Invincible’s Secret Mission
Shortly after arriving in Germany, I had to buy a car. As luck would have it, the Battalion Executive Officer was selling his 1960 VW Bug and I bought it sight unseen for $600. That car served us very well for a couple of years. We took it on many roadtrips around Bavaria, Austria, Switzerland and Leictenstein.
I took it one day on a “secret” mission, which required manuevering some rough terrain. It did well except after that trip the clutch was slipping. Not being an auto mechanic but being somewhat mechanically inclined, I got under the car and noticed the clutch cable was fraying. I did my best to fix it and much to everyones surprise it worked. This 1960 Beetle was living up to it’s name, “Invincible”.
It was named because it got us out of other tight spots during it’s tenure. The name was on a plastic sticker from a comb made my the Invincible Comb Company. That sticker was proadly displayed on our VW dashboard.
The Nonsecret Mission
Invincible was of service to us in many other ways. One of those ways was comforting our infant son. I’ve mentioned in a previous post that my eldest son was born in Germany and specifically in the Nuremburg Army Hospital. As an infant he was colicky. The little guy had a tough time getting to sleep and by extention we had a tough time getting to sleep. We noticed that the babe slept very well in the car, “Invincible”. So, we would often have to take him out in the car at night to calm him down and get him to sleep.
Once the neighbors found out that the baby was sickly, they often quiped, “No wonder the infant is sick, the parents take him out at all hours of the night.” Oh well, so much for new parents and nosy neighbors.
In My Service Again
One year in Germany, we decided to have a St. Patricks Day party. We would invite friends, and have some snacks. It’ll be fun. Well, being fron New York City where St. Patricks Day is an epic celebration, there was no way to match that unless we had GREEN BEER! Where would I get green beer? There was plenty of beer in Germany, some of it was dark and none of it was green. I’ll just have to make it. Make it green, not make beer. Green food coloring was the only convenient option. I raided the Easter egg stash and found the key ingredient. Next the beer.
Like I said, there was plenty of beer in Germany, but I wasn’t going to serve green beer in bottles. You couldn’t tell it was green through the amber glass. We had to serve glasses of green beer. And I wasn’t going to add a drop of emerald essence to your glass. I needed a keg. Finding one was no problem. I went to the brewery, paid for the keg and went to where the wooden kegs were being filled. I meet the “bonger” and tried to convey, in my broken German, I wanted to add the green food coloring into the keg before he bonged it. He wouldn’t have it and got angry. He filled the keg and closed it as would have hundreds of times that day. He did give me a brass specket and wooden mallet, and sent me on my way.
I’m not sure how big that keg was, somewhere between 20-30 liters (5.25 to 8 gallons). Now the smaller wooden keg would have weight 65 lbs and the larger one, maybe 50% heavier. Single-handedly I wrestled that thing into “Invincible”, then up one flight of stairs and into the bathtub. Have you ever opened a can of soda after it was shaken? I figured I was about to make a huge mess with the beer and food coloring, so I wanted to contain the disaster. I needed to open the keg, squirt in the food coloring and add the brass tap as quickly as possible. I decided to let the keg rest and settle down before I operated. To my recollection, it worked out fine: open, squirt and tap without a huge mess. I let it rest once again before I moved it from the bathtub to it’s wooden cradle on the kitchen counter. The guests were impressed, there was beer left over and my fingers were stained for another week. A very happy St. Patricks Day.
