During one of our biweekly Sunday morning phone calls, Ken informed me that he'd found the perfect junked Beetle to restore. I sent him a check for $750 to buy it in April 1982 and for the following year, he meticulously logged his progress and expenses in a notebook. In an early photo, it looks as if he spit-shined the engine.
Living in a border town helped him keep costs down. He had my 1964 VW upholstered and painted in Juarez. I wasn't crazy about the color--anthracite gray--so I told everybody in New York that it was called "urban camouflage." It did blend in well with a New York City that hadn't yet become a millionaire's playground.
A freak April storm dropped more than a foot of snow on El Paso--the second heaviest accumulation ever recorded--delaying my arrival to pick up the car but sunny skies returned by the time I was ready to head back to New York. Dave and I christened "Herr Cucaracha" (Mr. Bug). Nowadays, that name would raise the hackles of the PC police.
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| 9912 Collette (1983) |
I used a portable tape recorder to capture my impressions of Herr Cucaracha's first road trip, later transcribing them into my journal. The speedometer cable broke almost immediately. Not that it could go much faster than 70 mph.
April 12, 1982: Just beyond Terrell on a divided highway that cuts through fertile East Texas farmland, I spotted several old VWs behind a junkyard fence decorated with hubcaps. The proprietor stood in front talking to another guy. When I stopped to tell him what I needed, he insisted he didn't have any VWs, visual evidence to the contrary. "Boys across the street, they got the VWs." Sure enough, there was a whole yard full. "But I wouldn't go over there if I was you and don't tell 'em it was me who sent you if you do. Boys gone to Dallas to cut grass and they got the girl well-trained. A mother with a new baby. She's more 'n likely to shoot you if you go pokin' round over there cause she won't answer the door. Got to be careful hereabouts. Rapers and killers everywhere." I couldn't tell if it was junkyard proprietors or rural Texans who didn't take kindly to young strangers, but I decided to go to a VW dealer instead.
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| County Court House Anson, TX |
In Ohio, I passed several "roadside rests" where a very precocious Dave acquired his sexual education.
Herr Cucaracha got a lot of use in the 80s, including weekend escapes to Jones Beach and Fire Island, visits to family and friends, longer road trips, and once, a mass demonstration in the nation's capital. Initially, I stored it for $30 a month in an old wood-working shop in Hoboken, NJ where Tom and Audrey garaged their MG after buying a town house there. Al, the elderly proprietor, had built barrels for bootleggers during Prohibition. I rode my motorcycle to and from his shop until gentrification razed it.
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| Dave, Newton Falls, OH (1986) |
Herr Cucaracha finally moved into Manhattan. Eventually, I found a cheap garage on West 134th Street and pedaled uptown to retrieve the car after my motorcycle was stolen from the ASPCA where I parked it for free in winter. Ken, who already had taught me to change the oil and adjust the valves, custom-made a bike rack and shipped it to me for my birthday complete with assembly instructions. He also tuned up Herr Cucaracha and had it repainted in 1991 when I left it in El Paso for a couple of months. We regularly discussed how the car was running until his death. Note the vanity license plates. Ken kept it registered in Texas to help me avoid paying speeding and parking tickets. I'm still a wanted man in Virginia where a cop ticketed me for going 80 mph--downhill.
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| Ken, Post Tune-Up (1991) |
April 12, 1996: Less than half an hour after I called Pucci on Monday morning, a smooth talking guy who said he did all the body work for the local VW dealer in Linden reeled me in with his promise to take care of things. This included having the car towed to his shop where he could make a damage estimate. By Tuesday morning, I had agreed to pay him $2500 to repair and repaint the car.
"Michael," I said, "I'm writing you a check for more than a thousand dollars. I've never laid eyes on you or even seen your shop. I hope I can trust you to do a good job."
He responded by telling me to judge him by the company he keeps.
"I walk around here in an FBI jacket. You don't get one of those unless you know somebody. I'm a body builder. I work out at the same gym with all the state troopers. There's nobody in this town with a bad word to say about me."
"I think it's great you're a bodybuilder Michael," I replied, more than a little titillated by his macho braggadocio, "but right now the only body I'm interested in you building is the one on my car."
It took four months and the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs to get Herr Cucaracha back, in addition another $2500, two VW mechanics and another two months before it could pass inspection again. Car ownership without Ken had turned into a major stressor. I mostly used Herr Cucaracha for grocery shopping at the new Fairway on West 125th Street. Once Smokey died in 1992, it was faster and more economical to take the train to the Pines, ending any summer weekend use.
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| Post Accident (1996) |
But I still resisted selling what had been a powerful link to my father until shortly after 9/11 when Herr Cucaracha ferried me and several of Barnet's closest friends to his mother's funeral in Yonkers.
September 27, 2001: After reading a couple of prayers in Hebrew with occasional English translation, the young rabbi announced the service would continue at the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hastings-on-Hudson.
"That's where I'm going to be buried, too," Barnet whispered when if I asked him if Olga would be interred alongside his father. "Joan Crawford and Aaliyah are already there."
I knew something was wrong with the Herr Cucaracha as soon as the cortege began moving but kept my mouth shut and my fingers crossed as we drove another 15 or 20 miles north. We sat in the car while the cemetery workers carried the coffin to the gravesite, waiting for the family to give the signal.
"I had hoped we wouldn't see this," Howie remarked. His teariness through the first part of the service had surprised me.
Then we gathered round as they lowered the coffin into the grave and the rabbi explained the tradition of throwing dirt on the coffin. He instructed the family to begin the ritual using the back of the shovel first to show the deceased that there was no haste or eagerness to do the job, before using the shovel properly for a second scoop. Once the immediate family members each had a turn, he invited the guests to do so as well.
I can't remember when the rending of the garments took place, but both Barnet and his sister Diane were supposed to have brought along a favorite garment that, during a private ceremony with the rabbi, they had ripped to release any anger or frustration they felt towards their mother. Barnet had forgotten to bring the tight black t-shirt that showed off his tits he had selected the night before, so he removed his undershirt. Diane brought a silk teddy.
"I told the rabbi we got them mixed up" he whispered after they threw the rent garments into the grave.
The atmosphere grew noticeably more relaxed after the reading of the Kaddish, the final part of the service. Diane approached to make some small talk and Barnet pulled out a tiny kaleidoscope-like portrait of his mother, taken during a trip to Miami 40 or 50 years earlier. Everyone oohed and aahed. Even I had to admit she looked absolutely stunning, much more than she had in the black and white photo Barnet had affixed to the back of the mirror he faithfully brought to Jones Beach every time we made the trip so he could check his hair.
Barely 90 minutes had passed since the rabbi began and ended the service. I appreciated its brevity and greatly admired the tradition. Howie and Maria both thanked me for bringing them (Sharon had caught the train from the funeral home, perhaps sensing disaster).
"Wait until we get home first," I joked. How prophetic!
Ten minutes down the road a horrible noise stopped us on the Sprain Brook Parkway. Assuming the worst, I fully intended to junk the car even going so far as to remove the tourist magnets that decorated the glove box after using Maria's cell phone to call a tow truck.
"Whaddya mean, junk it buddy?" demanded Junior, the thoroughly likable tow truck operator. "The steel tread separated from the tire is all. The motor still runs doesn't it? You could get big bucks for this car on ebay."
Well, not quite. It took another flat and a tow before I photographed Herr Cucaracha and uploaded the pictures to ebay. Imagine my elation when a guy from upstate New York closed the auction with a bid for $1825, $500 above than my minimum. Only Ken would have gotten a bigger kick out of selling the car for more than I had paid for it 30 years earlier, 20 years after it rolled off the assembly line.
Alas, car buyers on the internet were no more reliable than many of the men I met in AOL M4M chat rooms. The deal fell through when the guy proved to be a no-show. Selling Herr Cucaracha quickly became my first priority. Unfortunately, my journal failed to record to specifics, although I do dimly recall delivering it to a man in rural New Jersey and my check book records a $700 deposit in November 2001. My relief at no longer owning an automobile in New York City remains palpable to this day. In the end, Herr Cucaracha was just an expensive mechanical headache with diminishing returns, no longer a major part of my identity.
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