That crack, she said, was never there before.
Well it is now, because it allows the doors to open and close in order to admit the Mercedes 500SL, which I find a particularly attractive car.
She was silent a few minutes while chewing on her salad. Then she asked, Did it belong to Adolph Hitler?
I dropped my fork. How could it belong to Hitler when he’s been dead fifty-some years? No, of course not, but so what if it did?
Doesn’t it have that swastika-thing on the hood?
That is not a swastika thing. That’s a three pointed star.
They all look the same to me, she observed, picking at her salad. I thought I read somewhere they should have closed all those companies down and banned their swastika-thing brands after the war, where did I read that?
I wouldn’t know, I muttered. I leave reading to others. It was Henry Ford himself who said “History is bunk.” The only history that isn’t bunk is the history I’m living right now.
I knew this would cause her to change the subject. It did.
Do you like the salad? she asked.
Salad’s salad, isn’t salad just salad, I ask you?
She craned her neck to see around the roof of the Mercedes and then pointed with her fork. It came from down there, next to those poles.
It’s limp. They need to fly it back and forth across the country a few times to toughen it up.
Your grandmother, I must tell you two, can be a little punitive now and then. The next thing she would tell me, I feared, was that the vegetables down there were grown with composted human waste.
It was grown using composted human waste, she said.
How could I enjoy my first dinner with the Mercedes in the dining room with remarks like that?
31. 1:12 SCALE 1997 ROLLS–ROYCE SILVER SPUR III
THE OCCASION ON WHICH I HAVE CHOSEN TO ADD THIS 1:12 scale 1997 black Rolls-Royce Silver Spur III to your collections is rather trivial: the tenth anniversary of Thingie® Corporation International profits reaching $10 billion a quarter for four consecutive quarters. Trivial, that is, in comparison with the historic event that was to have unfolded only this last week in the form of a visit to Fairlawn-Fairview Lake Manor scheduled by the President of the United States, on the occasion of the big one, which is of course my latest birthday. My contributions to his campaign and the party have been substantial, both personal and through the sixty-eight subsidiaries of Thingie®-Gazillion International. And your contributions too, Fabian and Rowena, as we have employed all seventeen loopholes to the full extent permitted by law, for each and every member of the family, excluding of course your liberal democrat father.
What I really wanted and what I got—admittedly two days shy of my actual birthday, owing to the press of corporate and international events—was a ride in the presidential limousine, which probably cost me close to two million dollars in contributions. Every penny was worth it, I assure you. I should enter it in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s most expensive taxi ride ever, from the CIA air base fifteen miles down the road to our front door. I was told to be waiting at the base at exactly 5:17 P.M. for the President to be helicoptered in, whereupon we would ride up to the house, which had been thoroughly inspected the day before. My gun collection was temporarily removed and three cases of exhibition-grade fireworks were uncovered in the garage—about which we will speak soon, Fabian—and we had to send Flora back to Panama for the week and put up with the presidential chef and taster for two days in advance.
But all to no avail, in the end. True, I got my ride, but without the President, whose schedule was revised owing to the West Coast earthquakes. I’m having a 1:12 scale model of the 2000 Cadillac Presidential Limousine commissioned for your collections with removable panels revealing bullet-and bomb-proofing and other security features. It will be the one car in the collections that I have neither owned nor driven but which I include as a memento of this almost historic event. I will only note that the car suffered from a persistently annoying rattle coming from somewhere inside the headliner above my head.
The model will be fitted with 1:12 scale models of me and the President sitting in the back seat. For those spoilsports who may complain of the historical inaccuracy of this scene, I can only suggest that a slight discrepancy lies not in our sitting in the back seat of the limousine, for we have both sat there, but only in sitting there simultaneously, which in time will come to seem quite the quibble.
32. 1:12 SCALE 1998 HUMMER H–1
AS I COMPOSE THESE WORDS ON MY WAY TO SÃO Paulo—a quick trip before my big one—I cannot help but still see you two, Fabian and Rowena, standing before me when you were perhaps five and three, rapt with wonder at whatever little speech I was giving to you, almost a whole decade ago—eyes wide, mouths agape, in your fuzzy bunny-suit pajamas—perhaps on the occasion of my presenting you with the very first models of your collection. Who would have guessed you might so soon become almost unrecognizable adolescents from outer space? Fortunately your good Delahunt teeth, Fabian, will need no straightening and you will be spared having your mouth turned into the major construction zone that Rowena’s has become.
Be that as it may, as a captain of industry myself—though I consider that ranking now to be far too low—a five-star general of industry would be more like it—I will be expected to make a few remarks on the actual occasion of the big one, apropos of my long and successful life, and how I have witnessed the march of progress going faster and faster, from a walk and then a jog, to a race and then a dash or sprint, churning out ever greater quantities of spin-off products on the way, to the benefit of that portion of mankind who can afford these items or obtain the necessary credit for their purchase, lease, or rental. My addition to your collections of the 1:12 scale 1998 Hummer H-1, whose early history I would frankly rather forget, is not to mark that occasion, however, which is still ahead of us, but is rather to celebrate the failure of the Hamburger Flipper Union to unionize the Gazillion branch of Thingie®-Gazillion International. They need to change their name, incidentally, now that all hamburgers are flipped abroad and only warmed within the contiguous forty-eight.
Be that as it may, my remarks will be about the wheel. How the wheel has done it all. I cannot claim to have invented the wheel, much as I would have liked to. And even tried to. Think of the returns on a patent on that one. My lawyers have been researching it for more than twenty years and have recently outlined a case to argue that nineteen patents I have submitted for the wheel were unfairly and illegally rejected by the U. S. Patent Office.
Be that as it may, much of mankind’s engineering effort has been in attempting to convert reciprocal action, which is the tiresome pumping up and down of legs while walking, for example, into smooth linear movement across rough and bumpy land. The first wheels achieved that remarkable end without notably increasing speed. The advent of the steam and internal combustion engine reintroduced the reciprocating action of legs and sexual organs and through various systems involving flywheels, clutches, and gears converted such action into circular rolling movement, with wheels.
Now it’s all very well to go so what? and ho-hum at this point and fail to notice the important action of the geometric proliferation of the wheel throughout the world, in the way it has smoothed, compacted, abraded, pounded down, firmed up, buffed, and polished the earth, and in general how the wheel has been such a dynamic force in rendering so much of the surface of the earth ever smoother and therefore ever more friendly and hospitable to the wheel. It is the wheel that draws forth more asphalt, more cement, more gravel in ever greater quantities over ever increasing surfaces of land. Pave me, the world cries out before the wheel, pave me over. Let there be rivers of pavement, fields of pavement, lakes of pavement, seas of pavement, oceans and oceans of pavement; let us dream of paving until the very end of time.
The ever-restless wheel seeks out ever more opportunities as we rush to build machines to satisfy its craving to smooth the rough, flatt
en the corrugated, round off the edges of nature: the roller skate, the mountain bike, the skateboard, the ATV, the SUV, all clearing deserts of brush, forests of trees, jungles of whatever they are cleared of, plus the great wheels of jet airliners with their unquenchable thirst for entire square miles of thick reinforced concrete. Where once it was the sword, the spear, the crossbow, the musket, the rifle, the cannon, smallpox, the mortar, the tank, the atom bomb, napalm, and Agent Orange that subdued the earth, now it is simply and elegantly the wheel, in the form of those countless tires upon which we ride each day, knowing each time we step into a car and sit down that we will experience a quiet moment of joy sent up our spine by the first instants of rolling.
The wheel, to which all shoulders are now applied, rich and poor, Conservative Republican and liberal democrat alike, the wheel, which all labor for and worship, from the child going rrrn-rrrn as he pushes the small metal toy car back and forth on the carpet, to the elder five-star general of industry, who with the push of a button can cause millions of wheels to start turning all over the world. And in the middle of a seventy-mile-an-hour bumper-to-bumper rush hour on a ten-lane interstate, who of you has not been amazed at the thrumming whine of hundreds of rapidly turning tires and the little gasps they make as they hit seams and cracks in the pavement?
The wheel: human evolution will have reached its pinnacle when the earth is finally paved over, and nature is confined to a few large estates and carefully managed reserves which we will visit on Sundays, the reserves not the estates, and ride about in them on monorails and hovercraft with our grandchildren—if we can tear them away from their own myriad wheeled conveyances.
Unfortunately I will not be alive for that great event, the final paving over, which is estimated to take place at 6:39 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, August 21, 2076, and therefore I will be unable to join in the massive global celebrations to be organized around it—unless the new freeze-dry cloning technique responds well to a recent infusion of capital. In any case, to all those who will be there, I convey my very best wishes for a wonderful event. If unable to be there in body, I will certainly be there in spirit.
Such will be the substance of my speech. I will not of course reveal to the assembled throng the final preparations I have begun to sketch out, for the black and chrome semi tractor trailer hearse, on whose flatbed will be borne my favorite car festooned with black bunting, with my suitably stabilized earthly remains firmly positioned behind the wheel, tactfully shaded by my favorite hat and dark glasses. My ultimate destination will be a simple limestone mausoleum built in the form of a two-car garage, the other slot being reserved for your grandmother and her favorite car, and into which the car, with me in it, will be gently rolled. At that moment, the stone garage “door” will rise up from the earth on hydraulic cylinders to seal me within, forever and ever—or until the perfection of the freeze-dried cloning technique, which has begun to show promise with salamanders.
And other such thoughts—or rather, thoughts more suitable to a joyous public occasion, I will deliver from the south portico of the Manor, to the assembled Thingie®-Gazillion International upper and middle management and spouses on the occasion of my next big one in exactly five days, predicted to be a clear and crisp autumn day, with temperatures in the low seventies, and the first maple leaves beginning to turn.
33. 1:8 SCALE 2000 LAMBORGHINI DIABLO VT
THIS, MY DEAR FABIAN, IS THE CAR YOU WILL ACTUALLY learn to drive on—if I have anything to do with it. Which I may or may not, given the reception your father greeted the presentation of this mere model with you, at 1:8 scale, behind the wheel. They are getting better at this, though your wardrobe for the car seems a little odd: some rakish double-breasted Italian leather sports coat, it looks like, and me in the passenger seat in my blue blazer and a yachting cap. I must talk to them about these details.
I would rather my son learn to drive on a bulldozer than an overpowered Italian muscle car, your father announced after you two had been excused from the table. Our first family dinner together in seven months was not coming to a happy conclusion.
That can be arranged, I suggested. I’m sure Fabian would love to take a D-9 to the neighborhood.
Chip turned around in his seat and stared through the archway into the living room, where the real full-size flaming red Lamborghini sat under floodlights. The doors were open and you two, Fabian and Rowena, were sitting inside it and you, Fabian, were gesticulating wildly.
No kid, Chip said, waving his dessert fork, has ever learned how to drive in a car like that. Not to speak of the fact that I am the one who decides when and how and where and in what my children learn to drive.
Deedums correctly added, You decide, and I decide, Chip. We decide. She re-arranged her napkin. But the fact is, Chip, neither of us can take the time to give the boy the driving lessons he needs. Therefore their grandfather’s offer—
No.
We went over your court calendar last night, Chip, she continued.
And Chippo, I joined in, you have to admit that you haven’t even found the time to go through the mountain of material I prepared for you and Deedums concerning the purchase of Fabian’s first car.
He threw up his hands. I intend to ask the boy simply what he wants.
Well, then that’s settled. He confided to me he wanted a flaming red Lamborghini Diablo VT. Unless you were going to ask the poor boy what he wants and then tell him that what he’s actually going to get is a dull red Toyota Corolla.
Is that the one he wants? he tossed his head toward the offending car.
No, I corrected, that one is mine. Upon the successful completion of his driving test, I’ll get him his own. He may want another color by then.
Deirdre, your thoughtful grandmother, chimed in at this point. I don’t see what the problem is. The boy should have what he wants. Bright red is a very visible color. It should be quite safe.
The discussion ended inconclusively when Chip’s cell phone went off and he had to leave the table for a half hour, during which time we adjourned to the living room for coffee and brandy, while you kids sat contentedly in the Lamborghini opening and closing doors and the hood and turning on and off the lights and sound system. With Chip still absent on the phone over an upcoming Supreme Court case, it was a rare moment of family harmony during which it appeared to have been decided that I indeed would be the one to give you, Fabian, your first driving lessons in the Lamborghini as soon as you obtain your learner’s permit next month.
This of course is an absolutely crucial moment in the development of the character of any young man, the moment of learning to drive and assuming possession of your very first automobile ever. What you will learn, Fabian, is that first of all you are your car—not only in your own mind, through the sleepless imaginings you will suffer night after night as you yearn for the moment of consummation in first possessing it as yours and yours only, but then, again and again, throughout the days and weeks and years when you set forth to find it again in the garage or the parking lot or wait for it to be returned to your hands by the parking valet or the mechanic or the car washing attendant. I hope, in this connection, you will never have to search it out in the impoundment lot.
You are your car not only in terms of your own insatiable longings, for in this at least it is socially permitted and indeed encouraged that you acquire a virtual harem of cars, but also in terms of how people look at you. They will see you as not just you, but as Fabian of the flaming red Lamborghini or of the Bentley or of the Hummer or of the Harley—or of all of the above, and more. Your car announces and proclaims your level of testosterone, your ambitions, your sexual orientation, your age, your economic status, your political orientation, and much more. You probably do not know how fortunate you are in not having to work your way up through a succession of sad little Nissans, cheap Fords, flabby Dodges or Buicks, cars which no doubt wreak havoc on their owners’ self-images by painting them as losers, oddballs, marginals, misfits, and malcontent
s—though in another way we must be thankful for those traffic jams of plain-jane ordinary cars, for setting off our far more magnificent machines. If no one or nothing were ugly, the beautiful would be commonplace—and quite worthless. In driving the cars of the gods, we set off sparks of envy in the eyes of those we sweep past.
What your first car, and especially this one, will offer like no others that come afterward, is the promise to be first, to win the race, to reach the summit, by simply pushing a few pedals and moving a lever or two, pressing some buttons, by an almost effortless labor. In this capsule on wheels, you are offered the promise of achieving all of your hopes and dreams, each and every day you slip body and soul behind its wheel—and all with little effort, almost no thought and hardly any planning, and no discipline other than submitting more or less to the so-called rules of the road. To drive a car: this will be your first great achievement, Fabian.
Yet your eventual success—as revolutionizing engineer, a Titan of investment, a great attorney, whatever—will enable you to see the illusion at the heart of even your most fervent desires, and make you wonder at how something that seems to promise so much, the climbing into your new Lamborghini or some other splendid car, can so often seem to deliver little more than a somewhat weary memory of the road and the traffic and the tiny imperfections of design or finish or handling or performance that seem to plague any car, even the finest and most expensive, or I sometimes think, especially those. Bumper-to-bumper traffic comes to seem an exercise in mass hysteria in which millions and billions of motorists believe they are heading down the road to success when the reality is that they are probably going nowhere fast, like hamsters on a treadmill, and only wearing ruts into a stultifyingly familiar route, and spending themselves eventually into penury to do so, although to the profit of those of us who have invested wisely. Such thoughts often pass through my mind while flying over some metropolitan sprawl at rush hour, in the dark, during winter, and I stare down at the slow-moving rivers of red tail-lights and white headlamps—as I did only forty-five minutes ago after taking off for Brussels.
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