Remembering the SAAB 96

SAAB automobile company has died - another victim of the recession. But instead of performing a requiem mass, I prefer to remember Judith's favorite car: The SAAB 96 light gray monster that nearly bankrupted us.

Not our SAAB, but one like it - same color - no roof rack.

Don't get me wrong. I loved the car too and we had many happy trips in New England.  It was the essence of a "touring car", comfortable to ride inside, with a feeling of safety that our previous VW bug "Xenophon" could not provide, and with a reliability that the Oldsmobile F85 station wagon "Hog" failed to deliver.  There were lots of stories associated with each of those other cars, but with the SAAB 96 - which we never named - it felt that we had finally "arrived" in a vehicle that reflected our burgeoning personalities as young, rebellious, serious students of life. It was a car designed by geeky Swedish engineers who seemed to understand that an automobile's personality was a gift to the drivers.

On one trip, down to North Carolina School of the Arts, we picked up Judith's sister Margot and her friend Tommy Hulse - who later earned fame playing the part of Mozart in "Amedeus". Tommy was so impressed with the car as we drove north. He watched me shift the car with its egg-beater gear shift that stuck out of the steering shaft - free wheeling, allowing us to coast down the hills, never using the clutch - and spontaneously proclaimed "What a wonderful car!"  Ah, music to our ears as proud owners, and it was true.  The insides were spartan but with just enough engineering panache' to make one feel like the car was designed for humans.  The front seats were angled slightly towards the center to provide more leg room.  There were little buckets clipped in the foot well for trash. The seats adjusted easily. The floor was absolutely flat.  The rear seats folded down so there was access to the trunk and more cargo room (we slept in the car overnight more than once on long trips - often while one or the other continued to drive). One felt you were driving a flying machine instead of a car.  Everything seemed to have a more reasonable design, including the hood, which opened backwards so that, if covered with snow, the load would fall off in front of the car when inspecting the engine.

And then there was its revolutionary front wheel drive: a novelty at the time.  We lived on a back road in Southern Vermont that was seldom plowed in the winter.  Driving down the mountainside after a snow the car cut a path like a duck through water, waves parting to either side in a spray of white. It's a memory I'll never forget.  Or when we visited a friend who lived in a holler in Kentucky: We had to drive up a creek in the middle of the night that was - in places - about a foot deep to reach her house. We were following penciled directions sent to us in a letter.  Judith was 8 months pregnant with our first child.  We paused, wondering if we'd made a mistake, since there were no signs on the road that now ended at the creek.  We both gulped, then drove on up the creek for several miles.  The SAAB 96 handled it remarkably well, spraying water along the sidewalls, never hesitating, the front wheels finding their track beneath the rushing stream.  Our friend later told us she'd lost a couple of cars in that creek. This knowledge affirmed our faith in our magnificent SAAB 96.

We'd purchased the car for $3700 with the trade-in of the Oldsmobile "Hog", whose transmission had failed and whose floor boards had rusted through in Vermont.   We'd bought the SAAB back in Munster, Indiana from the only SAAB dealer in the state.  (The Hog was still in his used car lot five years later when we passed by.)  It was the car of our dreams and we were convinced that it would be the last car we would ever buy.

Of course, we were naive', both 22, and we thought of cars not as machines but as inventions designed for the ages. We also bought a heavy-duty steel roof-top cargo basket that was our best investment. (Great for hauling firewood). We also ended up carrying twenty feet of logging chain and a ten gauge shotgun (inherited from Judith's father) in the compartment under the back seat.  And some metric wrenches and a couple of screw drivers in the pouch that was designed for the wheel jack.  These were essentials for us during that time living in rural Vermont while we attended college.  And we used them all.

As luck would have it, Indiana also killed the SAAB 96. After college we moved to Washington, DC, and then to Northern Indiana to live on a little farm.  The only mechanic in LaPorte, Indiana who would work on it was employed at the local tractor dealership outside of town.  The odd little problems that a car develops over time started to create serious difficulties for us with a new baby - such as the time that the carburetor float developed a pin hole and would fill with gas and then choke out the engine.  Ah, the humiliation of calling my father in the middle of the night to come haul us home - baby wailing in the back seat. My dad never said a mean word about the car, but there was a sadness in his eyes as he hooked the logging chain to the undercarriage and dragged us back to the farm.  It took the tractor mechanic more than a week to figure out what was causing the problem and he was ecstatic that he'd diagnosed it and fixed it so easily. He was like a kid who had worked on Lionel electric train sets all his life, and had suddenly been promoted to Swedish Rocket Engineer. 

The mechanic was so interested in the car that he special-ordered the factory manual for tuning the engine.  Unfortunately, all the measurements were metric and the manual was in Swedish, so that when he adjusted the valves, he kept tightening them too much, and we went through a series of burned valves before I realized what his problem was.  The SAAB 96 -- our dream car - "The Last Car We Would Ever Own" - was going to achieve its title simply because - if we didn't do something soon -- it would bankrupt us with repairs.

Eventually we were forced to trade it in for a new VW Rabbit - a mistake, but one that we lived with until it rusted out through the floor boards.  It was a sad day to say goodbye to the SAAB 96 in South Bend, Indiana.  Then, about two years later, I remembered that I'd left a 10 gauge shotgun under the rear seat along with the logging chain.  I never forgave myself and I wondered if it were still there, hidden out of sight from its new (imagined) owner.

The SAAB 96 was a great car for a young family: we'd hauled trailers with it, dragged birch logs down the icy roads for firewood, slept in the back during cross-country trips, crashed it at 40 miles per hour without injuring any passengers, and generally learned a lot about owning cars.  Judith still remembers it with fondness and pride.   

We've long ago stopped seeing old SAABs of that era here in California. There were never that many out here anyway.  The later models held no interest for us.  They cost far too much, and seemed to be designed for yuppies.  They were too plush, too artificially "modern".  By comparison, the SAAB 96 was like a car that one wanted to hand down to your children and your children's children.  It wasn't "retro" because it was exactly what it meant to be: basic transportation designed with a utilitarian bent for practical people.

Since the SAAB days we've owned a lot of cars: 3 VW bugs, 2 VW vans, a VW Rabbit, a Datsun station wagon, an old MGB, a Honda CIVIC, a Mercury minivan, an Isuzu Trooper, a couple of Toyto Corollas, two Toyoto Prius, and one leased Subaru Outback. And I've probably missed remembering at least one more.  Just listing out all the cars leaves me with  a sense of guilt for buying so many vehicles (imagine the carbon we've pumped into the air over the years).  But we've always bought "used", and I suppose that's some indication of our environmental consciences and our financial priorities.

Still, I have these dreams - nighttime revelries actually - of returning to my parents' two garage.  In this dream I open the door and discover all the cars that I and my family have ever owned.  They're all jammed in there somehow, as the garage extends mystically back into an ever deepening space.  Every car.  Chryslers, and Dodges, and Oldsmobiles, and Buicks, and more modern vehicles, parked side by side.  The smell of engines, and the feel of cold enameled metal penetrates my senses as I slip sideways between their silent hulks.

And in this dream I always head over to the little light gray SAAB 96.  It's exactly as I remember it, complete with the dented front fender and the rear bumper that is slightly out of alignment from dragging a ten foot long birch log along the ice.

I slip behind the wheel, and somehow manipulate it out of the garage.  I start down the road, convincing myself that the burned out valve that has left the car with such poor acceleration and compression, can be fixed once and for all.

And then, I pull the car over to the side of the road, lower the back seat, and take a nap as the sun beams through the rear bubble windows, with the leaves of trees swaying above my head.  I don't nap long.  Just a little cat nap, the smell of the seats mixing with the smell of autumn that streams through the cantered  back side windows.

And then something occurs to me.  Is the ten gauge shot gun still under the rear compartment?

I wonder.

I get out of the car and start to lift the rear seat to see.

But then I wake up.

RIP SAAB.

How to overcome your anxiety about the long wait for Peace Corps

I continue to get messages from other Peace Corps applicants who are waiting for their formal invitations to serve. Everyone asks the question - since our wait has been difficult - for our most current status. Each time I wish I could respond "It's a GO!" But not yet.

We continue to check with the placement officer about once a month. The last time we checked was at the beginning of November when she wrote back the following:

I wanted to just give you an update on the medical approvals I’ve requested. I sent for medical approval for the eight remaining programs to which you could serve as a couple for the 2012 year. I’ve gotten three negative responses back so far. We have given the remaining five programs a reminder to give us their responses soon. I will let you know as soon as I hear back from the remaining countries. Thank you for the amazing amount of patience you have exhibited in waiting for your placement. I am keeping my fingers crossed that we will have some good news from the remaining five programs. Sincerely, (name not posted)

The issue again seems to be medical approval, but - from our perspective - it's difficult to understand what's holding the assignments up. But we've got to trust that the people in the field are more knowledgeable that we, and keep our fingers lightly crossed.

So how are we managing the wait? Our strategy is to continue to engage the placement officer by trying to keep our profiles in front of her. So I wrote back to her the following:

Thanks for this update. We are keeping our fingers crossed that at least one of the five remaining programs will accept us. It's been a long road, but I sincerely appreciate that you're pushing the portfolios out to prospective programs.

Our daughter returns home (permanently?) Monday after 3 1/2 years working in Cambodia, with her new, 9 month old baby. That's a great Turkey-day treat.

So that will keep our minds and bodies busy while we await the outcome of Peace Corps placement process.

In the meantime, I'm continuing to work on projects for our son's NGO, Human Translation. org. As you probably know, Northern Cambodia is really suffering from the flooding that occurred several months ago: Crops gone, roads lost, live stock decimated. My son has started a new relief fund, and we're managing the fund-raising. So far, we've raised about $25 K. He'll be returning to Siem Reap where his naturalized Cambodian NGO called Community Translation Organization (CTO), is trying to mount the relief effort. He'll be there during the month of December before returning to the states. The good news is that the 600 hectare reservoir significantly helped mitigate the flooding in the villages of Balangk where the organization is working. Unfortunately, two of the six canals that were dug from the reservoir collapsed during the flooding, but as the water recedes, they can be rebuilt by hand and there's a possibility that - with the right instruction - the villagers will be able to "dry farm" another crop of rice in the next few months. CTO has several grants from Australia Aid and the UN's work for food projects. So, with some more hard work, I think the villagers will make it through. But not unscathed. Part of the relief fund will be spent on restoring clean water and sanitation. It's a mess.


So, while we're waiting for PC's determination of a placement, we're relatively busy here. Judith is continuing to teach at a local college, and they've offered her another term, and I have financial work coming in too. So we're not sitting on our hands. Nonetheless, we're extremely hopeful that PC will find a place for us. We both feel that the skills we will learn will substantially help us achieve our own goals, and I'm confident that we have something to offer, where ever PC might send us.

Our health continues to be very good and our spirits could not be stronger.
We both wish you a Happy Thanksgiving. And thank you for your work on our behalf.

Sincerely, Tom

So is this strategy working? Well, we still have no more news, but I did receive the following back from the placement officer last week:

Tom it is great to hear you are both keeping busy. I’m very glad you and your family are able to help with relief efforts in Cambodia. Your attached photo is a real eye-opening---I can almost imagine the difficulty of living in such a situation.Thank you for you the update. I will be in contact with new information as soon as I can.

And why are we continuing to push on Peace Corps placement when we have this other NGO to occupy us?

The answer is pretty simple: Peace Corps offers a chance to learn more, to do more, and to build our skills in this important area of service. At the same time, it's just one avenue of service. And if one avenue becomes blocked, it's important to us to seek others. It's like any job that needs doing: you persevere until you find the path that works. There's no romance about it. You just do it.

One of my favorite "old" movies that we recently watched was 1958 production of "The Inn of the Sixth Happiness" with Ingrid Bergman. No doubt it seems terribly romantic - this woman applies to work as a missionary and is rejected over and over again. The missionary stuff doesn't attract me, but the real-life personage of Gladys Aylward is inspiring. She's somebody who wouldn't take "No" for an answer.

I have no inclination to be a missionary, but I do have a desire to make a difference in some of the places where I know my skills can be of use.

Meanwhile, we're settling in now with our daughter and her significant other and her baby, who have just returned from Cambodia after almost four years. Our son Tobias was here too, as well as our son Dagan with his two boys. It was the first time in a long time that we were all on the same continent, in the same country, in the same town, in the same house, at the same time. It was an overwhelming experience - chaotic, exhausting, and terrible fun. Who knows how many of these will be left to us?

We sat around the table, made a toast to our recently departed cat Gus, and drank a bottle of 1981 Robert Mondavi Cab Reserve that I'd been saving for a special occassion since the time I worked there. (And it was still drinkable after 30 years.) A good time was had by all, and it was a Thanksgiving to be remembered.

Status on Peace Corps - October 17th, 2011

Thanks to those who send their encouragement as we await Peace Corps placement. This is an update of that process.

What's happened since the last post
At the most practical level, nothing has transpired: We still are awaiting for a placement.
But behind the scenes there has been activity at the DC headquarters, so our hopes have not been dashed, and we're still getting encouragement (from you and from PC).

Since our last posting we've sent emails to our placement person at PC.  The temptation, at this juncture, is the tap our foot with our hands on our hips and chide her with questions like "What's taking so long? ! ?."  In fact, many of our local friends roll their eyes at the delays.

But we have cordially requested explanations, and then when the answers we received didn't exactly match what we understood to be happening, we dug deeper (and deeper) to try to figure out what went awry. 

For instance, last time around (when they were placing couples) they submitted our portfolios to a number of programs in North Africa.  But there was something in our medical profiles that wasn't accurate.  In my case, it was a very slight allergy to certain kinds of sea foods.  In Judith's case, it was a limitation in the weight she could lift (nothing over 25 pounds).  As a result, (we believe) the portfolios were returned with a rejection for placement by these programs.

But the placement officer had no visibility into why we were rejected, other than a sort of blanket "because of medical restrictions."  She had no visibility, even, of what was in our medical portfolios.  And of course, because we also have no visibility into their records, we were really at the mercy of whatever the medical sector of PC had written about us.

So we went back to the PC evaluation nurse, got her on the phone, and "cordially" argued that there was something amiss. 

Poor Nurse!  We've spent so many phone calls with her, trying to get past the obstacles that she saw in our medical evaluations.  But, because we were pleasant - but persistent and insistent - she had begun to listen to us.  We'd overcome a number of these obstacles in the past, and each time she seemed just at thrilled as we were that our health "on paper" seemed to be "improving".  So, this time, she said point-blank, that probably the reason our portfolios were being rejected by the programs was NOT my wife's restrictions, but my incredibly minor food allergy to certain shellfish.

So, the long and the short of it is that I had to explain to her that I never died from this allergy, but merely had the usual problems people do when they eat something that their body doesn't like.  And since, in Cambodia and Laos, I've eaten things that Poor Nurse would probably not even consider as food (frogs, red ants, crickets, snakes, pre-historic-looking bar fish that stared at me with jaws filled with a mouth full of sharp teeth, etc.) and suffered only from the usual maladies of "bodia-belly" and other lower intestinal parasites, I actually laughed over the phone at her deep and sincere concern.  And I realized that absolute honesty on the medical evaluation forms is unquestionably a hazard if one really wants to go into PC. 

Fortunately, Poor (lovely) Nurse said "Oh! Well, I'll remove that restriction from your records!" 

Wow!  I felt like Kafka, in "The Castle", getting permission to move into the next waiting room. A victory! "I really am NOT a crippled, decrepit, lunatic with grandiose dreams of serving in Peace Corps. I'm just a healthy world traveler with something to offer!"

So Lovely (but previously misunderstanding) Nurse then went down through our entire medical records and said she would consider removing all restrictions.  It was like listening to a recalcitrant J. Edgar Hoover suddenly turning into Bobby Kennedy over the phone.

And I realized that she must have the most thankless job in Washington, DC: A job of rejecting hundreds (thousands?) of people who sincerely want to serve, but are not physically up to the challenge.  Her voice softened over the phone. Her affect of "sympathetic sternness" shifted in key, and it actually seemed as though she were thrilled to "white out" those restrictions.  A thankless job, being Nurse. How many arguments has she gotten into over the phone? How many people has she had to disappoint over her years as PC Nurse?  How many people have hung up on her "Bang!" after they lost their appeals?  What a thankless job!

So I said, in my most sincere voice, with a light ironic laugh, "Thankyou!  I really appreciate your special effort on our behalf."

And she said, quite simply, "You're very welcome.  I KNOW they want to place you. You had a placement, but the program got canceled.  I KNOW they are trying to figure it out.  You have real skills that can be useful!"

Wow! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU I was thinking.

Kafka, eat your hear out!

So we hung up the phone.  And waited. And waited. And waited.

Then last month, as we were returning from a trip from Colorado, in the waiting area between flights, I got a brief email on my cell phone from the placement officer.  A couple who had been assigned to Central Asia had suddenly dropped out of placement.  "Would you be interested?  You'd leave in January or February! Can't guarantee anything. Have to send them your records. What do you think?"

Would we be interested? WOULD WE BE INTERESTED? I immediately key-in "Yes! Fingers Crossed! Hope to hear from you soon!"  And then Judith and I sat in our cramped airline seats, hoping the answer would be "Go!" and what we would Skype to our daughter in Cambodia who is returning home in November "You'll have the whole house to yourself!"  And trying to remember which "stan" is in Central Asia where the Peace Corps has projects.  And trying to keep our enthusiasm under control.

A couple of days passed.  The email was received.  "No! For medical reasons!"

Whose medical reasons?  What happened?  Why - if our medical portfolios have been purged of restrictions - have our portfolios been rejected?  The placement officer could not tell us.  But, she said, the next round of placements will begin in Jan. 

So that's where we are now.  We've made progress! But only to the next room within the Castle. 

Are we disappointed?  Yes! We never thought that trying to get into Peace Corps would be a career path, but here we are. 

Are we discouraged?

No! This is not a whim for us. This is a very strong desire for both of us.  A kind of calling. And maybe with some added fortitude we'll make it yet.

Besides, maybe it's time to talk to my congressman again.

Peace Corps Status - An update in August of 2011

A reader is interested in our progress with Peace Corps.  Today I'm writing from our house in St. Helena.  We are still awaiting an assignment - the "invitation" in Peace Corps parlance.
While we were in Thailand we finally received our medical clearance, and conducted our "placement" interview over Skype. The placement officer said that we would probably receive our placement invitation in May. We're still waiting.

The process of clearing the medical evaluations was particularly harrowing. First I was rejected because of hypertension. The nurse was kind in her call, but said my blood pressure levels were not within their guidelines.  She said I could reapply after it was controlled for a particular period of time.  So I returned to my doctor and told him of the problem.  He said "But your hypertension is under control."  He pointed to the last three readings conducted by his office, and though they were not within the levels PC had indicated, he showed me that, for a person of my age with my history, I was within the recommended guidelines of the medical establishment.  I asked him if he'd write a letter to that effect, which he gladly did. I was extremely grateful.  I then sent the letter onto PC as a fax (they don't recommend sending things by mail) and asked - cordially - for their reconsideration.  After several weeks, on Xmas Eve, of last year, the nurse called me up and said they would give me medical clearance.  We were ecstatic, of course.

We had planned a trip to Thailand and Cambodia in February to attend the birth of our daughter's first child, and we were looking forward to the Spring, when we anticipated that we would receive an invitation. Unfortunately, several weeks before we left, Judith received a call from the PC nurse.  Unfortunately, she said, Judith's back condition would prevent them from giving medical clearance. They were afraid that she would not be able to handle squat toilets or the rigors of possible assignment in a rural country with few medical facilities.  Judith was, naturally, disappointed and angry - not because she didn't believe they were concerned, but because they had misunderstood her physical capabilities.

Consequently, we both were now rejected, and it also made me angry and defiant.  As luck would have it, our son Tobias had been befriended by the former head of Peace Corps in Asia, and he graciously introduced us to him and his lovely wife.  We exchanged a few stories about our various histories and travels, and then I asked him if he any suggestions to overcome this obvious bureaucratic roadblock.  He said it might be a good idea to contact our congressman, Mike Thompson, and ask him to have his office "monitor" our process.  That's what we did.  We also went to two back specialists to confirm that there was no medical necessity for Peace Corps to be concerned, and forwarded letters from them as well. 

By the time we arrived in Bangkok on our visit, we'd received an email telling us that we had then been medically cleared for service.  We then arranged to have our placement interview with the Peace Corps placement officer while we were in Bangkok - awaiting our granddaughter's birth - over Skype.  The placement interview went fine, and we were told that we'd probably receive our invitation to PC sometime in May.

When May rolled around and we had still not received the invitation, I contacted the placement officer via email to check our status. Were we going to receive an invitation? Or had something else created a roadblock?

She wrote back that indeed they had found an assignment for us. But unfortunately, budgetary restraints had forced PC to cancel that particular program.  All assignments for the Summer and Fall had been made. The soonest we might expect a possible invitation would be January of 2012.

So that's the current situation.  At this juncture we're not certain if we would accept an invitation after such a long trial.  We're not certain because it may be that the window of opportunity in our lives to do PC has begun to close.  I'm still very interested, as is Judith, but my business is starting to move again with many commitments, our daughter is returning from Cambodia with her new baby, and our experience with the bureaucracy has been so very mixed. 

Is agism the cause of these roadblocks? It makes one wonder. We knew the road would be long and difficult - and for our age, perhaps even more difficult than the assignments. But....
We'll see.

Fish at Elk Cove