the clouds of blue smoke were not the best advertising.

We took the Mercedes to a body shop to assess the floor situation. It took six weeks for a one-word analysis, “Hopeless.”

“You mean I’m the owner of a $3500 lawn ornament?” I blustered. Needing sympathy and guidance, I received, instead, two wisecracks:

“You paid $3500 for that rust bucket?” said the mechanic.

“You think you’re keeping that car on the lawn?” said my wife.

In desperation I returned to the original seller. “Ridiculous,” was his one word assessment of the body shop’s one word assessment. Obviously the man just didn’t understand Mercedes.

By now December had arrived. The inspection deadline had come and gone, and the weather deadline had passed for the time when the Mercedes made any sense at all as a Vermont mode of transportation. We struck a deal with the seller to store the car for the winter and to help us sell it in the spring.

The long, cold Vermont winter gave me an opportunity to clearly assess the situation.

I was a Mercedes Man, but I wuz screwed. And I wuz an idiot.

To review, I had paid $3500 for a vehicle that was currently uninspectable and, according to the body shop guy, would cost more to fix than it was worth. My son, for whom the vehicle had been ostensibly purchased, never wanted to see the car again. My wife had been proven to be married to a moron, and to add insult to injury, the car was now in the possession of the same guy who took advantage of me in the first place.

I avoided thinking about the Mercedes for most of the winter. I had made $3500 mistakes before, but this was different. This was a car. I had never made a vehicular mistake, if you understand the nuance. Guys don’t make car mistakes. It’s not allowed. I mean, I bought two Chevrolet Vegas, and hadn’t admitted to a mistake. This issue struck right to the heart of the species. To make matters worse, a Mercedes Man was required to handle the situation with a certain European panache. And my panache was in a deep, frozen ditch.

Part 3—Things Get Worse

Spring came, and the Mercedes remained in storage. I checked periodically with the guy selling it, but there wasn’t a lot of activity. The car now was officially an albatross around my neck. Supposedly there was an Internet site featuring the car, but I wasn’t able to find it. I searched in vain for an encouraging word. None came. By July the peak of car rutting fever had passed, and my bad situation would soon get worse.

I decided to take the car to the antique car auction run by the Thomas Hirchak Company of Morrisville held in Stowe each August. The fee was $100, no sale was guaranteed, and I would have to figure a way to transport the now unregistered vehicle, but my options were running out. I drafted my son to the venture reasoning that he should share in any automotive humiliation. Hadn’t I bought the car for him? If nothing else, he now understood the term “bad karma.”

I completed the paperwork for the auction, sent in my check, and arranged to take the day off from work. Sellers are permitted to place a “reserve” bid on their car, a minimum amount below which it can’t be sold, but I decided against it. This car was going to be gone, even if only for $1.

The story could proceed to a logical close, but the God of Vehicular Vanity and Retribution decided that I had not been sufficiently punished. Forty-eight hours before the auction I received a call from someone from Springfield, Vermont who had seen the car on the Internet and who had to have it. It almost seemed like more trouble than it was worth, but I agreed to meet him and show him the car. He turned out to be a recent high school graduate (just like my son) who was joining the Navy, and who thought it would be nice to own a classic car.

One side of me said, “This uninspectable maintenance glutton would be the worst financial mistake of your young life.”

The other side said, “It sure is a great looking car, but it is a (dramatic pause) Mercedes, and it RUNS GOOD.”

After twenty-four hours of frantic deliberation the young man decided not to buy the car. I would like to think that this is because I had been so completely honest and upfront about the car’s limitations. The more likely explanation is that the lad’s father had exercised a combination of common sense and tough love and said, “A ’75 Mercedes? Are you out of your mind?”

With a heavy heart and a sense of foreboding, I went to pick up the trailer to take the car to the auction. It was 95 degrees out. The clerks at the trailer rental place were surly and incompetent, not so incompetent, however, that they failed to point out that the half-trailer I had reserved would not work with an automatic shift car and that the full-size car-hauler required was too heavy for my Caravan to pull.

“Nonsense,” I protested anemically, reaching for a well of testerone that just wasn’t there. We went so far as to hook up the car-hauler, which dwarfed the van, causing my testosterone to leak out onto the parking lot. I slunk home, a vehicularly defeated man, resigned to the continued ownership of a Mercedes that served only as a monument to vanity and incompetence. I would have this Mercedes yoke around my neck for the foreseeable future or the rest of my life, whichever came first.

I called the auction company to tell them I wouldn’t be there. To my surprise the person on the other end of the phone seemed genuinely disappointed. “Too bad,” he said, “We’ve had a bunch of inquiries on your vehicle.”

“A bunch of inquiries?” This meant that someone wanted to buy my German-engineered piece of shit. “Well, maybe I can make it. I’ll think of something.”

I called the most reliable mechanic I know, Chip Milnor of Chip’s Auto and Tire, and laid it on the line. “Can you get a 1975 Mercedes from Camp Brook Road to Stowe tomorrow morning by ten o’clock.” He moaned about being too busy, but when I explained that my masculine pride was on the line, he took pity and agreed. The towing charge would be $136, he cautioned.

By ten a.m. the next morning my son Patrick (the original co-guilty party) and I reconnoitered with Chip at the auction site off Route 100 a few miles south of Stowe Village. As he drove off, he asked, “Now, you won’t be needing a tow back, will you?”

“Of course not!” we chortled back, full of transparent bravado. We were brimming with macho confidence. This car would sell. It had to sell. If it didn’t we would be out $100 auction registration, two $136 tow charges, a day of lost work, and we’d still own the #@%!!**&% Mercedes!

There was a prediction of rain showers, and you could tell that this was an event that would be a lot less fun in a downpour. An enormous farm field was converted into an antique auto super mall. After registering we moved our car into slot #21, right next to a 1975 Jaguar XKE in mint condition. Its owner polished non-stop, holding a aerosol bottle in one hand, a chamois cloth in the other. Patrick and I looked at the bird shit on our car, and suddenly felt like residents of a Third World country. A Mercedes has never looked so dowdy.

We bought a bottle of spring water and used my handkerchief to smear around the bird shit in a futile attempt to match our neighbor’s cosmetology. We overheard someone asking the Jaguar owner how much he expected to get for his car.

“Well, these are going for anywhere from $32 to $70,000,” he said, his voice smug with confidence. I suddenly hated this guy with a passion I hadn’t known since the Yankees beat the Red Sox in the 1978 playoff game. This guy was instantly my personal Bucky Bleeping Dent (the hero of that game for the Bronx Bombers). He turned over the Jag’s engine, and it roared into a rich 20-valve symphony.

Bucky *&^#!! Dent

Meanwhile, we prayed that no one would ask us to start up our Mercedes for fear that we would envelope the entire Stowe auction field in a cloud of blue, noxious smoke.

There actually were people interested in our car. The most enthusiastic was a middle-aged Mom with two kids from Portland, Maine who developed a crush on our car. We answered her questions honestly and enthusiastically (well, fairly honestly). Neither of us told her that rather than being the most distinguished car at the local country club or PTA meeting this would be her one way ticket to vehicular hell. We knew that this car would be as problematic for her as it had for us. We never told her it RUNS GOOD. That’s only for guys.

People pried us for information. Had we, for instance, put a “reserve” bid on our car, meaning a price below which we wouldn’t sell it? We hadn’t. The car could be had for a bid of $1. Bidders like this, because means they can pick up incredible bargains. It makes sellers very nervous, and injects a note of high drama into the proceedings. The most frequently asked question, oddly enough, was “Does the air conditioning work?” It did, we answered, neglecting to mention that this was a moot point since the heater was constantly on, too. We pointed out the rusting floorboards to everyone and repeated our mantra:

“RUNS GOOD. RUNS GOOD. RUNS GOOD.”

After a viewing period from 11 am to 1 PM the auction began. A full house was packed into a huge tent. The auctioneer was on an elevated podium as the cars were paraded in front of him. The rain was holding off, and our spirits were high as the auction began. In lots of five the cars left the viewing area and drove into the tent to meet their fate.

Ten cars later, however, our spirits were lower than a mud puddle. Nothing was selling, or if something sold it was for a pittance. We watched in horror as a beautiful 1970 Cadillac de Ville in immaculate condition was offered initially for $8000 and eventually brought $1100. Most vehicles did not even reach the reserve amount. This wasn’t looking good. Before long, it was our turn.

We followed the Jaguar toward the auction tent. A carnival atmosphere surrounded us as we proceeded. A gaggle of onlookers surrounded us throwing out last minute questions:

“Do you have a reserve?”

“How does it run?” (“Runs good,” of course. We NO longer spoke in capital letters.)

“Does the air conditioner work?”

“You willing to dicker if it doesn’t sell?”

I reminded Patrick, who was driving, not to stop the car on an incline, lest we treat the crowd to a display of the Mercedes’ blue cloud-making ability. Was it possible that our foray into the rarified world of Mercedes ownership would have one last cruel twist in store?

Now, the Jag was inside. The bidding started at $60,000, then quickly dropped to $30,000, then finally to $15,000 to “get it started.” Finally there was a bid. The price quickly rose to $20,000, but stalled at $21,000, a mere pittance for a car that was the class of the show, and that the owner valued at up to $70,000. Auctions make honest people of us all. The owner of the Jaguar stopped the auctioneer by getting out of the car. The auctioneer gave him the floor. He announced that he had a reserve of $32,000 on the car, but that he really had to have “at least $27,000” to let it go. He didn’t get it, and the car left the tent, unsold. Its luster looked a bit dulled and its puffed-up owner suddenly looked shriveled behind his steering wheel.

Now it was our turn. What humiliation awaited us? No bids at all? Selling the car for $100. Handing the key over to the nice lady from Portland? We had already determined that anything under $1000 would be a humiliating defeat. Over $2000 would be a victory.

We crept forward to the dais. I could hear the auctioneer reading the descriptive copy I had submitted. “The best-looking car in town…..Imposing, yet elegant.” What a crock!

The bidding started at $4,000. If our car followed the pattern of others, this would be halved, then dropped to $500 to “get it started.”

The price dropped to $2000. Then, amazingly we heard the auctioneer say “We have two, do I hear twenty one hundred?” One of the auctioneer assistants poked his head in the driver’s side window.

“You must be pretty pleased with that,” he said.

“Happy enough to kiss you on the lips,” I thought, but just smiled and nodded. Inside I was screaming, inexplicably in Italian, “Imma so happy. I lovva you all!”

The bidding finally stalled at $2550. When we heard the punctuation exclamation of “Sold!” Patrick gave the audience a thumbs-up, and we drove out of the auction tent, giving each other high-fives and whoops of delight.

But who had bought the car we wondered? Did the unsuspecting lady now own our problem car from Hell? I went to the auction office to complete the sale. This was the easy part. I signed a mileage statement, and the title, and was told to leave the key in the car.

“That’s all?” I asked, incredulous that the ordeal of Mercedes ownership had come to such a quick and painless end.

The clerk told I “That’s all. You should get a check by next Thursday.”

“Can you tell me who bought it?”

“A Mercedes specialist from Waterbury. He buys older cars and fixes them up.”

Relief. A pro now owned the car, someone who knew what he was getting into. No guilt at selling the car to someone’s Mom.

Part IV— Things Get Better

The trip home was jubilant. When we arrived home we recounted several bogus and disastrous accounts of our adventure before revealing the happy outcome. Sure, the experience had cost us over a thousand bucks, but it was a small price to pay for Mercedes ownership for a year. We had the transportation and prestige, plus my son had received some valuable lessons in life. From a vehicular perspective, he had experienced a rite of passage. I realized that he had earned his lesson well when he commented on the low prices some of the cars at the auction had commanded.

“Let’s go again next year,” he said. “We could buy a really nice car for $2550.” Attsa my boy, I thought, smiling as I looked out at the empty, Mercedes-less driveway.