Re: Wheelin'

[adh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Sandwich Maker)]

" From: farna@xxxxxxx
" 
" On March 5, 2006 andrew hay wrote:
" 
" 
" > " The last car built by Studebaker --- whose carriages carried America's
" > " Presidents --- in South Bend still is -in- South Bend, in a new museum
" > " designed to seem old.  American Motors, the next "last independent" is
" > " present in many ways in that place on Chapin Street.  Romney's compact
" > " and Teague's cormorant and AMC and S-P --- alive in auto history's mix.
" > 
" > teague's cormorant?  i don't get it.
" > 
" > i read a nero wolfe mystery recently and noted rex stout named wolfe's
" > car a cormorant.  connection?
" 
" 
" Me either. In fact, I looked it up. Other than a sea bird, cormorant
" means "greedy and rapacious", which further means "given to seizing
" for plunder or the satisfaction of greed; inordinately greedy;
" predatory; extortionate: a rapacious disposition." Maybe in the Wolfe
" mystery it was meant as a gas guzzler (greedy for fuel). 

it's definitely the name of wolfe's own car, and the oblique bits of
description suggest a very large and prewar chauffeured limousine.
from context i assumed 'cormorant' was merely stout's way of
suggesting a luxurious brand.

" Now how was AMC any of those? I think she mis-used the word and really
" meant something else. Maybe you heard it wrong? Or did you see a
" transcript and it got written wrong? Sounds like she meant to say
" something positive, not negative. 

i don't know about that, though stout was extremely literate and
probably knew exactly what cormorant meant, and that car appears
periodically throughout the wolfe series on the rare occasions when
he has to travel.

hmmm...  wolfe is sometimes greedy and rapacious, though never at the
expense of the defenseless or just.

" > " The panel gaps along M-B's new decklid make AMC spaces appear narrow!
" > 
" > saab used to design wide gaps deliberately, so their doors etc.
" > couldn't freeze shut.
" 
" Americans tend to judge other cars and cultures by our own conditions
" and standards, not withstanding any real reason there may be for
" others to think/do otherwise. Hmm... I have to say other cultures do
" us the same way -- human nature, I guess. 

in spades.  all the social bits of our instincts are tuned for small
groups, and it's a truism of psych that large groups spontaneously
frag into smaller groups, each of which tend to see themselves as 'us'
and all the others as 'them'...

this digression still leaves the mystery of teague's cormorant...
________________________________________________________________________
Andrew Hay                                  the genius nature
internet rambler                            is to see what all have seen
adh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx                       and think what none thought