Witches used to have brooms, now they drive Opels.
That’s what was written on the back window of an Opel today as I drove to Edeka as usual to complete my wheat roll ritual. Oh, I shouldn’t have told the two sisters my story, now our morning conversation has gone completely off the rails. „Two wheat rolls and a large grain roll, please. „Yes, sure, something lighter as usual, I’ll look for it,“ she says before I can ask for it. Because of the extra grain roll for €1.45, the other one in the back asks, „Oh, not the usual order today?“ And then they smile at me, as if they really enjoy interrupting my established routine, which is very difficult now. The melody too, all gone. „You’ve never needed a receipt before, until next tiiiiime!“.
But that saying reminded me of the good old days. My father had a light blue Opel Kadett LS Coupe from 1968, a dream with 45 hp. With 60000km on the clock, it was sold in 1978, it had a rust spot on the fender. There were several coupe versions of the Kadett, the one on the photo, the one I mean, the most beautiful and most American of all. A crazy number of variations. The blue in the photo is a bit faded after 56 years, it was a very bright light blue. Then came a Rekord in metallic green with 100 hp, a 2.0S, so with the carburetor engine, it ran well, my old father soon stopped driving, I had to do it because my mother couldn’t. As a passenger she could do everything, really everything. Then I put an original „E“ from the injection engine behind the „S“, which made it a little faster on the highway, and that was the only tuning of my life. As I like to say: You can’t go from the Black Forest to the Baltic Sea today in 6 hours with 100 hp. We bought red overalls and looked like a Ferrari service crew, but it was an Opel. At a gas station we were asked to clean the windshield of another car, nice try. I’ve told you this before, but you don’t remember anyway.
I always remember Opel, they used to sell more cars than Volkswagen, but then they started making Golfs and hit back with a 7 iron. I had a very nice colleague who was very sporty, very funny, very fair, very demanding, very competent, so he was almost like me. He flipped out when someone called his new Opel „Astra“ a Opel „Kadett“, he didn’t like that. A „Kadett“ is an old model from the 60s, you know? But in an A-level exam, he once answered the question „Can I sit here?“ to a student who was visibly nervous when she came into the cold exam room „This is where we ask the questions“. Sure, I had to bite my pencil, but the student was not amused. From that day on, I called his „Astra“ just „Kadett“.
„Your Kadett is far away today!“
„Are you going on vacation by train or with your Kadett?“
It was just for her.
