The Citizen, 1996-12-11, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1996 PAGE 5.
Arthur Black
I just had
my car put down
I just had my car put down and I am
deeply bummed out about it.
Not because I miss the car. It was a
treacherous piece of Detroit technology that
I should have pushed off a cliff several
thousand dollars ago. I'm delighted to be rid
of that old clunker. What bums me out is
that I have to buy another car soon.
And I am not good at purchasing
automobiles. When it comes to buying cars I
have the reverse of the Midas Touch.
Everything I put an ignition key in turns to
yellow alright — but yellow as in 'lemon',
not gold.
My first car was an Austin something. I
paid $25 for it and I was overcharged. The
only mileage I put on that car came from a
tow truck that hauled it from the vendor's
driveway to mine. "Just needs a little engine
work" the grinning ex-owner assured me.
Right. Like John Wayne Bobbit just
needed a Band-Aid. That car was cooked.
Whacked. Ready for the Big Parking Lot In
The Sky. Which is where it ended up
without once conveying me so much as
around the block.
Displaying the innate ability to learn from
my mistakes that has endeared me to a
succession of wives, I swiftly went out and
bought another English car — a Morris
Minor.
The Morris ran like a top. As long as the
Hungary in the west
I read the other day that Hungary might be
one of the first eastern European nations to
become part of an enlarged NATO. This
caused me to dig out my old diaries. It was
exactly 30 years ago that I set out from my
home in St. Gall to work in Vienna with all
the Hungarian refugees that had streamed
across the border into Austria in the wake of
the uprising against the Russians that were
stationed in Hungary and who were, in
effect, running the country's affairs.
I don't know how many thousands we
processed; it seemed that every week we
went off with a load of them to Rolland or
Italy or even France.
One typical job was to go to a refugee
camp just south of Vienna, load about 500
trains going from there to Holland. We put
so many in each passenger car and put one
person in charge of that car. I tried to find a
person with whom I could communicate;
since I didn't, and still don't, speak any
Hungarian, it had to be one of the languages
I had. On one trip I gave orders in Russian,
German, French and English.
Enough food for the trip was stored in our
compartment and was rationed out three
times in a 24-hour period.
From the time 1 got out of bed in Vienna
until I fell literally into another bed in
Holland, I was on duty for about 30 hours.
Fortunately the trip back to Vienna was
sun shone. At the first drop of rain, my
Morris would splutter, cough asthmatically
and figuratively go tires up on the pavement.
A daisy chain of mechanics could find
nothing wrong. Nor could they do anything
to prevent my Morris's pathological fear of
dampness.
How a rain-sodden country like England
could produce a car that refused to run in the
rain is a mystery. Perhaps it was a Limited
Edition. Limited toe.
I worked my way through a success of
clunkers after that — a Ford station wagon
that dropped its transmission on the road one
day, then ran over it, snapping the rear axle
in the process. A huge, lumbering
Oldsmobile whose thirst for Esso High Test
turned out to be costlier than a full-blown
cocaine habit. A manic-depressive Meteor, a
schizophrenic Studebaker — if there was a
dysfunctional vehicle on the used car lot,
chances were pretty good that I'd find it.
And buy it.
I was stupid, but I wasn't crazy. I always
knew enough to steer clear of cars from
behind the Iron Curtain. I never, ever bought
a Lada. Or a Yugc. Or a Zhiguli.
And I most especially never bought a
Moskvich.
You haven't met the Moskvich? Lucky
you. They're defunct now, but in the '80s
and early '90s more than a hundred thousand
Moskviches rolled off the Moscow assembly
line. For a lot of them, that was the last
rolling they ever did.
The Moskvich — a stubby hatchback that
looked vaguely like a baffed-out Pino — had
two positive features. It was cheap and it
leisurely and we could get caught up on our
sleep.
I think, too, of the gunfire we used to hear
along the Hungarian-Austrian border. It was
sad knowing that some of those fleeing the
Russian regime would not make it, but there
was nothing we could do. Fortunately most
of those who tried to get across made it but
for many it must have been a harrowing
experience.
I actually met some of the people in
Canada that I handled in Vienna and, when it
came time to celebrate the 25th anniversary
of their arrival in Canada, I was invited to
the celebrations. It was a real pleasure for
me to see how many of them had prospered
in this country.
With this in the back of my mind it was a
bit strange to go back to the Hungarian
border and find that the Iron Curtain had
been totally removed and that it was, in
effect, just about as hard to cross over into
Hungary as it was to arrive in Frankfurt in
Germany. The Russians are long gone and
not missed. It is worth noting that the
Hungarians, who had been put down so
brutally in 1956, were the quickest off the
mark in liberalizing their economy when it
became clear that the days of the Warsaw
Pact were numbered.
Even before the Russians left,
liberalization had taken root and Hungarians
were experiencing both the benefits and the
tribulations of a market economy.
Like the other eastern European countries,
the road from communism to a market
was roomy.
The 'roominess' factor was particularly
useful. It meant Moskvich owners could be
comfortable while they waited for the tow
truck to arrive.
How bad was the Moskvich? Don't ask
me — ask Alexci Kuznetsov. Mister
Kuznctsov is a fairly typical Moskvich
owner. He's a Moscow businessman, 25
years old, married with three kids. He
bought his Moskvich brand new in 1992 for
about $3,400.
"It looked nice. It ran nice," says
Kuznetsov, " — for the first 700 kilometers."
Then things started to go very, very wrong
for the Kuznetsov Moskvich. Over the next
four years, Kuznctsov says, "There was not a
single day when everything on my car
worked right."
He replaced the ignition, the generator, the
starter, the entire electrical system, the
clutch and the gear box. He also replaced the
gas gauge three times and the shock
absorbers four times.
When the repair bills passed the $8,000
mark, Alexei Kuznetsov threw in the
babushka and sold his clunker at a hideous
loss to some Russian even more desperate
and naive than he.
Call me selfish, but I find it somehow
heartening that there's somebody out there
who has even worse luck buying cars than I
do.
I'm going out car shopping now. No doubt
I'll get hosed once more, but I have one
consolation: I know my next lemon won't
have a plaque on the dashboard that says
"Moskvich".
economy has not been a smooth one. For
openers, Hungary has had a problem with
the selling off of state-owned enterprises;
many of them were inefficient and would be
hard put to survive in a competitive world.
How much foreign investment should be
allowed? What sort of tax level should be
set? How high should foreign borrowing go
before the country became unable to service
the debt? All these are questions which are
academic in the western world but very real
in eastern Europe.
Unemployment is still high and the
average family is not that much better off
than they were 10 years ago, but there are
definitely some plus factors. Western goods
are available in quantity, the Hungarians are
certainly to be considered entrepreneurial
and, above all, there is a high level of
political freedom, a valuable commodity in
that part of the world.
The situation in Hungary is considered so
promising that it, along with Poland and the
Czech Republic, may be the first countries
invited to become members of the NATO
alliance. All three countries would like that
very much and have already carried out
basic manoeuvres with troops from the
West.
I'm sure that many of the people I handled
in 1956 and who are still alive have already
made a return trip to their country of birth.
The contrast for them must have been even
greater than it was for me.
The
Short
of it
By Bonnie Gropp
There will be blood
My baby nearly died once.
Over a decade ago my youngest awoke
one morning with what appeared to be a
cold, accompanied by a rash. As the hours
passed, his symptoms intensified, to the
point that he was having a good deal of
difficulty breathing.
Our trip to Listowel hospital, took 15
minutes. It was one of anxiety and prayer,
not just that he would be okay, but that we
would get there alive. It was a drive I had
made a thousand times in greater time, but
one this time which, despite my speed,
seemed interminable.
When our family doctor came into the
emergency room, my relief, my sense of
security and faith was nothing short of
overwhelming. I believed that everything
that needed to be done to help my son,
would be.
We were fortunate that day. The roads
were clear, I had my own transportation and
enough time. Also, my doctor was able to
provide the necessary treatment for what
proved to be a severe asthma attack.
If some people have their way, not
everyone will be so fortunate. The Huron
Perth District Health Council's task force on
hospital restructuring has presented three
options which will effectively kill
emergency service. While other hospitals
would have 24-hour emergency service,
there would be no surgical back-up. Babies
will be delivered in less than optimal
surroundings, trauma patients could spend as
much as 30 minutes of the "Golden Hour" in
an ambulance.
And those of us who live in rural Huron
know that winter can put a whole different
perspective on that issue. My work week
begins travelling backroads to gather
correspondents' news. This past Monday,
floating fluffy flakes simulated travelling
through a milk bottle, while the early
morning hour offered a roadway knee deep
in snow, and a cow path wide. It took 15
minutes to travel four miles, and in addition
to testing my patience, raised my wrath on
the issue of hospital restructuring over the
top. .
If the emergency services, surgery and
obstetrics are cut as proposed, if hospitals
are closed without thorough understanding
of what the long-term effect will be, people
are going to die. Even people in politics
should have enough "common sense" (Gosh,
don't those words almost make you gag
now?) to see that.
Not to mention losing the doctors we have
come to know and trust, who aren't going to
stay in hospitals where they can not utilize
their skills. The recommendations put our
continuity of care, our very lives at risk.
And all without even a hint as to what the
savings will be. A member of the Wingbam
Hospital Action Committee established to
fight the task force's seriously flawed
recommendations told residents of Brussels
and area at a meeting last week that the DHC
has done no costing on their options because
they don't have the statistical background
necessary.
We're not idiots, we know there must be
cuts. However, it is, as this woman said, to
be done by looking at people, not mortar and
bricks. People bleed if you cut too deep, too
fast. If the province and the DHC ignore this
I hope they can live with the blood on their
hands.
International Scene
By Raymond Canon