Old Cars

 

It is said no news is good news but  GANNET2 has not gone to the shop and there is no news when this pesky coolant leak will be attended to.  Thus frustration is building and I must struggle to not yield to the desire to stamp my foot and have a gringo moment. I must be more like Rusty who has spent his life teaching me how to deal with adversity.

Three old cars showed up at Adrián’s place for a social call. A 1930 Ford sedan and a 1929 Ford pick up.

Both cars have been in the same family since new and according to the grandson of the purchaser the pick up started life as a sedan but his grandfather decided to convert it with wooden buckboards. 

The cars even come with windows, currently plastic awaiting glass panes as the restoration continues. 

The cars start run and stop no problem. I was told the foot pedal accelerator is a bit weak so it’s easier to use the hand throttle for big changes in speed…

The really indispensable accessory is a maté kit to refresh the driver.

No speedometer…those were the days.  

The crew:

That was pretty cool checking out these hundred year old cars but for me the belle was the perfectly restored, to my eye, 1962 VW Bug accompanying the oldsters.

My first wife had an identical VW when I married her in 1983.  It was green not red but it was the sane car.  I’ve never owned a 1929 car so there is that.  This VW is an original 1200cc according to the owner with electronic ignition and an alternator (for those who care about such trivia):

My wife and I took our honeymoon in her VW driving from Santa Cruz California to Glacier National Park on the Canadian border.

I was waiting for my green card so we couldn’t cross to Canada as I wasn’t allowed to leave the country but there was lots to see. We drive that VW Bug to Denver and flew to Philadelphia to meet her family. That went as badly as you might imagine but I can’t blame the car for that. It was a great car, not easy to lock as it got stolen one day but we did get it back as the felons weren’t that smart.

My buddy Giovanni who died in Italy two years ago had an orange bug after he graduated high school. We drove it all over the place but the fuel consumption was too much for us and he sold it on. 

A cop at the Key West police department had a similar vintage VW in turquoise also perfectly restored. Eric Biskup let me take it for a drive a few months before he died of cancer. I thought he was one of the nicest most interesting cops in the department. 

So many stories and so many memories just from seeing this car. 

In Chile we saw some Colombians overlanding in one. They were asleep when I walked Rusty past them in Puerto Varas so I never met them, just the car:

And in the World Cup Uruguay is not doing so well but the flags are still out.

Craft Market

When Layne first heard about the market scheduled  to held at a nearby farm, La Vigna, she shrugged and figured we would be long gone by then. As it happened we were still right here on that crisp sunny Saturday morning that was June 20th the last day of Fall.

We had no idea what to expect as the farm (“Granja” or gran-HA in Spanish), is a cheese factory with a tasting room on normal days. It’s a pretty spot and I imagine it’s quite the summer destination just 15 minutes from the River Plate beach as well:

This was not a normal day. 

Set up around the dining table were a bunch of stalls selling local products. 

Chivito (little goat) sandwiches are the national dish in Uruguay, similar to a Key West Cuban sandwich only they normally don’t feature actual goat. 

These did, with bacon ham provolone cheese tomato lettuce and egg, sometimes fried in this case boiled.  

We took these to go with pastries for dessert from the lady next door:

Layne had the caramel swirl on the left while I like cooked fruit and had the apple (“manzana”) pie on the right. The tiramisu in the middle didn’t appeal for  some reason. For $2:50 each we should have splurged.  

Then it was a case of wandering and checking stuff out.

Cheese, and yes we got some. The red one was a mild goat cheese which I usually don’t like, covered in paprika. We also got a cheddar- like cheese streaked with red wine, the full bodied Tannat popular in Uruguay.  

Mushrooms, one of my favorite foods.

Layne made a risotto with these and it was perfect. 

And so forth. 

Uruguayans are shy and act a bit standoffish unlike Argentinians across the river who engage with foreigners without problem. One vendor sidled up and excused herself to ask how us Americans came to hear of this event and did we live in Uruguay. That’s a question we get asked a lot and this area only 45 minutes by car from a big expatriate center in Colonia del Sacramento. 

Oh snd don’t forget the beer. It was too early to start pulling draft counts but we took a four pack home.

A couple of Belgian lagers, a porter and a weird but interesting barley wine. Uruguay is very civilized.