Friday, October 25, 2013

Made in America

Made in America

October 25, 2013 at 4:39pm
For no particular reason the other day, while looking around at an interstate choked with Nissans and Toyotas and Hondas, I proclaimed loudly, “I am never buying a Japanese car.”
 
Why, my wife asked? (Apparently, I’d forgotten she was in the car).
 
“Are you kidding me?” I said. “My father fought against that country and died in World War 2. How could I in good conscience buy one of their cars?”
 
“Aren’t you taking your father to the doctor next week?” she asked.
 
“Well, yes. Men of that generation were a lot tougher than those today. You had to kill them more than once.”
 
This was in my mind because I had to buy a new car recently. My sporty 2000 beige Chevrolet Impala with the cracked windshield and functioning cassette deck was totaled in a hit-and-run accident. I settled on a nice new Buick, which I know takes my coolness factor from 1 to minus-20.
 
I decided early in the process that I would buy an American car. This commitment to the red, white and blue has not always served me well. I once bought a Dodge Shadow, which appears on just about every “Worst car of all time” list you can find. It had an engine built by Briggs and Stratton and was less reliable than George Jones in the '70s.
 
My father worked for many years at General Motors, so I’ve always been loyal to those brands. However, it is probably here that I should point out that two of my dad’s most recent vehicle purchases were a Dodge truck and a Ford sedan. So clearly, I’m the only one who cares.
 
Well, whatever. I yam what I yam.
 
As dad and I were driving up the interstate on the way to the doctor, I was expounding on my theory that it was a dishonor to his memory, even though he’s still alive, to buy a Japanese car. So the World War 2 veteran pointed to an Altima just head of us and said, “That’s a nice car.”
 
“Daddy!” I said. “That’s a Japanese car. I would never buy one of those.”
 
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Me either.” I also got him to agree that neither of us would ever buy any damn Korean car, though they never attacked us directly, and they came off as pretty decent people in all the M*A*S*H episodes I saw. Then I saw a nice Mercedes-Benz and said “Now, if I had the money, I wouldn’t mind one of those.”
 
“You know, the Germans were involved in World War 2, as well,” he said. Well, nobody’s perfect.
 
Now, I know plenty of people would accuse me of being small-minded or jingoistic or just behind-the-times when it comes to not buying foreign-made cars. Maybe so. Maybe I was too affected when I watched “Tora! Tora! Tora!” as a kid. But for me, I guess it will always be baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet – or at least a cool Buick.