Brunnhilde
0369ewCambHosp.jpg I remember with pain the day I banged brand-new Brunnhilde into the back of a taxi transporting a crippled MD on Commonwealth Ave in Brookline. On my way to Control Data in Waltham, concentrating too much of my alleged brain on the holes I’d punched in the Hollerith cards in the box on the shotgun seat.

One of the better evidences I have of my sweetheart’s true Christian spirit is her reaction when I phoned her to confess. She insisted: “I’m not angry with you.” Don’t remember where, in those days (circa 1970) I found a phone… Not in my pocket, to be sure.
In those days, you could get away with parking Brunnhilde in “Compact Only” slots: her footprint matched that of her sedan-model cousins (or, strangely, that of a VW Bug). But we could (and did) carry a 4′x8′ sheet of plywood, flat in the back; many bigger wagons couldn’t. Valerie remembers also Brunnhilde’s surprisingly tight turning radius: she could pull a u-turn in a narrower street than could other cars, including the notably smaller Brigitte.

To haul plywood (or to make a bed in the back), of course, you had to fold the rear seat-back forward, to create the space that Rick dubbed “Where Horses Stay.” As our family grew, the kids often rode where horses stay; the nannies hadn’t yet debased the law to the point of insisting that we wear seat-belts.
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