xoxo

Good Morning.

Cars are second only to houses as objects of affection other than people. Human beings of all intelligence levels are perfectly capable of falling in love with a car or a house and they

can also end up wishing they'd never met either. This is because a car or a house can be

attractive at first blush and then seem ugly. A car or a house can also behave atrociously.

The first car I remember was a 1941 dark green Chevy sedan. It had brown cloth upholstery

that smelled like a musty closet. The heat didn't work too well, necessitating the use of a large brown throw to cover the legs of the passengers in the back seat during the winter. There was, of course, no air-conditioning. The car belonged to a house that was brown with cream trim. Brown was apparently a popular color at the time because my father often wore a brown suit to work and painted the house brown with a man named George. The house was built in 1911 and had a big front porch and a nice, two-car garage with fancy windows for the car. The house also had hardwood floors, corner cabinets in the dining room, a fireplace, bookcases, and a bay window in the living room and a functional kitchen with gray linoleum floors and some kind of swirly black material on the counter. None of it mattered. The food that came out of the kitchen was great and everyone got along well. The car went cool places like to the lake or the shore in the summer and the ski slopes in the winter. It was replaced in 1952 by a Pontiac station wagon that was gray with something that looked like wood but wasn't. The car was serviceable but boring. Four years later, a tomato-soup colored Ford station wagon with the fake wood came to live with us, but it wasn't boring. It was extremely noticeable, being tomato-soup red and all, and I loved it dearly, although a classmate and her family had the exact same car and that annoyed me.

I have lived in two Colonials, and I don't like them as much as I should, given my New England

background. You walk in the door and there's a staircase in your face. They always have a fireplace which is good and a formal dining room, but everyone is scrunched up in bedrooms off a center space upstairs. I once lived in a cookie cutter brick ranch in the south and felt, well,

like a cookie, a very plain one. I also lived in two stucco houses, both with serious flaws, like not enough bathrooms and small kitchens, but the woodwork was nice. The cars that complemented those houses were a large green thing the size of a boat, then an ugly mauve thing with a good stereo, then a white Buick with a black top that was a nice improvement, then a red compact station wagon that got good mileage, and finally a white Chrysler New York with claret velvet upholstery that was tufted like a couch. I loved that car. In the last Colonial I had a red Pontiac the size of a shoebox, then a black Saab convertible, and then a dark green Saab sedan.

My favorite house of all time was the one I sold two years ago. It was funny looking and stuck out like a sore thumb, a stubby one, on a block of Colonials, Capes, and Tudors. It was a Spanish bungalow built in 1929 by a man whose wife was from New Mexico and liked haciendas. It was completely renovated and updated into a home with great sight lines, railings made of galvanized plumbing pipe, and tile floors that were gorgeous but impossible to clean. It had two patios, one enveloped by a pergola made of lattice and old chicken coop that weathered to perfection, and one that faced a huge waterfall. Everyone should have a waterfall unless an ocean, a lake, or a swimming pool is at the doorstep. Having water makes you a better person, better able to love a house or a car.

I now live in a Cape. It is cute, maybe even sweet, but it's not my fave, and the dark green Saab

is in a garage with the flu.

Best regards,

Elisabeth