It’s A Wonderful Life

$10.25

By Gunnar Heinrich

YOU know the deal.

Your girlfriend wants to see the tree at Rockefeller Center and it’s the last weekend before Christmas that you get to haul ass into the City to check it out. Granted, year after year one seven-story Norway Spruce starts to blend with the next, but that’s neither here nor there.

It’s the principle.

So, on principle, you make your way to the nearest station. And that’s where your fun begins…

It being one day following a Nor’easter, you figure your best bet is to park ‘n ride the train into town. It’s one of the few times you can actually set aside the mantle of being a committed gear head and embrace the freedom from icy roads and holiday traffic that public rail provides.

Seem simple enough?

Well, the rest of Connecticut has the same idea.

No aparcamiento to be found within reasonable distance of New Haven’s Union Station. You find a spot three quarters of a mile away and hoof it through ankle deep snow to get to the train.

That’d be a cheery enough activity, but the windchill’s 10 degrees Fahrenheit and you make the train with one slippery minute to spare.

And you stay onboard for nearly two hours.

In that time, you take account that your train car has no heat or spare seats. You keep breathing in a molten stench coming from the bathroom that starts to smell strangely sweet while listening to a nearby debate on the merits of gastroplasty (stomach stapling).

You’ve made it to Grand Central in midtown Manhattan just in time to keep yourself from totally losing that holiday spirit.

You’re in New York. It’s a wonderful life!

Mind you, the weather hasn’t gotten any warmer and, just to remind, this is New York mere days before Christmas. So, like the Parisians in August, the majority of New Yorkers have fled for the hills long before you and a million other tourists arrive on scene.

This being a holiday themed visit and Rockefeller Center taking on a Times Square-like-center-of-the-universe role in the run up to the holiday, everyone and their grandmother’s second cousin is there, and also on the other side of Fifth Avenue at St. Pat’s, and in front of the window displays at Saks.

On principle, you must take turns seeing each up close and very personal.

So you growl and hack your way through the hordes with the two blunt ice mallets that were once your hands.

Your feet, behaving like wayward Martian rovers, stopped transmitting signals back to the motherboard five blocks back. You could complain of the biting cold and the ugly crowds.

So you do.

This puts you at immediate odds with your girlfriend, who, despite these merry obstacles is trying her damndest to make the best of it - jerk.

You both retreat to the comforting food and shelter of a nearby diner. The waiter takes pity on you and you sniff and snivle over hot chocolate and french fries. Your feet are making up for lost signal time by screaming ephithets at home base.

Technically, between your visit to the J&R shop on Fifth, Rockefeller Center, St. Patrick’s, a romp through Saks, and dinner at a diner somewhere between Lex. and East-Whatchakatella, you’ve spent less time in New York than you have traveling to New York.

Fine by you!

You beat pavement back towards Grand Central. A new snow squal makes the temperature two degrees milder and reminds you that Gotham can be pretty in the winter, after all. But you’re not staying one minute longer.

No, you’re going to head to Hudson News and grab the first British car mag that looks cool off the shelf and spend the whole train ride back reading it. Splendid!

So, what are our choices?

CAR? Always tempting, but no. Something different. Top Gear? Nah. Classic Car? Nothing good on the cover. Ah ha! Mercedes Enthusiast. Now we’re talkin’.

And look! They have a feature article on your beloved 560SEL! It is a wonderful life!

Unblinking you slap down a ten dollar bill and a quarter and make off with your prize. Surely, it’s one of those mags that you’re destined to save forever and a day. The trip was worth it if only for this one silly mag featuring a old three-box sedan for which you have undying ardor.

Find a spot on the train. Kiss your girlfriend to make sure she knows that you still love her even though your attention’s going to be fixed on a few pages for the next hour (oh, at least!)

Dive in.

Eleven minutes later…

The conductor’s already come by. You’re past the 125th Street stop. New York’s disappearing behind you. You’re done reading the article on the 560SEL.

You decide that what you’ve read is complete and total rubbish! You realize that you’d have been better taking the “tenner” plus quarter you paid for this overpriced loo paper and have made money confetti in advance for New Year’s!

Actually the feature wasn’t that bad. It just didn’t live up to inflated expectations.

From your sour trip, you wanted needed an Ace. This was to be the cure to your bad day – an article that shared your passion with a car so mighty, so technically brilliant, so Grand that the author wouldn’t have been able to help himself but to write in prosaic terms about your dream on wheels.

But, sadly, it was the standard write up with the typical platitudes: “iron fist in a velvet glove;” “so ahead of its time;” “reaffirming Mercedes’ ‘best car in the world’ reputation.”

Yawn.

It didn’t help that the example subject euro-spec 560SEL had a pensioner’s pale blue exterior on a weathered dark blue interior. Make matters worse, the mag’s shooters took the car out back behind some weedy chicken shed in the British midlands.

Sigh. You’re missing that $10.25, about now.

But hey, cheer up. It’s Christmas! And you know what?

It’s a wonderful life. In principle.

[Linked: Mercedes Enthusiast]