The Porsche

You really had to hand it to the flyboys, they had gotten it down to a science. First, they would present their wife with a gorgeous fur coat for her Birthday, their Anniversary, Valentine’s Day, or some other “special occasion”. Then would come the round of “date nights” to places where she would wear the coat. Then there would be that SIGH. You know sweetheart, it just doesn’t look right, as gorgeous as you look, taking you out in my old beat up (insert type of car the husband drove) rather than a chariot that matches your radiance. Sometimes they’d have to repeat the last line a few times, but typically it wouldn’t take long before they were out looking for that European Sports Car they were dreaming of. When the fever hit Mike, he was driving a Toyota mini-pickup truck with only 1 row of seats, so he added that his truck just wasn’t big enough for our family, since our second son had just been born. In his dreams, a Porsche 928 was just the ticket. After all that miniscule backseat that was too small for an adult, would be perfect for 2 little boys in their car seats, so it was a family car!! So he started looking. While I wasn’t actively looking, I actually came across one in Frankfort that I thought was perfect. Owned by a Porsche Dealers’ wife, it was not only US Specs, but California Emission Specs as well! Very well maintained (after all her husband was a dealer), low mileage (it wasn’t the only Porsche she owned). The only negative I could see was that someone had broken into the car once by breaking out the back window. While the window had been replaced, there was some staining on the leather interior from water damage that occurred before the window got replaced, but it was very minor damage. While I thought it was perfect, Mike decided it was too expensive, so instead one day he showed up with a “Gray” market Porsche that he had purchased off a GI in the area. With a Gray Market car, the car had been built to German specs, then over time had been “converted” to American specs. He justified the purchase by saying the one I had found was too expensive. Buying it without showing it to me first, he proudly drove up to the house and said he was going to take me for a ride! We didn’t even get a block away before he had to stop the car and let me out. The previous owner had been a heavy smoker and the residue in the car was making me sick. Painstakingly, Mike ended up taking the car’s interior apart and washing everything before I could ride in it. Not having had it checked out by a Porsche mechanic before he bought it, he decided that he ought to do that. (A lesson quickly learned was that only Porsche mechanics could work on a Porsche and those don’t come cheap). Picking up the car after it had been looked over (and finding out it had been in a couple accidents that the seller hadn’t mentioned to Mike and the VIN number indicated it was a year older then he was told the car was), Mike got in the Porsche to drive it home, with Brigham riding shotgun beside him. I was to follow in my car with Nathan. Backing out of the parking spot, Mike accidently put the Porsche in Drive and tapped the building. While neither the building or the car were damaged, with the whole family watching, Mike couldn’t pretend it hadn’t happened. At that point, I decided it was safe for me to drive it, since now, he’d had the first accident in it. Keeping up the “date nights”, one of the restaurants we loved to go to in Kaiserslautern, was a small Spanish restaurant. It not only had excellent food, but it had a very romantic atmosphere with private little candlelit alcove seating. One night, coming home very late from the restaurant in the Porsche, we stopped at a fairly deserted corner for a stoplight. As we sat there waiting for the light to change, a drunk started weaving her way across the street in front of us. She walked past the car, then right before the light changed, turned around and walked back, ending up right in front of us, when the light turned green. When Mike beeped the horn at her (a Porsche may look like a manly man’s car, but it’s horn is a tiny tinny little beep of a thing – more like the sound of a buzzing gnat than the honk of a goose). The woman looked around, and realized that something was beside her. She patted the hood. Then she laid down on the hood. Mike all the while beeping away at her. When the light changed to red, she finally got up and started to weave her way across the street again. Mike, breathing a sigh of relief, until she turned around and came back to lay back down on the hood right before the light changed again. Fit to be tied, Mike beeped the horn again, as it looked like she had passed out on the hood. Once more, she finally roused herself and started to move off as the light went red again, only to end up back on the hood when it went green. Finally, just as Mike was ready to get out of the car and try to talk to the drunk, (even though he wasn’t sure that she was coherent enough to understand him or what he should or even could do to get her to stay out of the street), a woman came out of a nearby apartment building, took the drunk by the arm and led her out of the street. As much as we wanted to get out of the car and thank our savior, we took the wiser course of getting out of there while we could. When we transferred back to the states, Mike brought the Porsche back with us to Miami, where we would sometimes drive the back roads in order to drive it as it wanted to be driven, since it really didn’t like American speed limits. The car really was lovely to drive. The only thing was, if you drove it, something seemed to go wrong. And if you let it sit in the garage, something seemed to go wrong. As a result, it spent a lot of time visiting its best friend, the Miami Porsche mechanic, who, because it was a “Gray Market” car, would have trouble getting parts for it. And of course, the parts would have to come from Germany which meant they took longer to get as well as costing more. Mike finally sold the Porsche before we transferred back to Germany. Before he told me how much the Porsche had cost us over the years we had owned it, he surprised me with a new Master Bedroom Suite of furniture.