There she was, sitting in the back lot of the old Dorchester Tire shop – looking worn but serviceable. She was Gretta Von Green, and the 1998 VW Gulf was about to be my family’s mode of transportation through the next two years, for better or worse.
“I’ll give her to you for 1,200 bucks,” said a guy named Mike, who indicated he used “Gretta” in the winter to preserve his BMW from the salty Boston roads. “But I’d like you to promise me one thing. Call her ‘Gretta.’”
It was about three weeks prior that I’d been cruising along Rte. 1 North from my home on the west side of Washington with my old Ford Ranger truck, and while I was crossing the Mystic/Tobin Bridge, a headlight dislodged and went tumbling into the roadway. One car dodged it, but the state trooper two cars back wasn’t so lucky. He stopped me, but being full of Christmas, I guess he had a heart. I beat it outta’ there with a warning, but with a deadline to make repairs to the old heap by the new year.
That’s how I found myself with Mike behind Dorchester Tire, shortly after learning there was no saving the old Ranger. Having pity on my desperate situation, he told me he wanted to help me out and he’d sell me Gretta on the cheap since he could see I “was a family man.”
So much for big-hearted car salesmen/mechanics, though; when I returned two days later with a cashier’s check, he upped the price a few hundred bucks. “I’ve had a lot of interest from the teen-agers,” was his rationale for the boost.
So it was that a four-speed VW from the 1990s with a soiled-yellow, stale smelling carpet, entered our lives.
My kids immediately took to it, especially when I told them the requirement to call her ‘Gretta.’ They immediately dubbed her Gretta Von Green, to accentuate her rusty, forest-green exterior. That was positive, as was the nice, spacious hatchback that seemingly could hold a whale. “I think I can see the road under my feet from inside the car,” said my youngest one morning. That was fun.
There were the times we could go ‘sledding’ by yanking the parking brake during a snowstorm and gently gliding the little car down the soft hills all through our neighborhood.
But by the same token, Gretta didn’t have the firepower to make it up those soft hills during a snow event, requiring a very round-about route along the “flat streets” for us to get home.
The heating system worked for about 20 minutes, then nothing; the air conditioner – well, it was only present in theory. That meant there was a button for the a/c, but no action took place when you pushed it. I fondly recall one August during a heat wave when Gretta’s heating system suddenly revived, but wouldn’t turn off high for a week, so riding in it was like commuting in a blast furnace.
Then there was the electrical system, which was a conglomeration of wires that resembled the rag-tag setup I have on my porch for the Christmas lights. One wire was taped to the inner roof of the car, another went from under the dash, ducked beneath the plastic interior, and disappeared somewhere in the rear. On one particular day, I was on the Mass Pike and suddenly heard a clanging underneath like the chains of the Ghost of Christmas Past. I got off in Allston and looked underneath where I saw a big metal “thing” dragging along the ground – apparently a connector for a flimsy wire that ran along the undercarriage. I tucked the piece back in tight, crossed my fingers, and fired up Gretta in hopes that she’d go. And she did. Nothing later seemed to be amiss despite the disconnection.
And that’s the beauty of a Gretta Von Green. Who knows, but it runs.
I remember hot and cold afternoons on the Expressway in bumper traffic having to use a stick shift. If you’ve gotten nice and comfy with an auto transmission, try going back to a stick in rush-hour traffic. It’s pure terror.
In all honesty, I’ve had a lot of “beaters” like Gretta that probably weren’t good and proper for the road, and most of them, thankfully, I’ve forgotten. In recent years, I’ve grown accustomed to leasing new vehicles that run smoother and smell nicer but aren’t as much fun, and the kids don’t name them. They, too, are forgettable. But for our family, Gretta Von Green will always bring a warm memory and a welcome smile.
BLUE HILL AVENUE
There’s a lot of momentum building on Blue Hill Avenue for reinvigoration and the expansion of existing businesses. I’ve always thought it to be the city corridor with the highest potential.
To me, living on the west side of Washington, it seems like a lifetime that my commerce flows eastward, if not outward, but I would enjoy being able to beat it over to Blue Hill more often to get what I need. I’m reminded of days of old, such as I heard from an acquaintance of mine, Ron Silverstein. Ron set up a very popular men’s shop in downtown Chelsea for 35 years, and the community loved him and his shop until it closed in 2020. However, his origins were not in Chelsea, but on Blue Hill Avenue.
He told me that his grandfather, Morris Silverstein, had run one of the most popular men’s shops in Boston from the 1920s to the 1970s, Silverstein and Sons Men’s Shop. People came from all over to shop at Silverstein’s on Blue Hill, he told me, with the humble origins of the store being his Russian immigrant great-grandfather selling hats and boots door-to-door from a pushcart.
Then, instead of setting up his progeny in the Blue Hill store, Ron’s grandfather set up family members with stores all over Greater Boston. Ron went to Chelsea. Another relative went to Randolph, others to Mattapan Square, and another elsewhere in Dorchester.
Sadly, Silverstein’s on Blue Hill Avenue did not endure, and it is long gone and few, if any, remember it. In today’s promising future for the Ave, it’d be nice to have some local folks of today build such an empire, provide service and sales with compassion, and amass wealth on Blue Hill.
I, for one, would be first in line at the door.
RUSSELL HOLMES/CHRISTMAS LIGHTS
After years of the area being crisscrossed by three, sometimes four, different state representative districts, it looks like January 2022 will bring some unity to West of Washington (WOW). State Rep. Russell Holmes told a WOW group that his new district includes all the neighborhood and so there will be a little more consistency on the map. The district was formerly represented by Reps. Holmes, Liz Miranda, and Dan Hunt. I recall telling high-ranking officials that he or she had been my state rep, which was breaking news to them!
On another neighborhood note, everyone agrees this Christmas season brought out the colorful lights in the neighborhood like never before. All through WOW, the two triangles – Talbot Harvard and Talbot Norfolk (TNT) – and up Glenway there were plenty of colorful lights to brighten the season. I’d say we made Santa proud.
