"You'll Never Walk Alone"—that goes for classics, too!
The Europeans are livening up the atmosphere at the current World Cup in the U.S. The Scots first made an appearance at a Red Sox baseball game in Boston, and later at a Marlins game in Miami. What particularly impressed the Americans wasn’t so much the game as the singing—such as the great soccer anthem “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” The song originally came from a musical; in 1963, it was turned into a hit by Gerry and the Pacemakers—another band from Liverpool that actually existed. Initially known as a song for Liverpool fans, it’s now a staple of the repertoire for true soccer fans all over the world.
“You’ll Never Walk Alone”—you’ll never walk alone. That’s exactly the thought that came to mind when I visited the O-iO on Pentecost this year—not in a stadium, but on the side of the road.
Apparently, a valve had snapped off. It almost seemed as if a spinning hubcap had caused the damage, given how askew the part in question was sticking out of the rim. Nothing like this has ever happened to me in all these years.
Calmly, I pulled out the spare tire, which, in a wise move, I had also equipped with a whitewall radial tire. It wasn’t until I tried to position the jack against the bumper according to the instructions that I realized it was unusable. Over the past 73 years, the retaining clip that wraps around the bumper panel had apparently been lost.
So I called roadside assistance so they could help me out with a hydraulic jack.
No sooner had I removed the hubcap than a young man stood next to me and asked if he could help. At first I said no, because the situation seemed clear: all I needed was a working jack. He didn’t have a suitable one either. Nevertheless, he decided to stay until the roadside assistance arrived.
To keep things simple, I ended up jacking up the car myself using the TCS helper’s jack and changed the tire. The “Yellow Angel” found the situation rather amusing and watched—an “easy job”! The spare tire actually had a bit too much air rather than too little—about three bar. I said goodbye to the roadside assistance worker; with over 600 classic cars in town, he was certainly better off there. I was able to handle the rest of the steps—tightening the lug nuts and putting the hubcap back on—without any trouble on my own. So the TCS guy was on his way again in no time.
Finn Arnold (18) with his Volvo 244 GLI, a volunteer roadside assistance worker and classic car enthusiast (Photo: Daniel Reinhard)
The young man, however, stayed to make sure I was actually back on the road.
As it turned out, he had passed his driver’s test just the day before and was now out on the road for the first time in his own classic car. His 1981 Volvo 244—which he was driving unaccompanied for the first time—has more than two and a half times as many years under its belt as its driver. By the way: The article about the young helper and his car will appear in the Swiss Classics Revue this fall.
“You’ll Never Walk Alone”—in soccer, people sing it; among classic car enthusiasts, they live by it.
You really rarely drive a classic car alone.
