Time for Another Tale From the Past: Part I of the Great Black Car Story

Many of you read and marveled at the wonder that is the Artful Mom. When I was thinking about that story, I started reminiscing about something else, an inanimate object for which I have an enormous amount of nostalgic affection. That object would be the first car purchased by the Artful Parents. To understand the hows and whys of how the Artful Parents ended up with the MOST AWESOME CAR, you have to understand that the Artful Dad was, and is, a car nut. He LOVES cars, and his love of cars is something that he has passed on to both the Artful Brother and myself. When AD and AM first arrived on these shores, their only objective was to save money so that they could return to India and open up their own clinic. Part of their salary, however, was going to pay off their flight here + room + board, and back then, foreign medical grads in Baltimore did not get paid a lot. Not at ALL. The AM, however, was, and is, a master of saving money. After scrimping, saving, and going without, she was able to save out of their meager paychecks $1000, a pretty nice sum of money in those days. She was so proud of herself. They had started their nest egg, and they would be independent before long.

Ahh...but here is where the Artful Dad made what at the time could have been a marriage-dissolving decision but what instead ended up as the best purchase he ever made. While roaming around the Baltimore suburbs, he happened to walk by a Mercedes dealership. Now, Mercedes was not the status symbol that it is today. Also, unlike today, Mercedes Benz automobiles were renown for their high quality. They were veritable TANKS. My father and mother had discussed purchasing one and having it shipped back to India when the time came to leave. Well...maybe discussed is the wrong word. Dad brought it up, and Mom said she would think about it. Well, that was all the Artful Dad needed to hear. In his mind, since Mom never said "no", she said "yes" (a mistake that she has never again made to this day). The day that Mom was celebrating having her first $1000 in the bank account, Dad was at R & H Motor Cars in Owings Mills, Maryland putting that same $1000 down as a down payment on the new member of the family. It was gorgeous. It was black. It had tailfins. It was all metal (no plastic on this puppy). There was no air conditioning either, and it was a diesel. It was a 1967 Mercedes Benz 200D.

Gorgeous, isn't it? The picture really does not do justice to what a behemoth this car was on the road. This was a BIG CAR. It had the most ingenious center console, a speedometer that was a mercury-like gauge that would change from yellow to red through different transitions that indicated when you needed to shift gears. It was a diesel too, so there was a lot of power. The AD purchased the car, and immediately he drove to the Maryland Department of Motor Vehicles to..ah..get his driver's license. The Artful Mom still tells the story of when he pulled up in his prize. She looked at it and immediately ran into their apartment crying. Poor Mom. All of her money gone. In her mind, the AD had not even asked her. Slowly, she started coming around-especially after Dad took her for a spin. You see, this was Dad's first car ever. He wanted to be able to take care of his wife and family, and in Baltimore, it was tough to get around solely on public transportation. The car was their ticket to freedom.

But why does a car, to this day, still hold such a very special place in the hearts of me and my family? What happened to the car? Are there any adventures to be told that occurred in the car? Tune in and find out in my next post...