Baggy Paragraphs

“The Special Type” appeared in Collier’s Weekly on June 16, 1900. It’s a typical Jamesian tale in five parts. An anonymous American portrait painter working in London tells the story of Frank Brivet’s search for the special type of woman who will do him a most original favor. As it happens, Brivet, the narrator’s “disgustingly” rich school chum, is unhappily married. “His marriage had originally seemed to me to require much more explanation than anyone could give,” reports our narrator. (Easy to imagine John Singer Sargent in this position.) “Still, I can enter into some of his aversions, and I agreed with him that his wife was odious.”

As luck would have it, Mrs. Brivet, who lives apart from her husband, has fallen for the unsavory Remson Sturch. She would even be “fool enough to marry him,” and Brivet would be “avenged in a manner positively ideal,” if only she had cause to institute proceedings. Even though Brivet has been carrying on with Rose Cavenham, who posed for our painter-narrator, he had “been so d—-d particular” and they couldn’t put a finger on him. So he needed to make it appear as though he were indeed carrying on. He doesn’t want Rose’s reputation besmirched. In fact, as he graphically puts it, “I don’t feel the right way to repay her is by spattering her over.”

“Yet if she stands…straight in the splash,” the narrator argues.

“She doesn’t!” Frank interrupts. “She stands a thousand miles out of it; she stands on a pinnacle; she stands as she stands in your charming portrait—lovely, lonely, untouched. And so she must remain.”

He devises a scheme to find the special type of woman who won’t mind playing along, posing as his consort, and who will be “remunerated” afterward. This special type must have a bit of a spotty reputation, so that no real additional damage could be done and also that Rose would not be jealous. The narrator understands this special woman “should have to lack, you see, no requirement whatever for plausibility.” She should be “squareable.” And, not incidentally, she must be at least as handsome as Rose.

Of course the reader knows she will be Alice Dundene, whom we have already met posing in the painter’s workroom. In fact, we met her at the moment when Rose happens to burst through the studio’s unguarded door. Here is an example of Henry James’s subtle understatement that I love so well: Alice “was not dressed for company, though indeed a dress was never strictly necessary to her best effect.” Later, Rose questions him about Alice, asking if she’s not exactly a lady, but neither exactly a professional, what is she? Through the course of things, we learn that she’s had a “checquered career” and is “sharp as a steam-whistle.” Brivet tells his old friend, “Well, you may take from me that I find her no more of a fool than, as I seem to see, many other fellows have found her.” We rest assured that Alice enters the liaison with eyes wide open, knowing the intended effect is Brivet’s divorce and remarriage to Rose.

Rose retires from the scene, withdrawing to America, and our narrator wishes to wash his hands of the matter, but chatter from “the usual sources” brings word “that no relation in London at that moment, between a remarkable man and a beautiful woman, had more of the general air of good manners.” Frank and Alice are seen together at all the popular entertainments and restaurants; there are diamonds and journeys; “elaborate arrivals and departures at stations for everyone to see”; and “his brougham standing always—half the day and half the night—at their doors.” Forthwith, Rose returns to London with news that Mrs. Brivet has filed for divorce and that despite appearances to the contrary, “a studied, outrageous affichage,” Frank has never seen Alice alone. In triumph, Rose commissions Frank’s portrait. (It goes without saying that Frank will pay.) The bon vivant radiates well-being when he comes to the studio. Exactly as Rose wishes, the painter succeeds in capturing “the dear man in his intimate essence for those who knew him.” The work is a treasure.

Now Alice reappears, dressed “very simply in black materials, feathers and lace, that gave the impression of being light and fine.” To keep his promise of remuneration, Frank has told her to ask for anything she wants. Naturally, she desires a full-length portrait of him. She declares that, as long as Frank can’t marry her—”he doesn’t so much as know me,” she says—whatever he wants is what she wants, too, even if that means his union with Rose Cavenham. The finished portrait that Rose has commissioned is unveiled. (The painter fibs in confirming that Frank had “the beautiful thought of sitting” not for Rose but Alice.) Alice sees its perfection, which overjoys our narrator.

Rose charges “base treachery” in this, but Frank will not go against his friend, and when the appeal for a second portrait is turned down because “my best was my best,” he assents to the deal “with the awkwardness of a man in dispute between women.” Rose furiously suggests Alice could have the decency to take something else, but the painter forestalls her, explaining that, in just remuneration, Alice wants the portrait as a way of living with him, having him all to herself—and to make up for the fact that never in all their meetings has she seen Frank alone.

ba

Bon Mots

London: “The big fish that rises so to the hook baited with gold.”

affichage: Display (the relationship between Frank and Alice is made to appear as something it wasn’t); affichage à cristaux liquides: liquid crystal display

Jamesian sentence: “I couldn’t quarrel with his recognizing so quickly what I had myself instantly recognized, yet if it did in truth appear almost at a glance that she would, through the particular facts of situation, history, aspect, tone, temper, beautifully “do,” I felt from the first so affected by the business that I desired to wash my hands of it.”

We watched “Pieces of April” last night (Thanksgiving). It’s the fourth time I’ve seen this film, which introduced Katie Holmes. It’s the simplest story: April wants to make Thanksgiving dinner for her family, who are coming to her Lower East Side apartment from upstate. The problem, as she discovers, is that her oven doesn’t work. Thus begins the journey inside her own apartment building as she searches for a loaner oven. The turkey goes in and out of three of them. Most hilariously, it spends an interlude in the brand-new, multi-featured oven of a prissy bachelor, Wayne, who has a pug named Bernadette. Things go awry between April and Wayne, and he holds her turkey hostage, which ultimately results in the loss of his toupé.

Meantime, a second journey is underway as the Burns family makes their slow progress along narrow roads in what appear to be the Catskills. Things haven’t been going too well between Joy and her renegade daughter April. And Joy is suffering, having endured a mastectomy. Patricia Clarkson, one of my favorite actresses, plays the part to the hilt. There are many stops along the way: the old folks’ home for grandma, a medical marijuana break for Joy, a roadside service to bury a roadkill squirrel. They’re such a quirky bunch. Too much of this would become tedious, but the scenes are brief and full of detail, and the actors play their parts so well.

The story veers past a potentially bad ending, and all are brought together for a joyous celebration—except prissy Wayne, who shares his holiday exclusively with Bernadette.

This brief, beautiful letter, published November 25 in the Ann Arbor News, is worth reprinting here:

“I am not sure if I want the government to provide the Big 3 a ‘bridge’ loan or let them file for bankruptcy. However, the CEOs were ridiculed and chastised by one or more U.S. senators for having come to Washington, D.C., for the meetings aboard private jets.

Interesting that the senators jumped on the CEOs of the Big 3, given the fact that the U.S. government is over $10.5 trillion in debt yet our CEO (the president) travels exclusively via private jets.”

Gene R. Rye, Ann Arbor

The official Baggy Paragraphs reaction to last week’s pathetic comedy, with Detroit auto executives begging in Washington, D.C., for salvation:

Ricky Wagoner: Stop threatening us with disaster! Do you really think you’re that important? “If you don’t let us play, we’re going to mess up the sandbox!” What a disgrace! Big Bill Knudsen would puke on you. With whatever dignity you have left, proceed commensurately to your sorry fate.

Alan Mulally: You were right to say you wouldn’t do your job for a dollar a year. The federal government has a long history of accepting the labors of dollar-a-year men. Now, evidently, Congress thinks it’s a prerequisite.

Nancy Pelosi: As the new doyenne of Detroit, it must thrill you to say, “Until they show us the plan, we cannot show them the money.” (Speaker of the House steals line from Hollywood!) You just know it makes the ladies at the Bloomfield Hills Country Club quiver with jealous rage. They thought they ran things here. Your interloping is unwelcome. But aren’t you going to be shocked when the general populace ignores your inevitable decree to purchase the cars that you ordered to be built? “Now we politicians have finally designed vehicles to our own specifications, so you plebes should be buying them. What’s wrong? Are you not listening to me?”

Henry Waxman: At least John Dingell had a clue. California blue-sky technocrats never will. Here’s a tip: When your Congress-cars, your Mandate-mobiles accumulate unsold on the New New Deal Car Lot, tax breaks notwithstanding, you might consider an old Detroit trick as a retrofit: trim them with at least as much chrome as there is on your own dome.

Robert Bennett: One of the sorriest actors in this drama, lecturing on managerial virtue in your unctuous “Let me give you a priesthood blessing” way. Your claim to fame: “I learned all about good management from keeping Howard Hughes propped up on the toilet.” As one who has followed the Mormon aristocrat’s pyritic path, you’re living proof of Woody Allen’s maxim that 90 percent of life is just showing up. To proclaim that you drive a 1996 Oldsmobile perfectly evinces your high rank among the dullards. “How very humble I am!” The reason the Olds has lasted so long must be attributable to your heated garage at home in Shadwell Acres.

Debbie Stabenow: “Where do I sign up for grazing rights? I heard a big feed was on today for the auto industry.”

Carl Levin: “I wake up every morning, look in the mirror, and ask myself one question: ‘What can I do for the unions today?’”

Ron “Sticky Fingers” Gettelfinger: “Why, shucks, we cain’t move up them concessions on retirement benefits any futher. It’d be like enterin’ a mule in a hoss race.”

Joint Resolution of Congress (adopted unanimously in both chambers): “If there’s any single thing we abhor, it’s flying on a private jet. In fact, it’s right down there at the bottom of the list of desecrations, along with seducing a page, accepting a golf trip, or having a supporter undertake some renovations on our seven-thousand-square-foot ski cabin. That’s why, every weekend, we always fly coach when we go off to our fundraisers.”

My dear wife’s first car, a snazzy lemon-yellow 1972 Mercury Capri, triggered a kind of self-preservation instinct, making Susan want to learn how to avoid being ripped off in repair shops, so she and her mother signed up for a course called Power Puff Mechanics. Based on the uncomprehending look Susan returns whenever I hold forth on Renault’s success with pneumatic valve springs during the 1989 Formula One season, it’s evident the course covered little beyond identifying battery terminals and explaining “how pistons work,” as she puts it. I doubt there was even a classroom exercise explaining that a piston is like a king because both have crowns. Chalk up another failure to public education.

Widowhood would have motivated Susan’s mother, Margaret, to join the mechanics class. I never met my father-in-law, but his legacy as a guy who could enjoy just one or two beers while listening to the Dodgers and puttering around the yard has awed me. Ray was resolutely a Dodge man. His choice of a boxy Coronet in the early 1950s was followed by a “two-tone, gold-and-white something with fins,” according to Susan, and then “a big gold square thing.” Without pictorial evidence, I assume she refers to the Lancer and then a more extravagant Monaco or Polara. These would have been part of the gaudily confident fleet of Chevys, Fords, and maybe a Studebaker or Rambler that festooned the neighborhood in Downey, a suburb of Los Angeles. Their housing tract alongside the Golden State Freeway had snuffed out an orange grove in 1949, when Susan was born. Sixty years later it remains a nice, if noisy, place, although BMWs now make a strong showing in the indigenous fleet.

After Ray’s 1972 death, my mother-in-law’s new independence extended to buying a car every so many years and overseeing its maintenance. When it was time for her next Dodge, she went to the local agency—she was of the generation that still used that term—but found herself ignored in the showroom. The salesmen might have thought she was there to apply for a cleaning job. Margaret already had one, as director of a hospital’s housekeeping staff. Telling herself they weren’t getting her business, she decamped, switching to an unremembered brand, perhaps Chrysler.

Learning to Drive Ever So Cautiously

Susan, who is quite petite, learned to drive in those big Dodges. Her native town, situated in the southern Los Angeles basin, is as flat as a crepe, and winding boulevards are conspicuously absent; the biggest navigational challenge was to avoid running into the Firestone tire factory on the way to selecting a bay at the drive-in restaurant. (The oldest McDonald’s is at Lakewood Boulevard and Florence Avenue, right there in Downey.) Inquiries about use of the Dodge always made her father protest, “You’ll put miles on it!” She wondered what the car was for, if not to put on miles. It does seem odd that a family would have a car not to drive it, but back then “low miles” had all the cachet that today accrues to “federal bailout.”

She learned to drive with the most scrupulous caution. This leads her to brake well past the apex of corners, which for me, as the passenger, makes Dustin Hoffman’s dental ordeal in Marathon Man seem inconsequential. Turning left onto a multilane road, she first takes the inside lane and then puts on her right-turn signal, swivels her head to look for Craig Breedlove overtaking in the Spirit of America, and finally moves over to the desired outside lane. Responding to my wholly well-intended critiques, she points out that she’s never been in an accident. Having managed to miss the Big One at Talladega doesn’t add up to driving accomplishment, but I keep it to myself in the interests of conjugal harmony.

The fact is, when I entered the picture in 1980, I was scraping by and didn’t own a car. The story of her father sleeping on benches during the Great Depression was something I could almost relate to. Susan had a good job with benefits and by then owned a 1978 Dodge Omni. She liked the Capri but needed a four-door sedan for transporting friends to church and numerous little nieces to ice cream stands. The fact that the package included a hatchback was a pleasing extra. As the domestic industry’s best subcompact, the Omni, a transparent copy of the Volkswagen Rabbit, represented the antithesis of Susan’s childhood Dodges. For one thing, of course, it utilized front-wheel drive. And rather than a Magnum or Hemi under the hood, it had a meek four-cylinder engine; the Omni went button-stitching down the road with all of 75 hp at its disposal. The SOHC 1.7-liter powerplant was sourced from Volkswagen. I once asserted this fact to a guy who said he knew cars because he owned a ‘78 Corvette, which was like saying he knew American culture because he watched Charlie’s Angels. Even though “Volkswagen” was plainly stamped on it, he contended the engine couldn’t have been a VW. After all, it was watercooled, and it wasn’t a boxer.  

Living with a Few Flaws

The Omni curled up over a modest 99.1-inch wheelbase, weighed a scant 2145 pounds, and went for a base price of $3976. Uncharacteristically cutting loose, Susan chose one of the two orange exteriors—spitfire orange or sunrise orange were offered—and the optional roof rack. When placed under my mismanagement, the Omni had registered about 25,000 trouble-free miles. Although I grew up thinking and talking about cars, I had driven only as much as the average Popemobile registers and had not even passed a power puff mechanics course. I could change oil and tires and once replaced the fuel pump on an Austin-Healey Sprite, but anything to do with carburetors seemed to belong to the realm of Carl Sagan. I also had the unfortunate, bullheaded tendency to ignore instrument panel warning lights and to profoundly believe the Burbank grease pit guys who decreed that the Omni’s three-speed TorqueFlite automatic transmission’s fluid looked clear and I could forget changing it.

We first noticed engine overheating on the sharp climb Interstate 15 makes in the searing desert just northeast of Las Vegas. The red light had to be related to the draw of the air conditioning system, so we switched off the compressor until the highway leveled out on the plateau. Indeed, the indicator light went off, and we turned on the A/C again. The indicator light went away until we drove that same route the next summer. Of course we had no idea the radiator had begun to fill with sediment. The cylinder head may have been aluminum, but the iron block, as though suffering from some autoimmune deficiency, was consuming itself and abundantly contributing particles. Meanwhile, inside the neglected transmission, varnish had begun to develop. The effect would ultimately be that, once the selector was moved from drive, the transmission, as long as it remained well-heated, would not go back into gear. Wherever we might find ourselves waiting, it was necessary to sit with a foot on the brake, engine running, or to shift into park, shut off the car, and let it cool way down before restarting and reengaging the transmission. We were always near financial ruin, and the problem didn’t seem dangerous, so we undertook no expensive repair but instead lived with the quirk.

After Susan became my beautiful bride, we went to Fairbanks, Alaska, for two years of adventure. Our first job was managing a rooming house inhabited by tradesmen awaiting their union calls to work at Prudhoe Bay. While they lolled around Harvey’s Rooms, Susan happened to mention the Omni was having carburetor problems; soon thereafter a committee of five men was assessing the situation under the hood. I shooed them away. What would have happened if they had gotten it apart but couldn’t fix it? My wife hadn’t thought of that. Maybe I was incompetent, but I hadn’t abdicated my command. A professional, certified mechanic replaced the carb. Then, with the Omni running well, we undertook a little road trip. At that time it was unusually hot in the interior of Alaska, well into the 80s, and every bag of ice in the stores had been snapped up. Our day’s journey took us to a hot springs about 100 miles away—not that we immersed ourselves in it; we were just Lookie Lous, as Susan likes to say. About thirty miles into the return, the engine warning lit up red for the first time in ages, but naturally we ignored it. Before long the engine coughed because of a blown head gasket and refused to drag us any farther. We were stranded out in the Steese Highway wilderness. But happy-go-lucky, husband-and-wife, weekend gold miners fetched us from the roadside, offered consolation, and carried us back to town in their Ford pickup. We arranged for towing. The Omni’s cylinder head hadn’t warped, and I had sure learned a lesson. For good measure, we got the radiator cleaned out, solving the overheating problem.

The End of an Omni

In February 1983 we drove the Omni all the way back to Los Angeles. One thing that made the trip even more remarkable was the week’s warmer-than-average daytime temperatures of around 30 degrees (instead of the expected reading of 15 below) that allowed us to stop along the Alaska Highway; we could leave the tranny in drive but set the emergency brake and get out of the car to take pictures of the immense frozen lakes and experience the arresting silence of Canada’s Yukon and northern British Columbia. I’ll never forget descending through the Fraser River Gorge, entering the temperate Puget Basin, and suddenly smelling moist earth for the first time in months. Susan remembers stopping there for ice cream cones and sitting outside to eat them.

We drove the Omni two more years. In 1985 it had slightly more than 80,000 miles and was about to welcome yet another replacement carburetor to the aluminum manifold when we traded it. I let the car cool completely a few blocks from the dealership before bringing it for the salesman’s test-drive. He took it around a square mile with me in the front passenger seat. For some reason, on the homestretch, he capriciously downshifted to second and then missed the upshift, momentarily finding neutral instead—but the tranny hadn’t fully heated up, drive reengaged, and I exhaled. Back at the showroom, I wolfed up his offer of $800 and came home a different man in a new Honda. New Hondas will do that. So will dumping a lemon on someone.

Susan still talks about her great little Omni. This much is true: we had lots of fun with it, including the long journeys to and from Alaska. Meanwhile, I’ve become more experienced with cars. Today, if I encountered a creampuff ‘78 Omni on the market, I’d somehow find a way to lay off, even if it has the premium woodgrain bodyside appliqué. On the other hand, presented with the right ‘64 Polara, a big gold square thing like my father-in-law Ray might have driven, well, I could be a sucker for that, just as I was for his daughter.

The crazy thing about hoarfrost is, have you ever seen pimpfrost? You know it must be lurking somewhere, but when does it ever make itself apparent? Answering this question could require a joint operation between the National Weather Service and the FBI. 

♦ ♦ ♦

My dad once filled out a form that asked his occupation, and he wrote “procurer.” I was about twelve at the time. I asked what a procurer was. He said, “Pimp.” It was just his way of telling them, “None of your business.” 

♦ ♦ ♦

“This one has some fruitwood,” he said.

“Fruitwood?” 

“Yeah, that berry tree.” He held up a chunk of a heavy dark-tinged wood. I don’t know if he’s referring to black cherry or what, but I might get bored if I burned nothing but ash, which is currently so plentiful because beetles have bored beneath the bark and killed just about every ash tree. Ash is superb in the hearth, rather as Scarlett Johansson must be in the boudoir. (We watched “The Nanny Diaries” later last evening on DVD, and I entertained carnal thoughts.) Other of Farmer Gansmere’s pallets to the rear exclusively held cords of ash, but fruitwood will add variety. 

He drove off to wherever he was going. My dog, Molly, was free to get out and chase chickens while I loaded up, but she chose to stay on the front seat and play loadmaster. I first inserted wood through the side door and tried to stack as much as possible right against the backs of the front seat as a way of keeping weight well distributed. (A polypropylene tarp protected the carpeted floor and vinyl seatbacks.) Filling the middle part of the ship, I moved rearward and stacked the rest. Enough room remained for another cord, which will be required, but the minivan already squatted under the weight of one. I’ll have to return over the coming weekend. 

♦ ♦ ♦

Happy Haunting to you and your ghosties,” writes Kerry. Trick-or-treaters will arrive at the door in about four hours. It’s gorgeous today with an absolute blue sky and gentle breeze, a mild evening certain. 
 

Q&A: Jim Horvath, senior associate engineer, Hankook Tire America Corporation, Green, Ohio

Sept. 22, 2008

Did you always want to be a tire carver?

My life’s ambition was to live and work on a farm. But I grew up real close to Akron and went to school to learn to do drafting work. And then I wound up in the tire industry. I worked for General Tire & Rubber. That’s where I learned to do tire carving. They had a lab back there [in the art department]. In that lab is where tire carving got started. Tire carving really began to change the industry until the 1970s, is that correct?
If they wanted a prototype, they had to manufacture molds and build the tires, then take those tires out and test them. 

So the way of prototyping that you’ve refined was a big advance?
Right. Say the engineer would like to take a look at a half a dozen different ideas in rubber. We can actually cut four tires and take them out and test them. If they’re noisy, if they don’t have good wet traction capability or snow traction, the engineer can take that data and modify what he’s come up with. The savings here is the simple fact that they don’t have to make a mold for every one of those ideas. We can do it right here on the spot.

How do you describe your carving tool? Compare it to something.
On the market they have what they call re-grooving tools. What I use is very similar. What I don’t like about the commercial unit is, the way the tool is set up, when you put your carving blade into it [and] push against the rubber, the whole head slides back. That makes contact, which lets electric current pass through the blade, which enables you to cut the tire. The tool that I have is a modification of that, drastically, in that I have a microswitch on mine and a rheostat. I can adjust the heat down to where I’m not going to burn rubber and it’s going to go through nice and easy.

As the compound changes, is your carving affected?
Yes. In some instances it is. Take for example an ultra-high-performance racing tire, the compound is much harder. It’s a little harder to cut. You learn to adapt and vary your heat on your carving tool.

Do you ever come up with repetitive strain injuries from shoving this thing along?
Nah, I’ve got a right arm that looks like Popeye’s.

Do you see yourself as an artist?
That’s using the term very loosely. I guess in a way it is an art form. But I don’t see myself as an artist. I kind of like the word ‘model-maker.’

You work from a stenciled pattern, so that answers the question, ‘How do you keep your lines straight?’
We hand-cut templates and then airbrush the design on the blank tire. The blank tire just looks like a racing slick. Then we can go ahead. We get back with the engineer, and he’ll tell us how deep he’d like to have the circumferential grooves, say, or the lateral grooves, and at what angles he would like to see those. And also the sipes—the small cuts in the tires. He’ll give us all that data, and we’ll go ahead and set our blades up and start cutting the tire.

Do tire carvers ever get together in Las Vegas for a convention?
No. I do know a couple of guys who carve tires. But since we all work for different tire companies, you tend not to talk about what you’re doing. It’s like a trade secret. Anything I’ve learned, I’m not going to tell you because then you can get as good as I am.  

Do you practice woodcarving as a hobby?

Yes, I do. Mostly caricatures. I’ve got some bears and some turtles and some coon hounds and nonentity things like a shoe and a hat. That kind of stuff. I do that as a tension reliever. 

You had another position at first?
Yes, I did. When I first hired into General, I hired in there as a draftsman. I worked in the drafting department for a little over eight years. Then I had a chance to go back into the art department. At that time, our art department—which would’ve been the guys that came up with the new tread designs; they did all the art work for meetings and stuff; they used to do a lot of airbrushing, which a lot of things have changed over the years; now everything’s on the CAD system and they have multiple views with the aid of the computers, but back then they did it all by hand. …well, I’ll tell you how it was…I worked in there almost another eight years because I had almost seventeen years’ service with General. I left and actually bought a farm in southeastern Ohio. I farmed for six years, had both dairy and hog operations. Then things got a little rough in the agricultural field for us. So I decided I’d better get a job off the farm if I wanted to keep the farm, which we wound up eventually doing. Then I wound up going back to General Tire for six more years before they got bought out by Continental. They moved everything to Charlotte, North Carolina. I did not want to go to Charlotte. Fortunately for me, Hankook Tire had opened a technical center. They had just built this brand-new building here in Green [Ohio], where we’re located now. It’s a little town about halfway between Akron and Canton. I put an application in with them and lo and behold I got a job with them. So I guess I’ve been here now, I guess, a little over twelve years. 

Not only a cost savings but also a time savings?
I don’t know how long it actually takes to produce a complete set of mold drawings. But then to have the mold drawings made by a CAD operator, and then get everything approved, and then send all that to a machine shop and have the mold made, then get the mold shipped to the production facility—and in our case, for Hankook, all our production is done overseas, well, what I call overseas, everything’s done either in Korea or China, and now I think we’ve opened up a plant in Hungary—for us it takes quite a while to get tires actually produced and sent back to the States for us to test. Whereas, if I have the blank tires here, we can go ahead and stencil the patterns on the tires and then go ahead and cut them. 

With the guide that’s on the tool, you can not only keep your lines straight but also you don’t have to worry about gouging through the carcass?
Correct. That’s pretty much up to the engineer to make sure that the blank tire that we have is built to his specs, so that there’s enough tread stock on there so that we won’t do that. 

What’s an example of a tire at either end of the time spectrum from two to sixteen hours in preparation?
Right now we are doing a job for one of the engineers and they’re going to be doing a traction study, and some of the tires that we have right now are basically a mono-pitch and they’ll either have no sipes or one sipe or two sipes. So those tires—which are just straight cuts, there’s nothing fancy about them—those will only take a couple hours. If you get into a pitched tire that has an all-season tread design, it may take you two to three days, once you get your templates cut, the tire laid out, and actually start cutting that. It just depends on how involved the tread design is, or what I would refer to as ‘lacy.’ Some of them like high-performance tires, they’re asymmetrical, a lot of times you have one side that does traction, the other side is for … those types of tires, you have less buttons or number of pitches around the tire than you do on a lot of your conventional all-season tires. To give you an example, we may have a tire that has sixty-five buttons in it or it may have as many as eighty-eight buttons—or pitches, would be the correct terminology, not buttons. 

Model-making is a term that goes way back in the automotive industry, a good solid label to put on it. For you to actually do this work by hand, it places you among a very distinguished, small number.

I think probably all the tire manufacturers have tire carvers for the same reason [Hankook has] me, just for doing prototype stuff. But no, I agree, it’s not a very common job whatsoever. 

Is there a type of wood you favor?

No. I’ve done a little bit of everything. I’ve got stuff sitting here in my office right now that is carved out of black walnut, which is a very hard wood. I do a lot of work with a Dremel tool. It’s like a high-speed carving tool. But there’s basswood, which is a real easy wood to carve. About anything I can pick up, I guess. You can let your imagination just go hog wild. Which is kind of what I do sometimes on our tires, too. 

What’s the result then?
Total chaos… We’ve actually tried some things that didn’t work. But it was interesting in that we could at least give it an attempt and see if it would work in the tread designs—some things like embedded pitch sequences. But it just unfortunately didn’t work for us, but it would’ve been great had it would have.

Can you listen to the radio while you work?
Yes. I listen to country. I’ve got an office area back here, I’m pretty much by myself. I do have a young guy that I’m trying to teach to do this type of work because eventually I’m going to retire some day, I hope. The people here have seen fit to say, ‘Hey, maybe we need somebody else who can do this.’ They hired him in for doing shipping and receiving. On Jay’s resume, he put down that he does chainsaw carving. So I got to chit-chatting with Jay after we hired him, and he thought he’d kind of like to try this. So we brought him back, and sure enough he fell right into it. He’s doing an excellent job. 

Does the smell of burning rubber ever make you sick?

If you’re carving and you’re burning rubber, you’re doing it wrong. There’s kind of a fine line there. If you don’t have the heat high enough, it’s hard to push the blade or the tool through the rubber. If you get it too hot, you literally burn it and you do smoke the tire. You don’t want either one of those conditions. You want it just to glide through, kind of like a knife going through butter.

Riding my Suzuki SV650 down to the corner store the other evening to buy beer, I followed a silver-gray Mini Cooper into the parking lot. A fellow in his sixties got out and started using the instant teller. I passed by him on my way inside and said, “My motorcycle is bigger than your Mini.” He got a chuckle out of my impudence.

N N N

Last Friday was Halloween. The first trick-or-treaters were three girls, one of whom lives next door. The best costume among them was the a Teletubby. The girls were chaperoned by the neighbor’s uncle. He wore a motorcycle jacket and carried a helmet. I think he rides a Kawasaki sport bike at home in Ontario, Canada. What I know about him from his sister is that he’s an eccentric bachelor. Early in 2007, for God knows what reason, I told him about the spill I’d suffered while entering a parking lot and hitting a patch of gravel. I slid along on my elbow and was happy to be wearing body armor. No harm to me, but the bike had some minor damage. I acknowledged him where he lingered in back of the girls. In response, he said, “Have you fallen on your bike this year?” If you suppose this interrogative caught me flatfooted, you would be right. Instead of inquiring about my summer or whether I still my Suzuki, he had to ask if I had fallen again. As a matter of fact, since then, I’ve tipped over once while parking on soft dirt (no harm) and skidded on oil (probably a Harley’s) in the motorcycle parking slots of the William Street parking structure in Ann Arbor, going over and fracturing a brake lever. But at this moment, with an audience of impressionable youngsters, I sure didn’t feel like rehearsing these misfortunes. Sensing my reticence, he prodded me, “Remember, last time I talked to you, you had fallen.” “Ah,” I said, managing to compose myself. “I had a great season. Rode twenty-five hundred miles.” They left, and I found myself thinking it was the equivalent of having a semi-stranger come to the door and ask if I’d pissed my pants lately. Just taking a survey.

N N N

The idea of GM’s vaccinating itself with Chrysler to ward off a fatal ague is ridiculous, if only for the fact that the vaccine itself is tainted. Having inhaled the remains of Hudson, Kaiser, Fraser, DeSoto, Nash, Rambler, and Packard, Chrysler chronically wheezes and carries the scent of death.

My friend Greg, a resident of Santa Monica, California, recently asked my opinion about prospects for the Detroit Three auto manufacturers, and in response to my gloomy forecast, he seemed rather defensive, almost as if it were personal. I had to think about why that might be. Now in his late 60s, Greg is a true-to-your-school type of guy who still likes to recall his Purdue Boilermakers’ being number one in the country in 1966. (He grew up in Logansport, Indiana.) On my wedding day in 1981, Greg chauffeured my bride and me around L.A. in his ‘62 or maybe it was a ‘63 Chevy, which was a pretty nice car. It served as his daily driver until around 1988, when he acquired a ‘78 AMC Eagle, and he still tools around in that.

Greg says that he sees lots of Chryslers out there, so it’s hard for him to believe things are really so bad for that company. He might indeed see lots of examples of the Chrysler 300, which was initially popular but hasn’t sold well lately. Maybe he sees some minivans (the whole segment has declined). But nobody buys the Sebring, and what else does Chrysler have to offer? The Aspen, which is a Dodge Durango in high heels. I’ll bet there aren’t too many ungainly Aspens in fashion-conscious Southern California. Anyway, the West Coast has been Detroit’s weakest market for twenty years.

Maybe I asked Greg if it really makes any difference to him whether the Detroit Three survive. After all, a huge domestic industry exists outside Detroit. Yeah, Greg said, but aren’t they just assembling kits that come over from Japan or Germany? I patiently explained that a huge network exists, supplier firms that support the assembly plants, companies the average guy hasn’t heard of but are nevertheless employing lots of people. One reason Volkswagen decided to build its new plant in Tennessee is because of the extensive supplier base that supports the BMW plant in South Carolina and the Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama. VW reckons on 80-percent domestic content at job one.

Another reason VW chose Tennessee is that there’s no union. Not yet. The UAW has a big hard-on for those plants, though. And with the “card check” legislation (The Employee Free Choice Act) likely to emerge from Congress, they might finally be organized.

 ab

To digress a bit, I have timidly mentioned to a couple of people that I think Toyota might have peaked in this country. A whole series of events leads me to say so:

·          There was a charge of sexual harassment against a top executive in Japan

·         Quality issues with some new vehicles and a lot of discussion about Toyota’s overexpansion in this the United States

·         The Tundra pickup has been a bust

·         Toyota flopped in open-wheel racing and its 2007 debut in NASCAR was embarrassing

·          Some key Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A. managers have defected to other companies

·         Toyota keeps turning out boring vehicles, no one really cares about them, and they’re being outperformed by the competition (drive a spongy Camry and a taut Accord back to back and see for yourself)

·         Despite the wonderful aura cast over the organization by the Prius, it turns out Toyota is almost as dependent upon truck sales as the Detroit Three; the recent downswing related to high fuel prices caused Toyota’s sales to drop by 32.3 percent in September, and sales are down 10.4 percent for the year.

So it was authenticating to see the October 27 Automotive News commentary headlined “Take a good look: Toyota is losing its halo.”

 ab

As far as the Detroit Three’s problems, I mention that they’re stuck with too many brands and far too many dealers, thousands and thousands of them. This vast network used to be a great way to distribute products throughout the hinterlands, but today it makes no sense. How many Chevy dealerships are within twenty miles of my house? Seven, maybe. Import brands typically have a few hundred dealers nationwide, and each sells a lot more units and has a regional monopoly on profitable service work, too.

The other thing Detroit is stuck with is a bad reputation. Yeah, they make much better cars today, but younger people could care less. They don’t aspire to move up the ladder from Chevy to Buick; they don’t want Buicks, but the Hyundai Genesis sure catches their eye. It’s a fact that’s confounding to my older friend Greg, who cherishes the heritage of the Detroit Three.

Labor and management have collaborated to bring the Detroit Three to the current low point. The government hasn’t helped much, either. Next thing, they’re all going to jump into bed together in a consolidation and bailout that’s designed not only to save the Detroit Three but also the union. When Barack Obama was in Detroit early in the year and lectured the automakers about building more hybrids. I can just imagine how much more unsuccessful the industry will become if the government starts designing cars (even more so than they already have) and dictating the product mix. What if an activist group were to succeed in getting Congress to mandate that, say, twenty percent of all cars built must be hybrids? Endless bailouts are conceivable.

My friend Greg, a stubborn cuss, is highly independent and deplores welfare. But the car industry is going on welfare, and anyone buying a car from the Detroit Three will be a welfare recipient. If no one buys them, the government might just start giving them out. I wonder if Greg would ever get in line. His 1978 Eagle won’t run forever.