Transformative Week: Person of the Year and 50 Years of Mustang

Who would you pick as the Person of the Year? Before you start to rack your brain for a worthy choice, here is Time magazine’s 10 finalists for the declaration it will make Wednesday. Listed alphabetically, they are:

Bashar Assad, President of Syria;

Jeff Bezos, Amazon Founder;

Ted Cruz, Texas Senator;

Miley Cyrus, Singer;

Pope Francis, Leader of the Catholic Church;

Barack Obama, President of the United States;

Hassan Rouhani, President of Iran;

Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services;

Edward Snowden, N.S.A. Leaker;

Edith Windsor, Gay rights activist.

Keep in mind that to be the Person of the Year a candidate need not be a do-gooder. Evil can win as well, and I’m not referring to Barack Obama in the eyes of too many deranged-thinking folks.

Hands down, in my opinion, the winner will be Pope Francis. I’m not a Catholic, but he has transformed in his short reign the way the Catholic Church is perceived, or should be perceived. True, he retains some of the more rigid dogmas, such as being anti-abortion and against women as priests. But he has instilled a renewed sense of purpose to aid the needy and not be overly materialistic. His influence travels well beyond his papacy. 

My second choice would be Jeff Bezos. Retailing, one of my mentors (David Mahler) taught me, has been a continual evolution in streamlining the distribution of goods, from the individual shop to the five and dime to the mail order house to the department store to the discount store, the specialty store, the shopping mall, the category killer store, to the Internet. With Amazon.com, Bezos has set the gold standard for Web retailing. Amazon won’t destroy store retailing, much as Wal-Mart did not wipe all other stores off the retail landscape. But Bezos has been a transformational thinker in the way product is distributed, not just in the United States but abroad, as well. 

All the others on the list, except for Obama, are temporary figures on the scene of current events. 

Only Mustang Makes It Happen: Back in 1968, I drove a fire engine red Mustang. It was a 1966 model, but I identified with the snappy advertising lyric hyping the current year model:

Only Mustang makes it happen,

Only Mustang makes life great!

Mustang warms you, and transforms you.

Mustang, Mustang, '68!

The car that transformed the Ford Motor Company under Lee Iacocca will be 50 years old Thursday. Last April I wrote about my red Mustang, so I’ll just provide a link (http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/search?q=mustang) and instead tell you about the last time I drove a Mustang, an aquamarine convertible rental on the island of Maui, some 20-plus years ago. 

Gilda and I traveled to Maui for the annual convention of the National Association of Chain Drug Stores. Normally, just one editor from my staff, Marianne, covered the event, which alternated between Hawaii and Palm Beach. We’d already been to Palm Beach, but not Maui, so I asserted some executive privilege and we accompanied Marianne. The NACDS, at that time under the direction of Ron Ziegler, President Richard Nixon’s former press secretary, spent lots of money on their annual get-together. The convention feature appearances by William Safire of The New York Times, Benizar Bhutto, the former prime minister of Pakistan, Liza Minnelli and Bob Hope.

But I didn’t need a car to see them. The Mustang was to get around the island, especially to drive up the road to Hāna, known for spectacular waterfalls along the 52 mile highway, and beyond Hāna to visit the gravesite of Charles Lindbergh. The climb to Hāna passes through tropical rainforest. Its mostly a switchback single-lane road, with some 620 curves. Without traffic it takes almost three hours to get to Hāna.

Our trip turned out to be an excursion to hell and back. On the way up the mountain we got stuck behind slow moving cars we could not pass because of the numerous curves. Maui had been suffering from a drought. Ergo, there were no waterfalls to behold. There also were no restaurants along the way, no rest stops to relieve ourselves. We finally arrived in Hāna a few minutes before 2 pm. We had hoped to eat lunch in the only sit-down restaurant in Hāna, but discovered it closed sharply at 2. The only open food shop was a greasy spoon shack we reluctantly patronized. 

We had to get back to our hotel for the conference evening event so we had to forego visiting Lindbergh’s grave. On the way down the mountain, Gilda and Marianne got car sick from all the sharp turns mixing with our greasy lunch. On numerous occasions they opted out of the car to walk a half mile or so in the mist that was now swooping in off the coast. We didn’t get stuck behind any cars or trucks, but our pace going down was significantly slower than when we went up to Hāna. Happiness was reaching the straightaway at the bottom of the road and opening up the throttle of the Mustang to whisk us back to our hotel. 

Car Talk

Barring any last minute complications, we’re picking up Gilda’s new car early this evening, a ruby red Ford C-Max hybrid. It will be my third red car, Gilda’s second.

My first was a used, fire engine red, 1966 Mustang, bought in the fall of 1967. I shared it with my sister but considered it more mine than hers. We kept it for two years, long enough for it to be rear-ended twice while I was behind the wheel, once even while stopped at a red light, both times resulting in a broken trunk lock. Though I liked the Mustang it clearly had bad karma. It also had a front end bang-up before we bought it, something we found out only when a mechanic asked my sister when the collision happened.

My favorite memories of that car included stuffing 10 of my house plan (like a fraternity) brothers into the front and back seats as I drove from one party to another. As the driver, I didn’t have to share a seat so I was indifferent to the squeezed bodies surrounding me. 

The second memory also involved my Knight House friends. We were trying to find Lenny David one school night. Several cars descended on the Brooklyn College campus. We thought he might be in the library. I jumped out to search for him, then returned to my car to go to the next possible spot where he might be. In my haste, I didn’t notice the car had been moved from its original parking spot. 

You might ask, how could it have been moved? Surely your friends had not become supermen, lifted it up and moved it some 100 feet? By some quirk of manufacturing, the key to my 1966 Mustang exactly matched the key to Brian Berman’s 1965 Mustang. As a practical joke he moved my car, assuming I’d realize the shift when I didn’t find it parked where I left it. 

Okay, the story doesn’t end there. My Mustang had a slight mechanical problem. The gas gauge always read “empty.” My sister and I agreed we’d always fill the car with gas whenever we used it to avoid unsuspectingly running out of fuel. We also agreed we’d never engage the emergency parking brake because no red light appeared on the dashboard when it was on. When I got back into the driver’s seat and started to pull away from the curb I was jolted by the bucking bronco motion of the Mustang. I figured Lee had failed to refill the gas tank earlier that day and this was the car’s way of belching out its near-emptiness. The car kicked and fought for the two blocks to the nearest gas station. I told the attendant to fill ‘er up. 39 cents. Roughly two gallons back in 1968. I was flabbergasted, unable to comprehend why the car was behaving in such an uncharacteristic manner when I noticed the emergency brake had been deployed. I realized Brian had been inside my car but it was not until I confronted him that I was apprised he had also moved it to a different parking space. Total embarrassment. 

To replace the Mustang several months later my father bought me a Buick Skylark, red with a black vinyl top. Gilda learned to drive in that car which she named Bertha. Just recently I became aware of the significance of the name Bertha to automotive history. Seems Karl Benz was a better inventor than promoter. He was reluctant to show off his car-making handiwork. His wife Bertha, however, was no shrinking violet. Without asking his permission, on August 5, 1888, accompanied by their two teenage sons, she took Benz’s creation out for a spin, a 66-mile spin from Mannheim to Pforzheim. As explained in her Wikipedia biography, the trip, aside from being the maiden long distance trip in any automobile, achieved several other firsts:

“On the way, she solved numerous problems. She had to find ligroin as a fuel; this was available only at apothecary shops, so she stopped in Wiesloch at the city pharmacy to purchase the fuel. A blacksmith had to help mend a chain at one point. The brakes needed to be repaired and, in doing so, Bertha Benz invented brake lining. She also had to use a long, straight hatpin to clean a fuel pipe, which had become blocked, and to insulate a wire with a garter. She left Mannheim around dawn and reached Pforzheim somewhat after dusk, notifying her husband of her successful journey by telegram. She drove back to Mannheim the next day.”

Gilda hasn’t indicated what she might call the Ford C-Max. Perhaps she’ll name it Thrifty or some other name to connote the savings the hybrid will provide. Its rated at 47 miles per gallon, city and highway, an important factor given Gilda’s 50-mile daily commute to and from Manhattan. Even if we get 20% less efficiency, at 37 mpg it would be three times more than what we managed from the Jeep Grand Cherokee we are replacing. 

We could have had a C-Max almost two months ago if we wanted any color but red. But when in a parking lot Gilda did not want to be lost amidst a sea of white, black, grey and blue cars. Ruby red will stand out. 

It’s supposed to rain in a short while. It rained when I picked up my Buick Skylark. My father used to say rain is a sign of good luck. 

The Bosch Affair

For how many years did Helen Thomas harbor an antipathy—let’s give her the benefit of the doubt and not call it a prejudice—toward Jews? A dedicated UPI reporter for 57 years upholding the profession’s ideal of objectivity, Thomas at long last was free, more or less, to say what she really felt as a columnist for Hearst during the last 10 years. She weighed in against George Bush, Dick Cheney and Israel, among others. Controversial comments were no stranger to her dialogue.

The soon to be 90-year-old daughter of Lebanese Christian immigrants, Thomas’ anti-Israel and anti-Jewish remarks may be explained away, but not condoned, as an outgrowth of her background. She wouldn’t be the first person to expose long dormant and repressed true colors given the opportunity.

I’ve got my own narrow-minded prejudices that express themselves in unusual ways. Take, for instance, my patchwork prejudice against anything German. Like many post-World War II Jews, I avoided buying German products, especially German autos, even though Israel welcomed Mercedes Benz cars and many of my friends drive them. I opted for Japanese cars. My avoidance of anything overtly German was sketchy, at best: I wouldn’t buy a Krups coffee maker, but Braun made its way into our household. At least one of our china patterns came from Germany. Overall, my prejudice against anything German had no rational design.

My biased-based boycott extended beyond German automakers. Henry Ford’s well-known anti-semitism prompted me to studiously avoid Fords as well, that is, after two years behind the wheel of a 1965 fire-engine red Mustang during my college years.

Ten years ago when we were remodeling our kitchen, Gilda wanted Bosch dishwashers (we were getting two). They were highly rated, among the quietest units on the market because of their steel interiors. I vetoed the idea. No way was I going to put a German name so prominently in our kitchen. Gilda was caught off guard. I explained that during World War I a nickname for the German army was “the Bosch.” Of course, during WWI, Germany did not persecute Jews. Indeed, Jews fought proudly for "Der Fatherland." That didn’t matter to me—my bias was set. We “settled” on steel-lined KitchenAid dishwashers.

Time now to replace our washing machine and dryer. The salesman at the local appliance store touted Bosch as the best value. I wasn’t up for another argument. I steered Gilda toward the Bosch units. To the rescue rode that All-American company, Sears. Its Kenmore brand washer and dryer rated better than Bosch, according to Consumer Reports (let’s not dwell on the fact that LG, a Korean company, makes the Kenmore appliances. I already expressed my leanings toward Asian manufacturing).

I’ll never know if I could have gone through with it, seeing Bosch-next-to-Bosch every day in the mud room leading in from the garage. The new washer and dryer arrived Friday. Kenmore sure does make a good product. Gilda loves them. So do I, for reasons beyond their cleaning power.