As most of you know, I do not follow Republican politics very closely. But this year there has been a major exception to the rule. The Herman Cain/Michele Bachmann/Rick Perry enjoyment has been endless as the Republicans vie for their party’s nomination to run against Barack Obama.
The Republicans have been at it for several months now and the field has been narrowed. It appears that the Republican challenger in 2012 will be Mitt Romney. Mitt is, of course, not his real name. I have been confused as to whether the word Mitt refers to a catcher’s mitt or a first baseman’s glove. It turns out that his proper name is Willard. That is a respectable name ranking alongside of such other names as Ezra.
We are now told that Mr. Romney is building a house in southern California that is extravagant, even for the social set that Romney comes from. More than anything else, the house is distinguished by elevators that will bring his automobiles up to ground level.
I get along with a two-car garage which is attached to our house. Mr. Romney seems to want to keep his automobiles below ground level, which would require the use of an elevator.
In the first place, there is a dispute involving the number of houses owned by Mr. Romney, which I believe comes to four or five. In the Presidential elections of 2008, John McCain said that he couldn’t remember how many houses he owned. We should all be so fortunate in our financial situations as to forget how many houses are owned.
Now that Mr. Romney has decided that he needs an elevator to bring his car to him, I am reminded of an incident that took place in St. Louis shortly after the Second World War. In the St. Louis case, the theater district along Grand Avenue is apart from downtown St. Louis. Parking has always been a problem. But somewhere in the late 1940s, there was a solution. It was called “parking in the sky,” a solution to overcrowded parking. In the new situation, the cars were parked on top of each other rather than side by side. St. Louisans were intrigued as the six story “parking in the sky” was constructed.
It was simply a steel structure, standing about six stories high. As I recall it, there may have been two or three such structures. When a customer entered the parking lot, his car would be placed on an elevator which would take it to the next vacant space in the “parking in the sky” garage.
The long and the short of it is that the “parking in the sky” became a cropper. In some cases the attendant parking the car did not fully engage the emergency brake. Then of course there was the problem of having a substantial number of patrons coming for their cars at once, after the theater had closed for the evening. “Parking in the sky” was declared a major disaster soon after it had been built up as St. Louis’s expected bid to solve the parking problem of a major city.
Unfortunately Mr. Romney does not consult with me. I could have told him about the “parking in the sky” experiment that was a failure in St. Louis more than 60 years ago. But Mr. Romney has not consulted experts and prophets like myself. But I presume that Mr. Romney’s builder has solved the parking problem by inverting the “parking in the sky” by putting the parking below ground level. One way or another, when Mr. Romney or Mrs. Romney calls for their car, it would be slid onto an elevator with the engine running and the heating on and then delivered to Mr. Romney’s front door.
Mr. Romney claims that he only drives four cars. He identified a Mustang and one other car as the cars he drives but he also said that Mrs. Romney drives “a couple of Cadillacs.” That makes a total of four cars, which with the enormous house that is being built for him somewhere near San Diego would be no problem. Somehow or another, Mitt Romney has decided that he needs an elevator in his garage. I deeply regret the fact that most of us have so few automobiles that elevators are not required. Very possibly Mr. Romney started thinking of adding to his fleet.
As you can see, I am not as informative as I would like to be on the subject of elevators for cars. The St. Louis “parking in the sky” was nearly seventy years ago. In future editions of Ezra’s Essays, I will try to determine how many cars Mr. Romney proposes to buy and how he proposes to elevate them, presumably from below ground to ground level. But for the moment, I am stumped as to why a driver would require elevators when he would be parking at home. And so with that thought, I will leave you hoping to be better informed about elevators for automobiles.
E. E. CARR
April 1, 2012
Essay 644
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In honor of tonight’s debate. Big long essay coming next! Also, I may be wrong but I think Japan has also figured out a way to do the whole car elevator thing, because of a) space considerations and b) having been to Tokyo on a couple of occasions, car elevators strike me as exactly the sort of thing that the Japanese would enjoy.