At twenty one, with my first legal drink behind me and smoking right out in public, I was a sophisticated son of a bitch, I'm here to tell you! There I was, dufflebag in tow, in front of the Bahnhof in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany. They called their train stations 'Bahnhofs' for some reason. Well, they DID kinda look like a barn.

   I'd been fourth in my Code School class at Ft. Devens, and now I was ready to cut my swath through the world. Copy a little code, drink a little beer, kiss the girls and make them cry. Frauleins, they called 'em.

Beauty shot, front view    Well, so much for all that. I hadn't gone fifty yards when I fell hopelessly in LOVE! With a car. Well, not really a CAR. But, then again, not really NOT a car. It was a cream and tan Messerschmitt and it sat first in line at the traffic light, shaking and bouncing. I immediately forgot to breathe and ran over to look down into it. The driver looked up and smiled. I guess I smiled back, I don't remember. All I remember is the car. It had two wheels in front under wide, flaring, fenders and tapered back to a slim engine compartment, with a single drive wheel behind the passengers seat. There wasn't room for a steering wheel, only a handlebar with motorcycle type hand controls, and two seats in tandem. I could see all these details through its plexiglas bubble top. I wanted one and I wanted one NOW!

Beauty shot, rear view    The light changed and the love of my life popped and sputtered and drove away. I watched until it disappeared, like when Patsy moved to Tennessee in the seventh grade. I lugged my dufflebag back into the Bahnhof, and drew sketches of the three wheeled Messerschmitt while I waited for the train to my duty station in Kassel.

   After I was settled in Kassel, I began to formulate a plan. A new 1956 Messerschmitt cost six hundred dollars. I knew this because the local dealer, Herr Biershenk, sometimes had to shoo me out of his dealership so he could close up at night. As a PFC in the Army of the United States, I made one hundred ten dollars and some cents a month. Simple math will tell you that I could easily save enough to buy a Messerschmitt in just three short years, or eight months if I stopped smoking. I was sorely tempted, but the image of me cruising down the autobahn at seventy five klicks, smoking an unfiltered Pall Mall, was just TOO strong.

   The 1957 Messerschmitts came out with vast technical innovations, like engine controls on the floor and an electric windshield wiper, and they began to paint them different colors. We were all getting tired of cream and tan. I fell thirty dollars behind, too, when the price went up.

    I imagined the car had simply been named for the fighter plane, and it WAS, but guess what? It was designed by one of the guys who designed the fighter, and they were made in an old aircraft factory in Regensburg.

   Late in the 1957 model year, I had two hundred dollars rolled up in a sock at the very bottom of my footlocker and a crippling desire to own that cream and green floor display model Herr Biershenk polished every day and let me sit in sometimes. It was time to make a deal. Herr Biershenk prided himself on his showroom and merchandise, and was equally proud of the fact that he spoke absolutely NO English. I, on the other hand, knew dozens of German phrases, like "Where is the train station?", "Two beers, please!" and "Do you come here often?". But I wanted the car and he wanted to sell it, so he brought in his daughter, who spoke 'Elvis Presley' English, and somewhere between 'Don't be Cruel' and 'Heartbreak Hotel' we made a deal. All I had to do was sign an eighteen month note and get an International Drivers License.

Dale, Paul & Burt pose by the fleet

Dale Hobein, yours truly, and Burt Ringelstein pose with the fleet!

   I never understood why the Army made it so difficult to get a civilian drivers license. It might have been an effort to discourage us from falling in love with German cars. But I kept at it, and after several trips to the I. G. Farben building, I presented Herr Biershenk with my Intenational Drivers License and my two hundred dollar down payment. Herr Biershenk and the U. S. Army argued for a while over who would keep the title until the note was paid, but I didn't care who had it, I had the car of my dreams and nineteen cents a gallon gas at the PX.

Join the Army and see the world...    Not that gas was a problem. The little darling got eighty five miles to the gallon. It was a marvel of engineering! It had a one cylinder, two cycle, air cooled 200cc Sachs engine and a four speed gear box. The piston, I found out later, was about the size of a can of Vienna Sausage. Okay, okay, so it was a motorcycle engine, but it was all the engine it needed.

   Almost everything did double duty. The generators armature served as the engines flywheel, and the generator itself served as the starter when you fed electricity to it. And get this: no reverse gear was necessary, as the engine could be started backwards and ran just fine, thanks to an alternate set of points. This made the Messerschmitt perhaps the only car in the world with four speeds forward and four speeds reverse. Just don't try to drive it backwards in top gear. It was very hard to manage and had a tendency to 'go divergent' as the test pilots call it.

Messerschmitt in the Swiss Alps    My friend Burt and I drove the thing all over Europe, from the foot of the Matterhorn, to the Gypsy camps on the outskirts of Hamburg, to that crowded traffic circle around Place de l'Concorde.

   It was wonderfully reliable. Well, okay, there was this one time it gave us a problem. We'd left Paris headed in the general direction of Switzerland and as soon as we got statistically as far from help in any direction as possible, Herr Messerschmitts wonder car just simply quit. This kind of thing actually happened a lot, and by then we knew to switch to the reserve tank and drive to the nearest petrol station. Not that day. Nope.

   Burt and I pushed the car off the highway, set its rear wheel up on a stump, and raised the hood. Now, I have to tell you that between us Burt and I knew everything about machines. As kids, he'd had a Bendix brake on his bicycle and I'd had New Departure, so all the bases were covered. We took the air cooling jacket off and rotated the engine a few times by hand. It made a sucking 'thwup thwup' sound that just wasn't right. Burt leaned back against a tree and asked me if I had cleaned the exhaust port lately.

Clean out the EXHAUST PORT??    Clean the exhaust port? Well, no. Aren't they self cleaning? It turns out they aren't, especially since two cycle engines don't have any valves. As chain saw owners all know, you mix oil with the gas for a two cycle engine. Under certain conditions, like improper mix ratio, this oil can form a carbonized lump which, if left to itself, can CLOSE the exhaust port and stop an engine quicker than you can say 'Einbahnstrasse'.

   We had no choice. So Burt and I, using proceedures that would make Mr. Goodwrench cry, removed the muffler and manifold pipe and scraped out the exhaust port with a swiss army knife. Two days later, it climbed Gremsel Pass effortlessly.

   The Beatles were playing in Hamburg while we were there. We didn't find this out until fifteen years later, however. Our big entertainment in Hamburg was trying to find a hamburger. We wanted to be able to say 'We ate a hamburger in Hamburg!" Nothing doing. I don't think What's his name had even met the McDonald brothers yet.

That's not a scratch, it's a line of birds...    Herr Biershenk almost cried when I made the final payment. I never knew if he'd lost a bet or was just glad to be rid of me. None the less, he handed over the title and we parted friends.

   For an enlisted man, shipping a car back from Germany was a lot like shipping a wife back. There were forms to fill out weeks in advance, titles and powers of attorney to make copies of. They didn't make it easy. In fact, over behind the motor pool was a little collection of cars that somehow didn't make it and were in legal limbo. Their owners had gone back to the states leaving incomplete paperwork. Now the cars just sat there, unbuyable and unsellable. We canabalized them for parts.

   Yep, bringing a car back was a labor of love. I had to drive it to Bremerhafen two weeks ahead of time, so hopefully it would be in New York when my plane landed.

   Of course it wasn't! I had to wait a week and a half for it. I picked it up at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in a very bedraggled state. All my tools and cushions and been stolen and it had numbers and routing instructions written in wax all over it. They had drained all the gas, crankcase oil, and battery acid to make it a safer cargo. Oh, but there's a gas station right by the pier, they'll fix you right up, they said. I'll bet you're wondering if that gas station by the pier stocked two cycle engine oil. Of course they didn't. When I finally thought to ask for Outboard Motor Oil they told me I could get some of THAT from a station by the freeway.

This odd package came over by boat...    One of the bravest things I ever did was drive that Messerschmitt through the Holland Tunnel with it so recently back from the dead. I made it, but didn't relax until I'd gotten up and over the George Washington Bridge and pointed south.

   I guess I really shouldn't have done it, though. A Messerschmitt in the United States is truly a stranger in a strange land. They were imported briefly but had no dealer or parts support. Anything I needed had to be ordered by letter from Regensburg and shipped through customs in New Orleans.

   When the gear linkage broke in 1960 it cost over two hundred dollars to replace, and once I spent an entire weekend sculpting a set of Ford generator brushes to fit. I performed the exhaust port surgery once more, this time next to a Mississippi Delta cotton field, but with better tools.

This was NOT shot in Mississippi

   The 'war bride' analogy was holding true. My little car just didn't fit in over here. Well, maybe I was growing up a little more, too. People were either curious or laughed outright. It was hard to drive it and be taken seriously, even my employer regarded me as a 'Beatnick'. Finally one morning in 1961, when it didn't feel like going to work, I knew the time had come. I put an ad in the paper and waited.

   A day or two later a college kid in sandals and jeans knocked at my door. He had that look. He smiled when I asked him if he knew what a Messerschmitt was. We went out to look at it. I told him it didn't run and he smiled again and nodded. He ran his fingers over the bubble top and told me he'd take it. He handed me the fifty dollars I'd asked for and whistled for his friend, who backed his VW down my driveway and hooked on.

   They towed it away. With tears in my eyes, I watched until it was out of sight. Like when Patsy moved to Tennessee in the seventh grade. I saw it again briefly two weeks later out by the campus. Still under tow. That was the last time I ever saw it. For a couple of years in the late sixties there was a cream and tan up on blocks in a carport in south Jackson, but I never stopped to inquire. No reason to.

   You know, I never even named it? Burt tried to name it 'The Green Bean' but it didn't stick. It should have had a name. You never forget your first love. It really should have had a name.

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