Hello and welcome to 2024. First up I'll say my grand plans for 2023 did not come to fruition. I had planned to complete the restoration of my 1953 DKW F89P, a project I've been working on for some five years now. Family commitments diverted me from that outcome. In July 2023 my mother-in-law passed away at the age of 94 (five months shy of her 95th). She had, as they say, a good innings. The last two years were spent in a care home, something she adamantly fought to avoid, but unfortunately she was simply too frail and too dependent on care to live at home. My wife and I took her out of the home every Sunday for drives and excursions, but towards the end even that became impossible as she lost the ability to communicate and needed constant help to perform even the simplest tasts. When she passed away in July it seemed we would have time to ourselves on the weekend, but no.....
My aunty, my father's sister, had been living alone since 2006 when her husband died. It was a loss that she never really recovered from and over the years we noticed a decline in her mental wellbeing. She became convinced that members of her family were breaking into her house and moving items around to torment her. These thoughts grew to become obsessions and ultimately delusions. She locked herself off from the family and became a recluse. Although she would not let anyone visit her or come into her house, she did maintain contact with some of us by phone where she would elaborate the torments being waged upon her by unnamed dark forces in allegiance with members of her extended family.
Years went by until she suddenly went quiet. My brother, a policeman, swung by her house one evening to do a health check and, recieving no answer, he broke in and found her collapsed in the bathtub, delirious. She was taken to hospital and not expected to survive, but she was a tough old bird and proved everyone wrong, recovered and eventually made her way home. While she was in hospital we cleaned up her house, which had become a hoarders paradise, with mountains of shopping bags full of rubbish and junk filling the kitchen, dining room and lounge. It was a mess.
Despite the family's concerns about her ability to care for herself at home, she was allowed to return home and live on her own, immediately reverting to her hoarding, mess and reclusion. So we entered the cycle where she would lock herself away, have a fall, go back to hospital, be released back to her home, fall again six months later, and so on. The length of time between crises got shorter and shorter until the hospital finally intervened and had the courts declared her unfit to manage her own affairs. She was placed under the administration of my brother (I was overseas at the time of the hearing) and was placed in a care home. In terms of her physical health, this was a good outcome. She has never been healthier in the last decade, but in terms of her mental health, this is terrible. Losing control of her affairs only exacerbated her fears of persecution, plunging her into the depths of a complete psychological breakdown. She has only tentative connection with the real world now.
"Nor the years condemn"
This ongoing saga has played havoc with the rest of the family. My brother and I have been adamant in our view that we should do everything we can to make her remaining time as pleasant and comfortable as possible and this includes keeping her house intact, as she has been terrified "someone" will sell her house out from under her, as well as preserving her possessions and making her new accommodation as 'homely' as possible. Other family members see this as a ridiculous waste of time, given her parlous mental state and want to simply toss her stuff in a skip bin. There is also SO MUCH stuff in her house - she was a hoarder and has never thrown out any piece of mail or reciept since she moved into the house in 1968. It has been a lot of work, but I still consider it as a rewarding exercise. Almost daily my wife and I have picked through box after box of papers and objects and sorting them out. A lot of it is junk and goes straight into the bin, but there are also the gems of a life long lived in there. Today we found a small box of love letters written to my aunty by my uncle in the late 1950s when they were courting. They are so heartfelt they bring tears to your eyes. We found her school reports starting with her first year of school in 1945, along with old photos of our grandparents and great-grand parents that have been hidden away for decades. So much history.....
Anyway, last year it was all about Family and 2024 will continue in the same vein. Crises like this make one think about your own mortality and the legacy you leave behind. We ourselves have collections of books, records, vintage clothing and - in my case especially - tons of automobilia. We need to sort through that in the event something happens to us.
Speaking of which - late last year I received another large tranche of East German motoring magazines. I will need to scan these and post them on my GDR Motoring blog (here: https://gdrfahrzeuge.blogspot.com/2023/06/welcome-to-gdr-motoring-magazine-archive.html). I'll be translating selected articles over the coming year. You can expect them to be published here in due course.
In a similar vein, I made contact with a Czech/German scholar late last year who has done extensive research on the Ringhoffer family of Prague. The Ringhoffer's owned the Tatrawerkes, the famous streamlined car maker from Czechoslovakia in the 1930s and 40s. The Ringhoffers, being behind the scenes somewhat, rarely feature in the story of Tatra and their legendary cars, but from this research I am learning that they had far greater influence than one may have realised. I'll be following through this research in my Tatra blog (here: https://tatrat600.blogspot.com/2023/02/tatras-self-licking-icecream-cone.html).
The F89P Restoration
I need to pick that up again and dedicate some time to the car. I am counting on assistance from my friend Malcolm Barnes to help with the rewiring. Fortunately Malcolm is an electrical engineer (retired) and has just rewired his 1938 DKW F7. I have been helping him out with his F7 restoration recently, which has now been completed. Here is a picture of the car as purchased in South Africa in 1975.
And here it is after a complete rebuild. The body was derelict and unsalvageable, so the car has a reproduction wooden body built by my friend Winfried Kuhl, one of his last constructions before he retired.
I may have mentioned in one of my earlier restoration posts that I had lost my car's original carburetor after I took it off the car for cleaning. I know it will show up as soon as the restoration is finished. That is always the way. In addition to the carburetor, I also lost the mounting for the carburetor to the engine and the mounting for the air filter. I managed to purchase another carburetor mount, leaving me with just the rubber piece that bridged the gap between the carb mouth and the air filter to find. I have many boxes of rubber fittings, but despite long searches I could not find it anywhere - until this week. When rummaging through a box of parts in the boot of my F94 the F89P air filter rubber "appeared". What??!! Why was this in the F94? Regardless, it's now back on the F89P where it will not get lost again!
Sometimes you must rejoice the little wins.
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