wednesday night, walt handed me the paper and asked me to call about a car being advertised in the classifieds. twenty minutes later we were in the home of the seller looking at a beautifully preserved european auto. marty kicked the tires, drove it around and listened to the motor. i confirmed that the rear windows went all the way down, played with the dual sunroof and gauged what the instrument panel would look like at night.

thursday morning, marty and i stopped by our local garage to talk about the car with our mechanic, gleb. gleb asked a few questions about it (i.e. make, miles, year) which marty readily answered. he then looked at me and wanting to contribute to the conversation, i added that the sunroof was very cool and had this button which made it go this way and that. he looked at marty who hung her head in a disapproving manner and they resumed their discussion as if i wasn?t there.

regardless of their ill-appreciation for the finer points of a classic car, i spent thirty minutes opening and closing the fore-mentioned sunroof on saturday.