May 3, 2011
e-mail from Klemens

Laura and I have talked more about it, and I think that at this time, we
will not pursue the purchase of an additional car. If Benjamin wants to
use Laura's car while she is working, he can drive to work with her and
pick her up at the end of the day. Better, he can walk or ride his
bicycle to his lifeguarding job at the Belmont Hill Club. He
procrastinated so long with driver's education that the very lax driving
school he was attending in Waltham has gone out of business, and we have
agreed that rather than spend 20 some hours in class, since he is now
18, he can take the driving test without a certificate from a driving
school. This will cost us an additional $600 or so over several years in
increased premiums, offset slightly by the $150 we will not have to pay
to a second driving school. The driving test will cost $90, because we
will have to rent a car, since the requirement is now that there be a
handbrake accessible to the examiner, between the seats, because of the
possibility that the examiner might need to stop the car suddenly. None
of the vans, obviously, meets this new criterion. The only place Laura
was able to find in the Greater Boston area that would allow its cars to
be used for a driving test is a South Shore chain with a site in Quincy.
Meanwhile, Benjamin spends every possible moment socializing with his
friends, continually spending money unnecessarily on food, and helping
at home only under duress, or when he expects to ask one of us a special
favor. He expects to be provided with spending money, but has no
interest in working more to earn it. He scheduled the driving test
without considering our schedules, and we are asking him to change it.
Without being punitive, we do not think that it is desirable to
encourage his leisure activities further by providing a car for the
summer. Restricting his driving by requiring him to ask Laura for the
use of her car may even allow us to protect him against risky situations
that he would not avoid on his own. He is still very young, and although
he has slowed down, probably the less he drives in the next few months,
the better. He is not the person I was when I was eighteen years old. He
is kind, and sensitive, and intelligent and thoughtful, and increasingly
intellectually engaged, but he does not like to work, or to save, and he
is quite ready to live for the day, without considering the future.

We will therefore defer the purchase of another car for at least a year.
I anticipate that Rebekah will need a car when she goes to Veterinary
School - she hopes to go to Tufts, in Grafton - and at that time, we may
want to buy one, although it is possible that we might continue as we
are doing now. Even if the green car becomes unusable, it is likely that
it would be more economical for me to rent a Zip Car or a conventional
rental when I needed a car and you were out of town, rather than to buy
another car.

You asked, near the end of Rebekah's visit, whether there were any
problems with the blue van that she was driving. I realized then that
she had not discussed with you her decision to take it to Chico's on her
arrival, to have the squeaking brakes repaired. I said that the car was
fine, because I didn't want to discuss it at the time; I didn't want a
disagreement just before Rebekah left and just before you left. Laura
tells me now that Rebekah told her that you had told her not to ask
anyone to check the brakes, because anyone to whom she took it would
just want to repair the brakes. Rebekah was made nervous by the noise,
took it to Chico's without telling you, and I paid $307 for their brake
work. I will give you the receipt so that you have the complete record
of that car's maintenance. This episode demonstrates the difficulty of
your presuming to maintain or to determine the maintenance of cars
driven by other members of the family, even if you purchased the car,
pay the insurance, and are responsible for it. Rebekah obviously didn't
trust your judgment about the brakes. One of the reasons that Laura and
I do not want to buy another car at this time, in addition to the
pedagogic considerations, is that we both recognize that you would be
paying for it. It is unthinkable that we should invade our retirement
accounts for this purpose, and we will be asking you for substantial
help with tuition this year. (Laura says that it will be $75,000 within
several months.) Unless we spent some of Rebekah's money - most of which
you contributed - on a car, we don't have the cash flow to pay tuition
and fully fund our 403(b) and IRA accounts. If you pay for the car, you
get to determine how it is maintained, at least most of the time. I am
not going to take trust money to buy _another_ car, this one for the
childrens' convenience, and tell you that we will maintain it as we see
fit, without consulting you. As I write this, I see Mutti in the kitchen
in Konnarock, and the phrase that comes to mind is "ich will Dir nicht
vor dem Kopf stossen." I recognize that the repair procedure I describe
is already the situation with respect to Laura's car, which you bought.
Quite frankly, if she did not feel free to spend money on that car at
Chico's as she sees fit, if every repair required your examination of
the car and approval, the situation would be intolerable to me.

In short, although we are going to ask you to help us pay Harvard and
Yale and Dartmouth, and although you can consider that you are
indirectly helping to pay for our 4 days in New Hampshire in the winter
and our week on Nantucket in the summer, we are not going to ask you to
help us support Chico's and Rancatore's, the expensive Belmont Center
ice cream parlor to which Benjamin would doubtless use a car to drive. 

As far as the "car of her own" is concerned, I think that despite the
visit to Chico's, Rebekah is less concerned about ownership, and more
about the aesthetics of driving alone in a van which she perceives as
disproportionately inefficient in its use of fuel. It makes her feel
foolish, and I think probably dowdy. Small cars are perceived not only
as greener, but as more becoming to a young person without a
family.(Consider Margrit's life-long act.) I understand how Rebekah
feels; I sympathize with her. We bought the 1974 Valiant because I
wanted a small car, and I wanted a car with a manual transmission. You
would never have bought a car that small. It was a good thing that I
learned to drive a standard shift, and I was happier on expeditions with
my friends in that car than I would have been driving a station wagon. I
remember Jamie Traver coming to the Mission Park Garage with me, next to
the old Massachusetts Mental Hospital, formerly the Boston Psychopathic
Hospital, now replaced by some new Harvard building. Jamie said that a
Valiant was just the sort of car he would have expected me to drive; in
its assumed modesty, it was an important negative status symbol. So I
understand Rebekah's aesthetic, but I am not prepared to buy a car to
indulge it at a time when we do not need another car. I will save the
money to help her with her childrens' education when she is earning
$70,000 a year as a large animal veterinarian and her husband, should
she and Matt eventually marry, is teaching school.

I hope that you and Mommy are well. I will leave tomorrow morning for
Nashville, returning Friday evening.

Klemens 
-----Original Message-----
From: Ernst Meyer [mailto:ernstmeyer@earthlink.net] 
Sent: Tuesday, May 03, 2011 10:58 AM
To: Meyer, Klemens
Subject: May 3, 2011

The sun is shining through a very light haze. It's very quiet,
the only sound audible (by me) is the infinitely patient humming
of the computer. Mommy is well. Presumably it was in one of the crowded 
subway
car in which I commuted to the hearing last Thursday, where I contracted
a very mild upper respiratory infection which has manifested itself only
by sore throat, hoarseness and a tracheal cough. No fever.
Interestingly,
it's the slight tonsillar edema that causes the discomfort when I'm
recumbent, and disappears almost completely when I'm up and about,
the converse with what goes on in my legs: an interesting corroboration,
for what it's worth, of the principles of cardiovascular dynamics.

I agree that we should provide the children with cars, and that almost
surely another one should be bought. To be considered: new or used,
style, model, financed from funds in trusts of Mommys and mine or yours,
or mixed, maintained primarily by myself or by "professionals",
registered
in whose name, yours, Laura's mine or one of the children, parked
primarily
in the left side of the garage or in the driveway. All of this has
significant financial, insurance, legal and intra-family consequences,
which need explicit or implicit consideration.

I am open to all solutions, - but my preference, because it's
financially
most advantageous, is that I should purchase a used car guided by
strictly
economic criteria, that Rebekah, Nathaniel and Benjamin should share
the red 2011 and the blue 2005 Minivans; that you and I should share
the newly acquired second hand car, the 1997 green minivan and the
1995 blue Nantucket minivan. The threshold issue is whether Rebekah
wants "a car of her own", an arrangement which would be relatively more
expensive.

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