Classic car, classic memory (5/26/04)

An old friend and I are looking at a 1958 Packard at the cruise-in at the Jay County Courthouse on Saturday evening, and suddenly I'm swept away.

The Packard, which could be a Studebaker in all ways except the nameplate, has brought back a flood of memories.

In an instant, I'm in a coastal city in The Netherlands. It's 1969, and I'm rambling around the town with a Dutch girl named Daniella. We'd met a couple of weeks earlier at a campground and had agreed to meet in her hometown. A few weeks later, we'd meet again in Sweden at the home of some of her friends.

By now, we have sorted out all the awkwardness that comes with relationships between males and females in their 20s. We've figured out that we wanted to be friends and had put all that other stuff behind us.

What we hadn't resolved was her streak of anti-Americanism. It's a common trait in Europe and much of the rest of the world, for that matter. And if you travel enough, you have to learn to deal with it.

Keep in mind that this was 1969. The Vietnam War was going full tilt. Friends and classmates were at risk; some were dying. Carrying a student deferment, like any other male in college, I was struggling to figure out what was right and what was wrong in American foreign policy. I didn't much like what I saw, and I'd been critical at home.

But there's a world of difference between an American at home and American abroad.

Finding myself surrounded by America-bashing young Europeans, I'd been in the odd and sometimes uncomfortable position of defending my country's policies even when I didn't agree with those policies.

And where my young Dutch friend was concerned, it wasn't just American foreign policy that stunk, it was everything about the country.

Our literature, she said, was vapid. Our art, she said, was junk. Our music wasn't worth bothering about.

That's overstating things, but you get the point.

I argued for our literature and scored a few points with Hemingway.

I argued for our art and lost.

I argued for our music, and she confessed that she was a fan of rock and roll.

Still, as we wandered the streets of her hometown that night, I found myself on the defensive.

Finally, we found ourselves at the edge of a city square. On the opposite side, parked under a streetlamp, there was a gorgeous car.

"Look at that," Daniella said. "That's what I'm talking about when it comes to European design and aesthetics. That car could not have been designed in America." (Note that this is a reconstructed quote from 35 years ago. Trust an old guy's memory.)

I looked at the car.

And I smiled.

There, across the square, was a Studebaker. It was a Gran Turismo Hawk, as I recall, not too different from the one Ed Ewry had owned next door when I was growing up.

"That's American," I said. "And that's made in Indiana."

There's nothing like a beautifully sculpted Studebaker to stifle European anti-Americanism. My young Dutch friend put all of her arguments on hold.

And there's nothing quite like a 1958 Packard at the courthouse cruise-in to pull a memory like that out of the back recesses of the brain.

My old friend was more interested in the car in front of him Saturday than the story I was rambling about. But he was too polite to admit it.

That's OK.

Daniella got the point.[[In-content Ad]]