In 1981, three years before Tav was about to retire, Diana and i moved from our one bedroom apartment overlooking Beverly Hills to the townhouse overlooking the Forum in Inglewood, then-home to the Los Angeles Lakers. The move was necessitated by the apartments being converted to an overpriced condominium complex and was an easy solution as the move afforded us more space for fewer dollars.
Roughly a year later Tav had figured out that, as a newly-minted 747 captain with United Airlines, his two best shots at the most desirous domiciles yielding highest seniority, were NY City and Los Angeles. LAX won out and, tipping the scale, was the fact that he could pay us monthly rent that was considerably lower than what he’d pay for an apartment in a “pilot zoo” either near LAX or JFK.
Diana and i enjoyed the arrangement since he only stayed 3 or 4 nights per month and the visits provided opportunity to catch up on the ensuing decades the sibs had missed. To pass the time, Tav told Diana he was going to restore Helmut, the 1966 VW Bug she’d bought in Washington, DC, to take Pa to his appointments at Walter Reed Hospital.
Diana warned Tav that putting the car in “as new” condition in southern California would make it a target for theft. He dismissed her concern as overblown (he termed it “BS”) and begun his project. For Diana’s 60th birthday celebration in 1982, at Aunt Selma’s in San Francisco, his gift was a small box with ornate wrapping. Inside were the bills for VW parts stamped “PAID.”
Three months later, when the restoration was nearly complete, Helmut was stolen. After explaining to Diana how the thieves “did her a favor” and how the newer technology was so far superior, he helped her obtain the most favorable terms on a 1982 VW Quantum (roughly equivalent to the Audi 3000 or 4000).
A few weeks after the purchase of the new car which she’d named “Helga,” while shopping at Century City, thieves broke into the car in the underground garage and stole the Blaupunkt radio/tape player. Although insurance paid for the repairs and she replaced the unit with a removable one, Diana was determined not to have any repeat theft so she bought a mannequin which she named “Dennis.”
The objective was not so much to fool anyone into thinking Dennis was a live human being as to attract attention when the car was parked so thieves, seeing no radio, would not break into it.
Although Diana never warmed to the Quantum, she drove it for nearly two decades (1983-2002). By 1999, a little over two years after Diana purchased Brunnhilda, Tav started telling her how she needed to replace Helga with newer technology since replacement parts for the Quantum were becoming ever harder to find.
She reminded him that, in 1983, he’d told her that Helga was the last car she’d need to buy. Ever the sentimentalist (sarcastic crack) Tav countered, “Hey, I didn’t expect you to live so long.” He did advise her buying Honda, Toyota or Nissan and, in 2002, she purchased the Toyota Camry which she named “Tyrone.”