Dreaming of...Car Talk?

Karen Dreams of Tom and Ray in "Reduced Circumstances"

Dear Tom and Ray,

I had a dream about about you guys. I heard your voices doing your usual schtick, and everything was dark. I told myself to open my eyes, and there I was standing across the street from the Boston Public Library. Standing in front of it was a classic 19th century horse-drawn peddler's cart, and I immediately understood that the show had been cancelled, and that you were selling the last of the Car Talk junk from the back of this cart.

Ray eventually came around the non-horse end of the cart dressed in a very natty, three piece suit. The whole suit was made of one of those fine wools that only the Italians can do well. It was a summer weight wool of olive green with subtle flecks of mustard in the yarn.

Karen H

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Dear Karen,

This dream puts its finger on no less than the central mystique of Car Talk. What is it, besides their infectious humor and mastery of mechanical minutiae, that makes these guys so wildly popular? I'd maintain it's a certain creative tension, deriving from a union of opposites. Here are these two mechanics, not America's most deified profession, who are also subgenius MIT grads---more like physicists, for godsakes, than greasemonkeys. Are they car guys...or cognoscienti? Makes your head swivel a little, which is what dreams love to do: tweak your assumptions and make you look at the world from a different angle.