An Apology To All Of You Out There Not Reading This/Joachim Zahn

At various times I come up with incredibly clever ideas for this blog. Great jokes, stories from my past, current events observations, and job related tales. This post is one of them.

It is, however, the only one that I took the time to write down immediately upon thinking of it. Sometimes I think of something, and by the time I take out my Blackberry to make a note about it, I have forgotten it. It's a short term memory problem. I usually carry some paper with me. Sometimes I forget to take it with me. Those seem to be the times when I think of something clever.

And Yet:

Sometimes events of years ago come to mind. They seem to stay with me indefinitely. I was sitting next to one of my dealers, Suyeiki, early one evening and a Country and Western video came on. She said that she really liked the music a lot, but had no idea who was singing. I looked up at the screen and thought I saw that the singer's first name was Joachim. I went closer to the screen at the close of the video and saw that his name was actually Jason, but the Joachim name got me thinking. I started to remember back to the mid 60's. I used to hang out in a Preppie bar called Mike Malkan's. Mike was a whole other story, and a fascinating one at that. This: http://books.google.com/books?id=SsEBAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA42&lpg=PA42&dq=mike+malkan's&source=bl&ots=jqnHHXap21&sig=cJoA58h5Ucr5uzgX4MjAZfXvVtY&hl=en&ei=dCRATo-jJ8TV0QH5reCcBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=mike%20malkan's&f=false will give you an idea.

I discovered Malkan's in the mid 60's. I used to go there every night, sometime to drink, but more importantly to socialize. It was an amazing place, filled with celebrities, mini celbrities and wannabes. I was considered a regular. One night one of the girls that I had gone out with, also a regular, introduced me to a new friend of hers. His name was Joachim Zahn. He lived in Germany and he was visiting for the summer. Joachim had a summer job working in the Mercedes Benz dealership in Fort Lee, New Jersey. This was right over the George Washington Bridge, about 25 minutes from midtown at non rush hours. He was quite handsome, spoke very good English and was a very pleasant kid. His only bad quality was that he insisted on telling everyone that his father was Chairman of the Board of Mercedes Benz. I would introduce him to friends and I would always say something like, "Joachim says his father is Chairman of the Board, although if I were in Germany I would probably tell people that my father was General Motors." I could live with his wanting to have people think he was something special. We went out on double dates many times. I was driving a Cadillac at the time. My father had always wanted one and finally he bought one. I'll never forget that he didn't want to spend too much on the car so it had no air conditioning. Joachim, working at the dealership, only had experience driving Mercedes, probably just around the parking lot. He was fascinated by my car and wanted to drive it. I knew that my father would kill me if he found out, but one night we made the switch. He drove the Cadillac and I drove a two door sportscar, that was later called the 450SL but I am not sure of the model number for that year. There were no problems and no incidents with the switch. I would often call him at work to make arrangements for the upcoming evening. They would answer the phone, Mercedes Benz Fort Lee, I would ask for Joachim Zahn and they would say, "Just a minute and then he would pick up. That is, until September. I called one day in September and ask for Joachim Zahn and the operator said, "Which one?" I said, "What do you mean which one? How many are there? The operator very politely explained that Joachim Zahn, the CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD OF MERCEDES BENZ, had come to visit with his son. With whom did I wish to speak?

End of story; I was went to dinner at the Plaza Hotel a couple of night later with both Joachim Zahns.