Bmw or Batmobile

I used to drive a enormous, low-slung 1969 Pontiac. Just so you know, I didn’t drive it in 1969, nor in 1970. In fact, we didn’t own it until about 1985, and I was still driving it in 1990. To be fair about it, underneath the hood was a well-muscled machine with an engine-size of 428 somethings which is impressive I think. I also think that my boys raced it more than once and usually won.

Whether they won any money or not, I don’t know, but it would not have been hard to hustle up some unsuspecting competition, because judging the car by the part outside the hood, you would think that it could do no more than limp.

One Halloween, even my shiny, clean, brand-new red 1990 BMW convertible (with only 300 and something under the hood) went out in costume. It was disguised as a paint-chipped, crunch-fendered, khaki-colored 1969 Pontiac Grand Prix. We called it the Batmobile—not because it was smart enough to catch penguins, but because it was so scary.

And sound effects! The Batmobile could furnish backgrounds for the House of Usher. The passenger door sounded like the most Gothic of iron gates when it swung on its hinges.

The mufflers thumped like Sasquatch running through the swamp. When the speedometer cable squealed and the hood-liner flapped, we had giant man-eating bats fleeing some underground cavern.

In more ways than one, bats have become an important part of the spoken and written lore of the Butterbean family. And I’m not referring to bats in the belfry this time.

Most of the bat incidents involve the person in the family who lives in mortal fear of bats. Some people probably go through life and never see one. Not this family member. Of course bats are nocturnal animals, and so is she, which accounts for her running into them more often than the rest of us.

When she worked as a maid cleaning cabins at a mountain resort, hers was always the cabin with bats in it. When she went out to meditate under the stars, bats flew around her head.

I told the following story already, but I should have saved it for Halloween. In case you missed it, here it is again. If you didn’t miss it, skip down a couple of paragraphs.

One summer night our phobic daughter wrapped up in a blanket and went outside to take a breath of fresh air (check on the movements of the neighborhood). While sitting on the front porch, she chanced to look upward. There among the rafters, a few feet above her head and hanging upside down, was a good-sized bat blinking at her.

She jumped up with a prolonged shriek, ran for the door, wrenched it open and immediately went into a skid on the waxed parquet flooring. Running in a blanket is a bit clumsy at best. With her racing slicks on, she lost traction, and her body rapidly got ahead of her feet. She didn’t quit bodysurfing until she hit carpet. I am happy to say that she was called “safe” at home plate.

My daughter had one other fear besides bats. That was of the Batmobile. It had nothing to do with it’s name. That part was coincidental, but the thought of driving it horrified her. I don’t think she would have driven herself to the hospital in it. That would have been a little too much like being caught dead in it. (She didn’t believe that it was a Beamer in disguise like I did.)

For one last Halloween (this one), the Batmobile is still sitting in the backyard. It still has a crumpled fender. It’s paint is far beyond chipped and is more like crumbled. It’s hood-liner is dragging down onto the seats. Every square inch of its interior has become a mouse metropolis. It’s like something out of Frankenstein the Car.

I suspect that under its hood, though, is an engine that has withstood the ravages of time and can still take on the competition—if not scare it, at least worry it a bit.

After this Halloween, I have to say good-bye to the Beamer in disguise. Someone is buying it. At least part of it. “Of course,” you are thinking. “some speed-freak wants to put that 420-something engine into a drag racer.”

Wrong. I’m not kidding; someone wants the body.