Carol’s Column

Poor Dubowitz bites the dust

DUBOWITZ is dead. I still can't believe it after all we've been through together over the years.

Five speeding tickets. Four frontal contacts, one side, one rear. One loading-zone fine and countless parking tickets.

Indeed, the Johannesburg Traffic Department will miss Dubowitz almost as much as I will.

I remember when he first appeared in my life almost five years ago. Red, shiny and awfully smart — the first new car I'd ever owned. His number plate DBW312T — the only way I could remember that was by christening him Dubowitz, so Dubowitz he became.

Zippy, full of bounce, he took my children and the rest of South Africa's children to school, tennis, swimming, judo, soccer, rugby, ballet, piano and modern dance. Doctors, dentists, hairdressers, barbers all had Dubowitz to thank for the fact that their clients arrived on time.

With equanimity, he carried buckled bicycles and beat-up go-karts.

Over weekends, he'd transport four sailboards precariously balanced on his slender roof racks to dams all over the country. And last year, single-engined, he hauled a trailer loaded with eight sailboards and a dabchick all the way to St Francis Bay. That was without the inner load of one frantic mother and five children.

Courageous

A more courageous, gutsy car you'd never seen.

Weekly, the might of the supermarket crushed me, my budget and my bank balance — but Dubowitz remained unscathed. Loaded to the roof with brown paper packets, mealie-meal and dog food, he'd chug home happily without a chassis squeak or grumble.

There were the few occasions he was temperamental. Once in the Free State — in the middle of nowhere — while fetching sons from a regatta, he refused to move. Alone, except for a cow chewing cud, I got down on my knees and begged him to start. And, with a little encouragement from the cow, he eventually did.

I mean, there are better ways of spending the night than alone in the Free State with a cow and a car.

Then there was the time he inadvertently drove over an unseen traffic island and became the only circumcised car in Johannesburg when his exhaust was chopped in two.

Over the years, I spent a lot of time in, on and under Dubowitz.

We had what could be called a close relationship. In fact somebody once asked me where I lived.

“In my red Mazda,” I answered. I wasn't joking. No mother of four would be.

My first grey hair sprouted in Dubowitz when my oldest unmarried son got his learner's licence. And Dubowitz gave me heart failure when my second oldest unmarried son received his.

I still have grey hair, heart failure and Ralph still has his learner's licence. Dubowitz is lucky — he's out of it.

I remember how I cried the first time he ran away from me and banged into a tree when I forgot to put on the handbrake while fetching from Greenside High — the only school in the area built on a hill.

Dented

His rear was dented, so was my ego.

The kids gave me a deformed sunroof for a birthday present. No matter that it didn't open or shut. The only time I prised it open, there was a hail storm and home we rode, Dubowitz filling rapidly with golf ball-sized hail stones.

And then, three weeks ago, half clad, while packing to go on a trip, I looked out of the window.

“Good heavens, Nicky,” I said to my 11-year-old daughter, “there goes a car just like Dubowitz.”

An aspiring Sarah Bernhardt, she beat her breast with one hand and shrieked: “Mummy, that IS Dubowitz.”

It will suffice to say that Dubowitz was last seen in Parkwood being chased by one mother of four clad in bra and panties, one petite, dark-haired little girl and a 14-year-old de-sperado on a bike.

We never caught him.

Oh, the flying squad were magnificent. They were at the house within seven minutes.

In between sobs, I blurted out the tragedy of Dubowitz's theft. Sleuthlike, we went over every clue. How many wheels he had, etc — all the little details necessary for insurance.

“Was it locked, Mrs Lazar?”

“Of course, he was locked.”

“Ma, you never lock your car.”

They seemed hopeful they'd find him. “Perhaps someone's just taken him for a joyride,” they suggested gently, sensing my distress.

I went away, Dubowitz always in my thoughts, and returned, hoping against hope, that he'd be back, sitting smiling in the car port.

It was not to be.

They phoned me last week.

“Mrs Lazar?” the young voice said over the phone. I knew immediately that all was not well.

“This is Constable Kapp from the Parkview Police Station. About your car ... I have some news. Bad news.”

“How bad?” I whispered.

“Very bad,” he answered. “Brace yourself.”

I braced myself and fell off the chair, dislocating my left shoulder by landing in the waste-paper basket.

Stripped

“Mrs Lazar, Mrs Lazar? Are you OK?” shouted Constable Kapp. I think he thought I'd shot myself.

“Tell me the worst,” I said as I struggled upright, the waste-paper basket still stuck to my shoulder.

“We found your car,” he said, “stripped and burnt to a cinder.”

“A cinder?” I repeated and burst into tears.

Of course, it's silly. Dubowitz was only a car. But even so, he was more than a car. He was my friend.

And now he'd been transformed into an oversized charred French fry.

“If you want to see the remains,” said Constable Kapp, “I'll give you the address.”

“No, no,” I wailed, “let him rest in peace.”

“So what are you going to buy?” friends ask me sympathetically.

“Buy? With what the insurance will pay out, all I can afford is a bike.”

You see, there's a problem.

To me, Dubowitz was a Rolls-Royce. To my insurance, Dubowitz was yet another, beat-up little car.

But the truth of the matter is, I haven't really the heart to buy another car. I miss Dubowitz. Like an old pair of takkies, a mother-in-law, or a pimple on the chin, I was used to him.

So instead, I'm walking and I've got sore feet.

It's a long way to Parkwood, let alone Pretoria.

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