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Just before I moved back to the city, I bought a great car. It was a white Opel
station wagon in perfect shape. She lived in Petaluma and sold it to me cheap
because it had a leaky fuel pump. I replaced that in about half an hour. I used that car to move all my stuff from Santa Rosa to the city. Just before the Golden Gate Bridge there is a hill called Waldo Grade which is a long-haul climb. The car climbed that hill loaded with all my junk, easier than when empty, and in fact effortless all the way in the fast-lane. This German four cylinder, and the Japanese Isuzu as well, have more power, the more weight you put on them. In fact when I was commuting to Stanford, I used to run sandbags in the trunk of my Opel coup for more weight.
That was a great car, but short lived. On the way back from Golden Gate Park, coming down O'Shaughnessy to go through Glen Park, the car loaded with Gerry's kids and others, slight rain and a woman coming up the hill, pulled some kind of pincer movement, accelerating her Buick suddenly and skidded right across the road into our lane - hit us head on. She ended up against the curb, more on my side of the street than I was. Fortunately I was doing probably less than five miles an hour and she the same, so no one was injured or even hardly mussed. However it did total my car because the radiator was damaged. It was an insurance company call of which I was not happy. I got a settlement. Bought another Opel out the advertiser, from a guy who was on aspirin twenty-four hours a day, because he fell off a ladder.
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