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Alfi is a 1978 Alfa Romeo Alfetta. All About Alfi
Alfi Incident 1: How we came to
find Alfi Alfi Incident 1: How we came to find Alfi. The story of how we came to find her goes back to before she was born. For a few years I had a 1938 Austin 7 which I kept in England. With a friend I drove that little gradient detector from Lands End to John O’Groats. We took part in Rallies and Gymkhanas, and joined in the camaraderie of English car clubs. But we had a problem. Every time we left England to come home to Canada we had to store her. While she was ever so tiny, she was a nuisance in the corner of anyone’s garage. To put her in covered mews parking in London--even in a place not big enough for an ordinary car--cost at least a thousand pounds a year. Then we heard about the Paradise Garage. This London establishment stores cars at no charge in a public showroom. All you have to do is state your price. So that’s where she went. The price I named seemed to me to be outrageously high, but when we returned one day to pick her up she had been sold. James, who is Sara’s twin, aged 9 at the time, and I wandered out of the Paradise Garage with pockets full of Pounds Sterling. I was not familiar with Alfas, their legendary performance, shortcomings, or the legions of loyal aficionados. After a test drive at an Alfa specialist we decided to give the Italians a try. I loved the handling, the smooth five-speed transmission, peppy performance, and the bark out the rear. It was an unusual one too; our Alfi was a 1.6 liter hatchback with right-hand drive. We dumped our ill-gotten Austin money and James and I roared off to the Continent.
Alfi Incident 2: Some Accidents with Alfi. At one time I stored Alfi in a south London suburb with a recently divorced lady named Daphne who had a big house and a three car garage. One day Daphne phoned me in Canada to say my car had been in an accident. I had asked that the car not be taken out. She announced that the accident had happened in her garage! Apparently her ex husband John had driven home abruptly on a wet night and skidded sideways into Alfi. This unpleasantness required substantial bodywork and a re-spray. John’s insurance company later paid with regrets. Shortly after that event John took up with another woman and went away for good. But the trouble with Alfi wasn’t over. John’s father was depressed about the breakup and, believe it or not, came to live with Daphne. He had some idea about patching things up, but he was unable to do this--with the result that he became more and more depressed. He became so upset that he decided to hang himself from a beam in the garage. This he performed successfully by jumping from Alfi’s recently repainted bonnet. Another phone call to Canada. Another blemish. Another repair. Ironically, Daphne’s home insurance paid off.
Alfi Incident 3: An Unusual Hitch-hiker I was driving in the Irish countryside near Sligo and I picked up a lonely looking elderly gentleman who was in need of a lift. I determined his destination which was a town 50 or so miles away. He seemed a sour and unpleasant sort. After a while he noticed my windshield camera. This is a small camera which is attached near the visor, pointing out the windshield in order to take shots of the view forward. It’s fired by a release cord that leads down by the steering wheel. "What’s this?" he said. I explained. "You wouldn’t be with the IRA, would you?" I assured him I had nothing to do with that particular organization. After a period of brooding silence he said, "Well I am." Then he spoke eloquently and enthusiastically about the British soldiers he helped blow up. For miles I heard a litany of hate and violence that went back to his grandfather. He had a memory like a steel trap. I began to wonder if he had noticed my British plates. I wondered if he had explosives in the knapsack he bounced on his knee. My knuckles turned white as I gripped the steering wheel and I felt sweat running down my back. Finally his destination appeared and I was able to deposit him beside a statue of St Patrick. He scurried off to attend what he said was an important secret meeting. Shortly after I borrowed a hose from a farmer and washed Alfi.
Alfi Incident 4: An Overnight Guest I had checked in at a modest hotel in a Portuguese town called Odiciche. In the morning when I approached the Alfa I noticed something different. There was an object sticking out the window. As I got closer I realized it was someone’s feet--someone who was lying across the seats. It was a person sleeping under a blanket, clinging onto a tattered backpack, their feet out the partly rolled up window. On the backpack was an embroidered Canadian flag. I sat in the nearby café for a few minutes and then returned to the car. I tapped gently on the windshield. A young man unfolded himself from the blanket and blinked up at me a few times. Then he pulled himself together and climbed out. "I noticed your Canadian flags," he said, pointing to the ones on the rear windows. "I was pretty desperate for a place to sleep last night. By the way, I’m from Kamloops, B.C., where are you from?" Back at the café I bought him an espresso and ended up driving him to Sagres where Henry the Navigator instructed young seafarers in his school of Marine Geography. I learned from my new friend that Canadian flags are a passport to hospitality which brings together travelers who wouldn’t give the time of day to one another if they were in their own country. Those flags stayed on Alfi for several years until my son James, on another trip, noticed they had been skillfully removed by someone in Turkey who felt they were something worth collecting.
Alfi Incident 5: A Mysterious Disappearance I left Alfi in the free parking lot at the airport in Faro, in the south of Portugal. I attempted to give a gratuity to a security policeman who was standing nearby. He insisted on not taking the money and said he would be glad to keep an eye on her. I was to be gone for a year and I was worried because some of the parkees had no headlights or other body parts. One old Mini didn’t even have wheels. This place, I thought, could be a bad place, it could be the end. When I returned the next year things were really confusing. First of all there was a large building standing where the parking lot used to be. There was no Alfi to be seen. I ran everywhere on the extensive lot looking for her, fearing the worst. I even thought of renting a car. Then I spotted the same security policeman I had tried to bribe the year before. I made it clear to him that I was looking for the Alfa Romeo which I had entrusted particularly to him. After some discussion with his colleagues he seemed to recognize me and led me practically to the horizon to what looked like a small wrecking yard. Here were vandalized and pirated cars in various degrees of decay and decrepitude. And among these sad orphans, sat Alfi, smiling, intact. My policeman explained that they had no idea I was going to be away for so long and when the building was started a group of men had to pick her up bodily and carry her out of harms way. She was untouched and undamaged, a little scorched and faded from the relentless Algarve sun. With the use of jumper cables and another car which the policeman brought over, I got Alfi started. This time I pressed a large bill into his hand in such a way that no one was able to see. It stuck. It was an excellent bargain.
Alfi Incident 6: Fellow Travelers. Alfi was stored for more than a year in the basement of a lovely home in the Rousillon area of France—a place called Mas Pechonnier. In the middle of the night, unable to sleep with the time warp, I crept into the darkness and hooked up the charger. With a few cranks Alfi roared into life. After a sufficient warm up I turned on the heater and the fan. I was greeted by a shower of small objects hard against my face, snorted like a shotgun blast out the dashboard ducts. I pulled the car out into the dawn and realized I had mouse droppings all over my face and clothes. I now abandoned her to the open air and the morning sunshine. Later, I vacuumed and picked fluff and twigs and other unidentifiable items out of the heating system. Mice had been everywhere. They had even gnawed at the alternator-belt, for which I fortunately had a replacement. Mice had used my English worsted wool deerstalker for a nest. My polyester umbrella had been shredded for raw material and even tubes in my paint-box had been raided for some, perhaps creative, purpose. About noon I once more sprayed all of Alfie’s orifices with disinfectant and we took off for the day’s mosey. At the site of an ancient barrow-mound I turned up the heating fan and a full grown mouse popped out of the dashboard and onto my lap. I opened the door and flicked the little traveler out. The Rousillon mouse was sluggish from the heat or the inhalation of toxic fumes, but a few minutes in the sunshine perked him up and he presently disappeared between the boulders of the ancient ruin. |
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