l i f e
'57 Merc
contributions
christopher@30seconds.org
Intimately, but detached.
Its image becomes implanted on the brain and this is good and bad. Good because at any given time I can tell how far I've left to go, but bad because it bores.
Construction will change the face of it now and again, enough to keep the traffic interesting, but still predictable. Strip-malls have popped up along the side and new exits have been added. But there is still the same array of dilapidated hotels and small towns where you don't want to stop, let alone break down. Their names pass by on the right at 75 mph, Whitsett, McConnel, Apex, and a host of others. These are interspersed among the better known towns of Raleigh, Chapel Hill, Burlington, and finally Greensboro...home.
Every once in awhile something will change the scape. Something that belongs. Something that should catch my eye, but doesn't right away. Something that blends in until when I finally notice it I can't remember how long it has really been there. It might seem as though it always has. The '57 Mercedes is one such example.
A '57 Mercedes sedan is a beautiful thing. Headlights stacked on-top of one another, large grill, lots of shape and personality and...fins. Yeah, a Mercedes with fins. They start just behind the rear window and carry all the way down the trunk line until the single red lens of the taillight stops it like the flame of a rocket engine. The taillight runs the full height of the fin, from the chrome bumper to the tip of the tail...one piece of glass. Glass mind you, no plastic taillight on a '57 Mercedes. No way. The car itself is solid steel and houses a V-8 built to run forever. Not like an ugly, puffing, ready-to-pounce muscle car V-8, but an engine with class. Silent unless you stand by the front fender, place your hand on the hood and feel it. Yeah. Feel it. Its heat. Its small but powerful vibration. Its engineering.
The '57 Mercedes.
It appeared in the parking lot of a run down motel just north of Burlington. I don't know when. I see it everyday now, and I think about it a lot. It's a far cry from one of the great classics, and yet its beauty is so timeless, weaving together the last of anything the pre-war years had to offer in a car, with mediocre post-war design. It is a utilitarian car, that can somehow still be the catalyst for my feeling toward the automobile. I'm reminded of Crews who said, "It (cars) gave our lives a little focus and our talk a little credibility, if only because we could point to the evidence."
I think that sums things up pretty well, but you have to understand the love affair with the car. If you've not owned a car you can't understand. You have to have had yourself up to the elbows in grease first. You've had to tear down engines to see what makes them run and put them back together again. You've had to have had a sensual relationship with the car, and, pardon the expression, it's a two way street.
So maybe one day soon (now that the days have grown longer) I'll stop on the way home and see why that '57 is in such desperate need. Why it hasn't moved in all the time I've been watching it. See if its dove gray paint has any shine left or if it is forever the color of storm clouds.
If I stop I'll pocket something small from the car. A valve stem cover. A flake of paint. A piece of chrome. A coin from under the seat. Anything, anything at all, so that later when the car is gone (and it will be), I can sit back, look into my window sill of things, and point to the evidence.
goodnight 4.5.98
