Beetle buyer welshes on Irish deal

Hitler’s favorite car, the ubiquitous Volkswagen Beetle, is no more.

Last Wednesday, the last Beetle rolled off the last assembly line in Puebla, Mexico. It was truly the end of an era. There were 21.5 million Beetles produced over 58 years. The design was commissioned by our old friend Herr Hitler, who ordered designer Ferdinand Porsche to produce a people’s car that looked like a beetle, for reasons unknown.

Back in the day, everyone who was anyone had a Beetle. John Lennon had his white Beetle on the cover of “Abbey Road.” Artist Andy Warhol used the Beetle for several of his quirky art works. James Bond left his Aston Martin in the driveway and actually drove a Beetle in “Octopussy.”

They cost something like $1,200 new and were so economical that you literally forgot to fill the gas tank. They were emphatically underpowered and quite the change from the V-8 Fords and Chevys we were used to. The heaters were so bad that you could die of exposure in a VW during a New England winter unless you were going more than 60 miles per hour, an almost impossible act.

Everyone has a Beetle story. Mine occurred while I was masquerading as a Boston insurance underwriter circa 1965. Having even less money than I have now, my Beetle came to me secondhand. It was owned by my former friend (you will find out) Denis Horgan, the recently defrocked columnist for the Hartford Courant. She was British racing green with a terrible shamrock painted on the back window by the shaking hand of Mr. Horgan, no Warhol he.

If memory serves (this was 40 years ago), my bullet-ridden Dodge (still another story) was smoking so much that it had become a public health hazard and was no longer allowed on the Commonwealth highways. Horgan was scraping enough money up for a trip to Ireland, which we all found miraculous.

Part of his financial scheme was to sell his Beetle to me. I paid him something like $400 and promised to send him $300 more when he got to Ireland.

We all waved goodbye to Denis at the airport and I immediately forgot about the other $300. As the weeks went by, his calls got ruder and ruder. He needed the cash to extend his vacation. I stopped answering my phone. Poor Horgan called everyone we knew to put the arm on me for the missing money.

Meanwhile, I drove the green VW around Boston, having a great time. The radio worked. When you put the key in the ignition, it actually started. These were rarities in the Meara fleet.

As pressure from the Emerald Isle mounted, I grudgingly assembled the now-famous $300 in the form of a cashier’s check and headed for the post office.

One of my numerous failings is that I think that I am funny. So I addressed the envelope to “Lt. Col. Denis Horgan, IRA Headquarters” and added his Dublin Street address.

The humor of the situation, if there was any, evaporated when the IRA the next day blew the head off a statue in London. The Irish police seemed to have noticed the blast because they delivered my letter to “Lt. Col.” Horgan at his Dublin apartment. Our man Horgan was afoot somewhere on the Tour of Dublin Pubs and missed the Garda visit. But his landlady was kind enough to fill in all the salient details.

He moved.

Word of Horgan’s displeasure preceded his return to Beantown. I did not make the welcome-home trip to Logan Airport, since I was hiding under my bed. But I was told that Horgan practically kicked the door of the plane open and screamed “Where’s Emmet?”

I made myself scarce for several weeks and made many out-of-town trips. I hardly ever answered the phone or the doorbell. Eventually, his furor subsided and he hated me much less than he did in Dublin. He never did see the humor in it, though.

The Volkswagen made it all the way to Florida when I fled the insurance industry (and Horgan). I sold it down there and I made sure I got cash.

I always thought the “IRA letter” was funny. How was I to know that the IRA was going to blow up that statue?

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.