Life Is Cool Sometimes

My brother told me this story over Father’s Day weekend, and I’ve been meaning -- but consistently forgetting -- to tell someone about it. I've probably got some of the details a bit wrong, but they don't matter so much. It's more about the spirit of the story, which is pretty awesome, I think.


My brother and his wife are former NYC residents who moved to Bethlehem, PA in search of affordable housing when their daughter was born. She’s two years old now, and her favorite place on the entire planet is a car museum in Hershey, PA. She loves going there so much that my brother and SIL decided to purchase annual memberships to the museum, rather than pay each time they go. Because they are members, they were invited to a cocktail reception and preview of the current exhibit at the museum. And because they’ve been a bit desperate to go pretty much anywhere and do pretty much anything since they left the non-stop action of NYC, they decided to attend.

Perhaps it’s the snobby New Yorker in all of us who live in New York long enough to become snobs, but my brother and SIL were not expecting much from this reception. And shortly upon arriving, they find themselves watching in horror as a casually-dressed man jumps over the ropes cordoning off the public from the cars, pulls open one of the car's driver-side doors, and begins rolling down the window. They notice, however, that the man has an obvious familiarity and casual comfort with the car, and combined with the fact that none of this generated so much as a flinch from whatever security might be in place at a car museum in Pennsylvania, they make the (correct, it turned out) assumption that the man was there “with the cars.”

A bit later, they introduce themselves to the man and inquire about his relationship with the cars. It turns out he’s a local car restorer. When he was younger, everyone told him that the better money was in car repair, but he loved to restore cars, so that’s what he learned. He nurtured a modest car restoration business in Allentown, PA. Got himself a wife, some kids, probably a dog. Nothing fancy. Until the day when a customer arrived to his shop with a car. You’ll have to forgive my lack of knowledge about cars, but whatever it was, there are only three of them left in then entire world. The customer requested some work; the man said he’d be honored to restore the car. He does the work, and after some time, receives a call from the office of a Mr. Bulgari. Mr. Bulgari owned the car he’d restored and wanted him to come to NYC for a meeting. A car would be sent to transport him to and from the meeting; he needn’t worry about a thing. Understandably, our man the car restorer was a bit concerned. I’m not sure what concern precisely crossed his mind, but if I were in his shoes at least, I’d have been thinking Mob.

Still, he heads to NYC, and meets Mr. Bulgari, who it turns out is Nicola Bulgari, of watch, jewelry, and perfume notoriety. He is also one of the premier car collectors in the world. And perhaps I’m jumping a bit ahead of the story, but he’s a cool car collector. He’s not terribly enamored with the extravagant cars owned only by the most wealthy; he prefers the cars that regular people drove. He has no interest in souping up the cars in his collection; he restores them according to their original specifications. His only requirement is that he needs to fit in the car. He’s a big guy, apparently, and his joy comes from driving the cars, not collecting them. He will not purchase a car he cannot drive; he’d rather another collector enjoy the car.

So back to our car restorer. It turns out Nicola Bulgari has two car collections: one in Rome, Italy and the other in Allentown, PA. He’s got some work he needs done on some of the cars, and he’s got some auctions he’d like the car restorer to attend on his behalf. He dispatches the restorer almost immediately to an auction, with instructions to secure two cars. The restorer checks in to the auction and, based on his appearance – jeans and a ballcap – is instructed to stand near the back of the room. The restorer realizes that he may have trouble participating in the auction so far from the action, so he asks one of the people leading the auction if he might move a little closer. The person requests to see his bidding paddle. Apparently paddles are handed out according to one’s bid limit – the lowest numbered paddles go to the people with the highest limits. Our man the car restorer is holding paddle #6. He is escorted to the middle of the front row. Past Jack Nicholson. Past Jay Leno.

The story fell mostly to vignettes at this point. Nicola Bulgari is apparently a shy man who keeps a close group around him whom he treats like family. Our humble car restorer became the personal overseer of Nicola Bulgari’s Allentown-based car collection. (There is a similarly cool story about Bulgari's personal driver.) My favorite of the vignettes involved a trip he took with Mr. Bulgari to Los Angeles. Bulgari suggested they visit Jay Leno and view his car collection. Upon entering the room, Jay Leno takes one look at the car restorer and exclaims, “You’re the guy from the car auctions!!!” Apparently all the regular high-end bidders were desperate to know who was the country bumpkin sweeping in and buying up all the cars.

But what I liked, perhaps best about the story is that it doesn’t appear, at least from my brother’s telling of it, that the guy has changed at all. Nor the Bulgari has asked or needed him to change. They both love cars, and that’s all that matters. They take rides together in Bulgari’s car collection on the back roads of Pennsylvania. Sure he has a nicer shop than he used to have, and I’m certain his family’s standard of living has improved somewhat dramatically, and he’s seen a whole lot more of the world than he’d ever have seen if Nicola Bulgari hadn’t driven into his life. But he’s still the guy who turns up to the semi-formal museum exhibit opening in jeans and ball cap and lives with his family in Allentown, PA, and there's something very awesome about that.

So that's The End, I guess. You could lay a moral over this story -- "if you follow your dreams, good things will happen" or some shit -- but I think it's cooler (and more accurate) to just leave it as a story about something awesome and unexpected that happened to someone out there in the world. Yeah. Just thought it was cool.