{"id":3164,"date":"2014-02-18T16:58:09","date_gmt":"2014-02-18T14:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/?p=3164"},"modified":"2014-02-18T16:58:09","modified_gmt":"2014-02-18T14:58:09","slug":"eddie-and-the-white-smoke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/2014\/02\/eddie-and-the-white-smoke\/","title":{"rendered":"Eddie and the White Smoke"},"content":{"rendered":"

We love our 1995 Toyota Corolla. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in fantastic shape and is our only car for driving out of Jerusalem. (Our other car is a Better Place electric vehicle which is now essentially a very expensive \u00e2\u20ac\u0153city car\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s\u00c2\u00a0another story<\/a>.) So, when a car repairperson rolled down the window in his vehicle and called over to my son while he was stopped at a red light near work and informed him that white smoke was coming out of the tailpipe, we were all understandably concerned.<\/p>\n

The repairman in the next car handed over his card between the windows \u00e2\u20ac\u201c he specialized \u00e2\u20ac\u0153in just this sort of thing,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d of course be glad to take a look.<\/p>\n

Not so fast. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d just replaced the catalytic converter in the car a few weeks before that \u00e2\u20ac\u201c it had failed its air pollution test; these things happen from time to time \u00e2\u20ac\u201c so we decided that the best bet would be to take our car back to the shop where we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d had the work done as it was still under warranty. That meant a visit with Eddie.<\/p>\n

Eddie is not your typical car mechanic. Stylishly dressed with a button down shirt, longish hair and speaking close-to-perfect English, he comes across as something between a presentable version of Johnny Depp (one not in pirate costume) and a 50\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s rock and roller. Which is fitting given that, in his free time, Eddie plays in a local Jerusalem band.<\/p>\n

\"1961<\/a>He also has a fully restored beautifully bright red 1961 Plymouth Valiant in the back of his shop in Jerusalem\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Talpiot Industrial Zone. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It was the first automatic car to be imported into the country,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he told us with irrepressible pride. Does he drive it? He happily nods: to meet-ups of other vintage car owners. (These get togethers are held fairly regularly on Fridays in the parking lot of the Israel Museum. Who knew?)<\/p>\n

\"Art's<\/a>Eddie reminds me of Art, the owner of the car repair shop we used in Berkeley before we made\u00c2\u00a0aliyah<\/em>. Art also outclassed the other mechanics in the neighborhood. His waiting room was decked out in pastels with filtered water and soft music. (He did a good job of fixing the car, too.)<\/p>\n

Eddie doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have a fancy waiting room yet (he has a few bean bag chairs off the main garage \u00e2\u20ac\u201c more hipster than high class) but, despite his youth (he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in his 30s), he projects a clear confidence. So when he floored the accelerator trying to generate the tell tale white smoke and it wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t forthcoming, we believed him when he said the car was fine.<\/p>\n

He then offered an explanation for our run-in with the repair guy at that red light. Eddie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s shop is right next to the air pollution test facility, which car owners must pass through each year to renew their registrations. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Look how empty it is,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said, waving towards the adjacent building. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153No one buys cars at this time of year.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Since you have to take your car in for its check on the annual anniversary of when you purchased it, a lack of customers right about now would seem to back up that claim. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re all waiting until after Pesach when the 2015 models are delivered.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

With so few people getting their cars tested in the lead up to the holiday, he went on, repairs are also down and businesses need to try \u00e2\u20ac\u0153creative\u00e2\u20ac\u009d ways to generate new customers. The unstated correlation: an unscrupulous repairperson might flag you down for an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153invented\u00e2\u20ac\u009d problem with an unnecessary (and expensive) solution.<\/p>\n

Could the reason really be so cynical? Yes, probably. (Fortunately, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not an indictment of Israeli mechanics; deceit knows no borders.) We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re glad we found Eddie. And he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t charge us a shekel for some sound insight.<\/p>\n

This article appeared originally on The Jerusalem Post<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We love our 1995 Toyota Corolla. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in fantastic shape and is our only car for driving out of Jerusalem. (Our other car is a Better Place electric vehicle which is now essentially a very expensive \u00e2\u20ac\u0153city car\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s\u00c2\u00a0another story.) So, when a car repairperson rolled down the window in his vehicle and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[26,29,32],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3164"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3167,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3164\/revisions\/3167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}