I could see him smirking from underneath the SDL that he was working on as I got up out of my car, opened the hood and shut off the engine. Maybe I should have not expressed my surprise with his shop being open on Martin Luther King Day, after all his shop had been closed all through the Christmas Holidays when I desperately needed parts and advise.
Hans came out from under the long one with the normal expletives about when he chose to open or close his little piece of the Fatherland. I offered up a very rusty and frozen passenger door vacuum lock, he took one look and said he had one.
Into this wonderful room we go that is filled with more old Mercedes parts and manuals than I have ever seen. He fumbles the shelves for a minute or two and then pulls from the original box a perfect match for my vacuum door lock. Then I make a critical error of judgement by asking about vacuum line and if Auto Zone was OK as a source. It was then I realized he had been drinking beer, as he rose to his feet and into my face. The words that he had for anything that was not manufactured by Mercedes were very creative, I dare not post them to this board with two women lucking in our midst.
He pulled down a long roll of vacuum line, the proper kind and let out six feet from it and cut it with something that I am pretty sure was a German Boker.
30 bucks he said, and promise to replace all of that sh*t of vacuum line that you have already f*c*ed the car up with. Next time you come into my shop that hood better not come up.
As I watched him crawled back under the SDL I thought he and I might be developing a tenuous friendship.
Chip
Houston
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