Vertical Inertia…

This is the status in which my mind is at the time… Not much going on, despite the efforts to the contrary.

Several years ago a friend of mine who lived in NYC owned a Citroen. Actually, he, his wife and children lived in a little known enclave of the Bronx, called City Island. This was, back then, an almost bucolic like place with a main avenue, appropriately called City Island Avenue, going down the center of the island(yes, Virginia, it is an island!!), all the way to the end restaurant and  flanked by a number of houses facing the small streets branching off either side of the avenue.

 Well… that is just a mental picture of this place. His name was (I hope it is still…) Ira; a good Jewish name for a good Jewish man. I have not spoken with Ira in almost 40 years… In fact, one of the last times I saw him was at my citizenship swearing in ceremony, where he was my sponsor and witness. I remember him for this … and I remember Ira’s Citroen… Bertie. For those of you who do not know this French standard, it is a car which relied much on a number of hydraulic systems within the frame… whenever the owner shut it down for the night, the system would shut down and actually lower the car almost to a sleeping position, with the snout almost resting on the ground. We used to joke that it went to sleep faster then the owner, well known to be up until the wee hours of the morning. We also had a running joke that, whenever the car broke down, Ira had to call his mechanic … and also the plumber to check the car fluids.

Bertie, in White dress... 

Ira loved his car; a 1970 or so Citroen berlina, and it was a badge of sorts; it took him to and from New York (actually, being in NY already, I should say “took him to Manhattan”) where, in those days, you could still find parking spaces on the streets; not like today, when a parking garage will charge you $15-25 to put away your chariot for the day.  That black car (very French back then… a black car) was, as far as Ira believed, a living, breathing thing. Certainly it was a cantankerous item; wont to function as it would, not necessarily as the poor Ira would want it to.

Every so often, when we would come to drop off typewritten work (my first wife was a medical transcriptionist and all her work came through Ira’s wife) there would be poor Ira, staring down into the open maw of this creature, trying to figure out which one of the hundred hoses or so within the hydraulic system was the culprit for the car remaining in the “rest” position… And every time, he swore this would be the last day for the bloody car (actually, the language used to depict the car was a lot more colorful…) to test his nerves and his wallet. The car, almost as if knowing this was pure bluff, remained quietly there with the hood up, waiting for a dental inspection that never comes.

A Favorite Sunday Lunch

 One summer Sunday, around 2 in the afternoon or so, we were heading out to the island. Our plan was to drop off the work, chat for a while with Ira and his wife and then head down to the restaurant at the end of the avenue in order to have a favorite lunch: fried clams, fried scallops, French fries and a cold beer. Oh yeah… and a good home made Bronx cream cheese pie for dessert, flushed with a nice big cup of coffee… Back in the early 70’s we youngsters did not worry much about diet, you see…

 As we approached the bridge that would bring us into the island (the only way in and out of the island, other than the ferry for people) we noticed there was some sort of a problem, for traffic had stopped… As we seemed to be close to the source of the problem, I got off the car and walked a few steps towards the bridge, to a place from which I could see what was going on… and, there they were!!

The Bridge into City Island

On the right lane, sat big black Bertie, its maw wide open (an image I had grown accustomed to…) and poor Ira kicking the front tire in a fit of  fury, while holding a useless screwdriver in his hand… I saw this and had to laugh… doing so well before I reached this tableau, for I was afraid Ira would try to puncture me with the screwdriver if I did laugh out loud while next to him…

“This Bloody G… Damn car…!!!” said he, not very quietly… “All it does is go up, down and sideways, but it won’t go forwardS OR BACKWARDS!!!” Seems that the infamous hydraulic system had caused the engine to stop, while retaining enough pressure to show some vestige of life in a manner that was not of much help to poor Ira…

Along with a couple of friendly neighbors, we managed to push the car out of the way, into a street parking lot. We then took Ira home and, as his wife lit into him (she was not a fan of that old car) we kind of snuck out and went on to fulfill our previously laid plans… And, yes… poor Bertie was put to rest after that Sunday afternoon.

Perhaps some of my internal hydraulic system is not working well… my mind (what’s left of it…) seems to be going up, down and sideways but there is not much forward movement… I sat here and thought about Bertie and his master of sorts, Ira…

Be Well … Be Back!!!

Final Notes:

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