Car misadventures-Part 2
Dreamland
One of my recurring vehicular experiences is a dream. I am in a mid-sized car that, for unclear reasons, I must drive from the back seat. Often there is no one in the driver’s or front passenger seat. I never attempt to maneuver into the driver’s seat. I simply extend my arms over the back of the driver’s seat and manipulate the steering wheel as best I can. Of course, this leaves the pedals out of reach. Unsurprisingly, it feels awkward, challenging, and stressful, but not nearly as much as you might imagine.
Another recurring car dream involves navigating on roads that are extraordinarily hazardous: mountainous, with wicked blind curves and sheer cliffs, dirt and rocks galore, and occasionally sheets of ice or slushy snow. I am fully aware of how treacherous it is, but I continue driving, even when I seem to have no control over the steering, acceleration, or brakes. Often, the car is sailing along, and I am fervently hoping all ends well.
A third recurring dream involves closing my eyes for a spell while driving. Repeatedly. I am not asleep when my eyes are closed, and though I am worried about staying on the road and avoiding a collision, I’m unable to stop my eyes from closing again. As I open my eyes and get my bearings, I come to the realization that there have been major gaps in my visual feedback, and I panic not knowing what has transpired. The dream reminds me of runs I took in my teens and twenties when, hitting a particularly wonderful stride and feeling at peace, I would close my eyes for a few seconds and continue running. It was magical and, oddly, free of worry.
Then there are the real-life car adventures that sometimes echo the dreams.
The former East
In 1990 my father, Otto Marx, moved back to the place of his birth and expulsion: Heidelberg, Germany. His family, like so many secular German Jews, had spent hundreds of years as proud Germans (my grandfather was decorated with the Iron Cross for his service to Germany as a lieutenant in the First World War) but lost everything, both tangible and intangible, during the Third Reich. The family escaped Germany when Otto was nine. In his career Otto became the foremost expert on German Romantic Psychiatry, a historical inquiry that illuminated the antecedents of modern psychiatry. Otto’s Jewish identity and love for German culture and country were irreconcilable. Returning to Heidelberg as a visiting professor for several years was, I believe, his effort to make peace with his past and attain the recognition he deserved for the successes he achieved against all odds.
My husband Jim and I visited Otto and his wife Nancy in Heidelberg in December 1990. After enjoying the outdoor holiday markets (replete with mulled wine and roasted chestnuts) and relaxing in one of the many popular spa towns, we borrowed Otto’s car, a small rat trap Audi sedan. At the time, poorly made East German automobiles could be had for a song.
Jim and I were keen on exploring some of the East and set off. The weather was typical of December in Germany: grey, overcast, and biting cold. Our goal was to cross the former border with the least possible driving. The route was uninspired at best, snow covering much of the fairly flat landscape, and little to appreciate other than the extraordinary speed with which drivers in late model Mercedes and BMWs overtook us.
After three and a half hours we came to a previous border crossing with decaying guard towers, rusting barbed wire, shards of broken glass, and chunks of concrete. It was eerily quiet. We poked around in the debris. A beech forest ran alongside the checkpoint; small spiny beechnut shells were scattered amidst the detritus. It was hard to conjure up the horrors of that era.
It was late afternoon, and we began searching for accommodation. We stopped several times in depressed hamlets with a smattering of dirty old stucco buildings and asked at those labeled “Gasthaus” (guesthouse or inn) if any rooms were available. Each time, using my solid conversational German, the response at the pubs we entered was puzzlement. In the former East these “guesthouses” were only taverns, absent rooms for rent. Deciding we might have better luck in a nearby city, we drove to Suhl.*
Suhl was a heavily industrialized sprawling mass of large unadorned moldering Soviet-bloc style buildings, factories, and belching smokestacks ringed in by hills and distant mountains. I consulted our guidebook for a pension or B&B. Several B&B’s were listed at the periphery of the city. It was difficult to ascertain the exact location of the B&B’s on our map. We drove to where the hills began to climb and concrete gave way to nature, ascending a residential street with large stand-alone homes and gardens that must have belonged to those with means. The views of the city were drab and depressing. Having located one address, we were confronted with a long driveway covered in snow and ice that curved up a steep hill to a grand old villa. The car had little traction and the light was failing. Jim navigated carefully up the hill. There were no signs indicating a B&B. We rang and knocked at the front door, but the house appeared empty.
Jim turned the car around and we descended the driveway slowly. On the passenger side a forlorn row of small boxwood hedges lined the driveway, beyond which the hill fell off sharply. Part-way into our descent, the car slid slowly off the driveway and into the downslope of the garden, running over a few of the boxwood hedges and coming to a stop just shy of the low concrete wall bordering the property above the street. It all happened in the kind of drawn-out dreamlike motion that contrasted with the panic and adrenaline I felt. We got out of the car and began pushing it back up onto the driveway. It was a very good thing the Audi weighed so little. I was extraordinarily relieved. Jim remained disconcertingly calm throughout. I felt terrible about the boxwoods and even worse that our tire tracks would not lie about what had transpired.
We got back on the road and thanked our lucky stars nothing worse had transpired. I still wonder if the owners noticed anything amiss, whether the boxwoods recovered, and if anyone ever stayed there as a guest.
*Suhl: When we selected Suhl as our destination, we didn’t know much about the city other than that it was close to the former border. My recent scamper online revealed an interesting history and explained our visual and visceral impression. According to Wikipedia, Suhl is surrounded by the Thuringian Forest and is regarded as mountainous for Germany (an approximately 3,000-foot mountain is the highest nearby peak). Early mentions of Suhl date to 1318 when it was a small mining and metalworking town; by the late 1800’s Suhl became the center of arms production (predominantly rifles and guns), along with an eminent car and moped producer. By 1952, when Suhl was part of East Germany, the government razed the medieval historic center of town and replaced it with concrete “Plattenbau” architecture. This resulted in “…a typical 1960s concrete architecture-marked city centre…defining to the present. Suhl’s cityscape is marked by the lack of flat ground to build on, which is why the city’s morphology appears picked and incoherent.” After German reunification the population decreased precipitously during the 1990’s and 2000’s when people sought out economic opportunities in the former West or other big cities of the former East. This led to demolition of some of the Plattenbau buildings around the city periphery. Plattenbau (panel+building) is a style of architecture using prefabricated concrete slabs that were popular in post-World War II nations when inexpensive rapid building of housing was needed for refugees and residents; the style was also popular worldwide during the 1960’s.
A Close Shave — guest contribution by Jim Kahn
In 1975, after graduating high school, I happened upon a spectacular summer job — work on the production line of the Dannon Yogurt factory in Long Island City, New York. I secured the job via my dad’s army buddy, who started Dannon with only two employees (he and his father) after WWII. At the extravagant union wage of $6 per hour, I could earn spending money for college.
But there was a catch: I had to shave off my impressively large beard. (Or wear a hairnet over it, which was not happening!)
Work started at 6 am, about 45 minutes’ drive from our family home. To bed at 9 pm, up at 5 am, and quickly out the door.
At around 8pm the night before my first day on the job, I set to removing my beard and mustache. A task which, it became quickly obvious, I had no idea how to accomplish. Three hours of awkward scissoring and manual razoring later, I was clean-shaven.
It was early July. I was on the tennis team, and I had spent hours in the sun, before the era of sun block, through months of spring and early summer. I was very tanned. Except for the newly revealed and very pale broad swath of skin along my jaw line and under my nose. I had a big mop of dark hair (which would get a net), a very brown mid-face, and below that a big sweep of white upper lip, cheek, and chin. Nice look!
Off to bed around midnight and up at 5 am, I made it to the factory by 6 am, remaining sufficiently awake and alert for the 8-hour shift. In the early afternoon I headed home in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Stop, 2 mph, stop, 2 mph, doze off, bang! I hit the car in front of me and was suddenly quite awake.
I jumped out of the car, as did the middle-aged man of the car I hit. “I am so sorry! Is your car ok? I’m normally a really good driver, but I started a new job today really early and didn’t get enough sleep last night, and I guess I dozed off.”
The driver sized me up, no more than five feet away from my face, in the bright day. He looked at his bumper, at my bumper, and again at me. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “You’re a nice clean-cut kid, not like all those damn hippies with the big beards.”
“Thank you, sir. Have a nice day.”
Was he serious, or was it the perfect, dry joke? I’ll never know.
