Out of My Mind Read Online Free PDF Page B

take it, but we don’t have a car on the floor right now without it.”
    In every case, when they say something is “optional,” they mean it costs extra if you want it. And if you want the car, you have to take it.
    â€œDo I get four wheels?” I asked, “or are wheels optional?”
    Car salesmen are deaf to attempts at humor.
    The only “optional” equipment I seem to have avoided was the “genuine leather-wrapped steering wheel.”
    There are so many variations on basic models that I question whether manufacturers ever make two cars alike. Anyone looking to buy a car can’t compare prices of two different kinds of cars or two different cars in the same showroom because no two are the same.
    Years ago, when I was buying my first car, it was simple. I had the choice of buying a Ford, a Chevrolet, a Buick or an Oldsmobile. Maybe
I’d look at a Pontiac or a Chrysler, but I wasn’t faced with 19 different models of each make. It was either a Ford or it wasn’t.
    Now every manufacturer puts out a dozen models, each with a different number. My car comes in an X3, an X5 or an X7. I asked why they skipped model X4 and model X6 and the salesman didn’t know. He thought it was strange that I asked.
    At the bottom of many of the pages in the glossy brochure for my car, there are explanations for the asterisks like:
    â€œOptional: included in X3 3.3Oi Premium Package.”
    â€œHalogen free-form fog lights (std on 3.3 Oi, opt on 2.5i).”
    â€œIncluded in Optional Premium Package.”
    What “optional” means in every case is, it isn’t included on the basic car or if it is included you can’t buy the car without the optional features because they don’t make a car without it. I am perfectly willing to have car salesmen make a decent living. Most of them have good personalities and are pleasant to deal with, but what we all want and can’t get from them is a firm price that we can compare with the price of a car we’re looking at somewhere else.

EXPENSIVE BED, BAD BREAKFAST
    I don’t know what it is about them, but I remember hotels I’ve stayed in and I was saddened to read that the Rossiya Hotel in Moscow is being closed and torn down.
    I stayed at the Rossiya twice years ago and I’ve never forgotten because it was the worst hotel I was ever in. The Rossiya was built by the Communist regime in 1967. At the time, it was the biggest hotel in the world—3,000 rooms. That’s a lot of little cakes of soap in an American hotel but the Rossiya didn’t have soap.
    When you left your room at the Rossiya, you turned in your key to a woman sitting at a desk by the elevator on every floor. When you came
back, you stopped and got your key from her. The Communists always wanted to know when foreigners were coming and going.
    They were proud to tell you there was a telephone in every room in the Rossiya, but they didn’t tell you there was no switchboard in the hotel. If anyone wanted to call you, they had to know the number. No one knew the number, of course.
    If the Rossiya was the worst hotel I ever stayed in, the best was a suite I once had on the top floor of the Fairmont in San Francisco. I had a four-way view of the city, including the Golden Gate Bridge. Even breakfast was good.
    The year after I was discharged from the Army after World War II, I wrote a book with a friend, which we sold to MGM. We went to Hollywood and our agent put us up at the Beverly Hills Hotel. It was such a grand experience that I’ve never stayed anywhere else when I go there. It’s cost me dearly over the years. The hotel is owned by the royal family of Brunei, who probably took the money for it from the people of Brunei. I have breakfast in the Polo Lounge and always hope Clark Gable or Lana Turner will come in. They used to, but don’t anymore.
    In Paris, we stay at a small Left-Bank place called Le Relais Christine. It