A Jew Canoe

In the 50s crackers from the South christened a Cadillac with New York plates passing through Dixie as the ‘Jew Canoe’. That decade and the 1960s marked the zenith of the glory for Detroit cars. Americans abandoned their boats during the 1973 Oil Embargo for more fuel-efficient foreign cars and the Mercedes-Benz sedans surfaced as the new 'Jew Canoe' along with offerings from BMW. Both companies had close business relationships with the Nazis. Cadillac never exploited this connection to guard their market share of the Jewish-American market.

BMW used slave labor. Mercedes-Benz exploited foreign workers and there are rumors that the company even built death gas trucks for the SS extermination squads. Even the groovy VW Beetle owed its manufacturing to 'guest workers', who learned the lesson of 'arbeit macht frei'.

Both Richie Boy and Manny drive Mercedes-Benz.

“How can you buy a German car?” I have asked them on many occasions. “They killed 6 million of you.”

“It’s a comfortable ride.” Manny loved driving his Mercedes 600 SL to Florida. His annual migration south came in February. His total yearly mileage was less than 10,000 miles. He would have been better off flying to Miami, but car drivers loved the freedom suggested by their automobiles.

“So you’ve forgiven the Nazis?" I confronted Manny on his hypocrisy. Richie Boy couldn't have given a shit. He traded in his Land Rover for the Benz SUV. His head was buried into the phone. Its microwaves were frying his brain to a crisp.

“We’ll never forget.” Manny's brothers fought in the war. One of them came back not the same.

“Never again.” I had a VW Bug as a kid. I bought a BMW 2002 in Hamburg. My last car was a Toyota. I forgave the Japs for Pearl Harbor once Sony came out with the three-in-one electron gun Trinitron TV. Black and white was a thing of the past.

“That is right.” Manny had a long memory. His family came from Poland. He still spoke Yiddish to anyone French, Italian, or Russian. He spoke it pretty good too.

"You know I've been thinking about writing a song NEVER AGAIN centered on a Jewish family driving home for Yom Kippur in a Benz."

"Never again in a Cadillac, you mean." Manny had heard this dreck before. "Cadillac never made a car as good as my Benz."

"No, I don't think they did." It was the truth.

"But I did love them in the 50s. They said style." Manny swooned like the first time he had seen his wife. Hilda had been the best-looking woman in Brooklyn. She was no boat. "Wish I had one now. The old Jew Canoe."

"You know what's the difference between a Jew and a canoe?" Richie Boy got off the phone. "A canoe tips."

It was a bad joke in so many ways that I had to laugh.

Es tut mir leid.

That’s sorry in German.

It’s not inscribed in any Mercedes-Benz or BMWs.

Big surprise, nicht war?

Then again, neither is Sieg Heil on a Mercedes Benz.