Uphill, downhill: Betsy won’t go

A fter at least 10 years of family service, our beloved 1981 Mercedes 240D diesel sedan finally earned a family name.
My husband Jerry’s family had a Chevy named Betsy, and my mother’s family had a Haynes, complete with running boards and rumble seats, affectionately called Betsy. We resisted copycatting our parents, but finally gave in because the Mercedes acquired the moniker in her own right.
Several years ago, we drove into what was then Hunter Motors (now Kovacs) to inquire about fixing our rather aged Volvo, and there was this shiny black old girl with black leather seats parked awkwardly in the sales lot and looking somewhat lonely. While she was Vic Hunter’s personal car at the moment, he said, “Everything is for sale.” And the price was right.
After we purchased this gorgeous old loyal vehicle, my brother, the professor, informed me that Hitler drove a black Mercedes and that the color was reserved for his lieutenants. Yipes! As someone who had long boycotted German cars because of the atrocities against Jews, and who had just succumbed to the sensuous temptations of a Lady Mercedes, that was a shocker.
Betsy took us back and forth to British Columbia several times so that we could visit Jerry’s older kids and their families and teach American politics and government at the University of British Columbia and University of Victoria. At times we would find ourselves poking along in the far right lane, along with vintage Volkswagen buses, slowly climbing the Siskiyou Mountains or winding our way through Oregon and Washington with more modern cars whizzing past us. But who cared? It was great fun. Even if the radio got only one station.
And then there was the first night we taught at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, when snow, thunder and lightening socked in the campus during our evening class. During the break, some students habitually visited the computer lab to catch up on news, and this night they raced back to say campus was being closed and the last bus out would be at 9 p.m.
Everyone headed for their car or bus, and trusty-yet-unnamed Betsy gamely followed that last bus out, with her novice snow driver at the wheel, and glided us along the bus’s tracks to downtown Vancouver and relative warmth and safety.
On another adventure through Oregon, Washington and British Columbia, we were working on the first edition of our guidebook, “Northwest Wine Country – Wine’s New Frontier.” Somewhere around Walla Walla, Wash., the radio conked out completely. There’s a lot of space out there between Walla Walla and the rest of civilization.
The only cassettes we had with us were Jerry’s Jimmy Buffet tapes, which meant the only music or other sound that we had to drown out the loud lawnmower-like aging Mercedes engine was Jimmy Buffet. That would be about 2,000 more miles of the man from Margaritaville. Back in Sonoma, we found the radio’s tiny problem was that so much dust from rural wineries’ rocky driveways had packed the aerial shaft that the aerial wouldn’t go up.
Then one day I was following a colleague up the Oakland hills to Skyline High School because we were working on a U.C. Berkeley project to bring government into Oakland schools, and suddenly Betsy stopped, cold. She refused to shift, and she refused to go. Something was up, and she didn’t like it. That “thing” that was up seemed to be the hill, and she has refused to go up them ever since.
We took our Mercedes to a local “expert,” spent $1,200 to get it fixed, and she still wouldn’t cooperate. So we finally found a used Volvo that weekend at the Ford dealership, bought it, and took off  two days later for British Columbia.
Betsy’s temper tantrum continues until this day, but we respect her wishes. Jerry and I gladly limit her range to the flatlands of Sonoma, and she gladly serves as our lady “truck” for nursery and dump trips.
Betsy, we love you dearly.