PFRED

Southwest Airlines, somewhere over south-central Texas.

I’m on the plane home from the Louisiana work trip, thinking about the Pinzgauer.

Can’t even tell you how excited I am about this damned car. I keep making lists. Number one: fiddle with the carbs. Number two: drive to SD next weekend. Number three: pull off the gas tank, clean it, fix the gauge. Number four: pull all the levers, open all the compartments, just to see what’s hiding.

And I keep thinking about license plates. It’s a habit I’ve gotten into. PFRED — sort of a combination of Pinz, Fred, and the German for horse. Or maybe PFREDZ. No real point to that, I guess.

I want a license plate frame that says “Pinzgauer” / “Swiss Army Truck.” Don’t know what sort of funky novelty place you’d go for one.

Interesting that I won’t be able to go to any more British car shows. I don’t know that there are German car shows — though I suppose there would have to be. Porsche, BMW, Benz. Besides which it isn’t really even German, though I sort of think of Austria as more German than Germany. It was after all where Hitler had his retreat.

The guy next to me with the automobile magazine read the reviews of the new Toyota and the Jaguar, then flipped right past all the SUVs.

The Pinz never got a vanity plate. PFRED lives only in this journal entry.