When I grew up in Poland in the 70’s, one of the greatest achievements for a boy was to have a collection of those shiny western car catalogues. The paper quality of these print pieces was just superior to anything else we had and there were always these glimpses of the world on the other side of the iron curtain. My parents liked German Quelle and Neckermann catalogues more, of which I only liked the winter versions, as they included toys.
Car catalogues were simply the greatest thing. They were something of a currency among us boys. There were Stamps, of course, there were cans and there were these car catalogues. And as much as there are real shares on a stock exchange, one could also deal with options. The addresses to car dealerships in the west or to manufacturers in the west were like the options for the car catalogue currency. Dealing with them was more risky, of course, since they needed more work to turn them into car catalogues, but the reward of writing a letter to one of these addresses and receiving a shiny big envelope filled with the latest models of cars was one of the greatest things one could think of. The addresses were scarce because nobody wanted to create an “inflation”. The car manufacturer would never send out catalogues to 20 boys. One for sure, two, yes, five not very likely. We knew that they were paying money to send us the advertising material and we knew that we had to offer something. The letters we wrote were a bit like love letters. We would use many colors, draw cars, maybe the company logo. (If we knew what it looked like, of course.) Some brands just did not sound real. Some addresses just sounded too risky to exchange anything for. Who would be stupid enough to write to a company called “Rover”. Rower means Bicycle in Polish, so the Rover cars were a running joke of the playground. Other names were better known. Mercedes was a clear winner. Mercedes-Benz, just the sound of the brand was worth something. I shared the address of Volvo for the address of Mercedes-Benz in Paris. Zbyszek Waskiewicz was a very smart kid in my class. His mother was a teacher, like my mom, and he was smart enough to skip second grade. His worked in France. Zbyszek would deal with trading cards of French soccer players and was able to demand exorbitant amounts for them, because nobody else had “trading cards”. It seemed pretty logical that Zbyszek would give me a Mercedes-Benz address that happened to be in Paris. I thought that maybe his brought him the address. I copied every letter of the piece of paper he gave me onto an envelope, wrote my kind request in Polish, of course, and sent out the request letter to Mercedes-Benz in Paris, France. The letter eventually came back, all stamped up. The address was a fake. Good thing that I already had my Volvo catalogues, so chances were that Zbyszek did not even get his letter back, even though my address was very real.
Later, after we moved to Germany, I only drove Mercedes. They were old cars, but only Mercedes. I sold my last Mercedes just days before moving to the US. I now use public transportation, as having a car in New York City is a bit of a silly thing. (I can see the Subway station as I am writing this.)
I walked by the Mercedes-Benz dealership yesterday. I could not stop myself but to walk in and ask for the new SL catalogue. I am obviously not the little Polish boy anymore and I did not arrive there as a crayon drawn plea letter in Polish. The Salespeople did not want to help me. They claimed that they did not have anything on the new SL. There was a waiting list of a year and a half. One lady went to the back to ask somebody, but she could not find the brochure I was looking for.
I then saw the main Manager of the branch. He asked me why I needed this particular catalogue. I just smiled, oh, just to have the really well designed piece that was made to help sell an expensive car. He smiled. He said something of a “private stack”, went to the back of the dealership and came back with this shiny big brochure of the new Mercedes SL.
I felt like the little boy in Jastrzebie-Zdrój when he gave it to me. So strange. I still like these car catalogues. (I actually also collect stamps.) I guess not much has changed. I wonder where Zbyszek Waskiewicz hangs out these days.