Subtle Wealth

I live in a nice neighborhood just around the corner from Raritan Valley Community College. Its called Chindia, you can look it up. I can vouch for every word in that entry, btw. I hear four different Indian languages on my block. We also have Vietnamese, French and Russian families. It's like the UN in this place.

Chindia is a nice quiet community of three and four bedroom homes. The kind of place where Mrs. Stroock and I send the kids out to play without worry.

There is nothing garish or gaudy about the houses. They signal middleclass professional success story. Walking around today with the little ones, I noticed, for the first time really, a subtle detail. Almost everyone owns an expensive car. BMW, Mercedes, and Lexus are big. Someone has an H-2. There used to be an Escalade in the neighborhood but they moved. Those people weren't Chinese or Indian anyway.

So in almost every driveway is nice car. But interestingly, there's usually only one nice car. I saw a Lexus parked next to a Hyundai, a Mercedes parked next to a Honda. A BMW accompanying a minivan. None of these cares really stood out except for the bumper logo. I dunno, I'm not a car guy. Maybe you gearheads would have spotted them right away.

These people could afford two BMWs no problem. Believe me, this is a neighborhood of big-pharma reps and IT specialist.  I know one guys whose a chemist from Exxon-Mobile. he was at Tiananmen Square and told me when he saw the tanks moving in it seemed like a good idea to head back to the dorms and study.

Anyway,  if Mr. and Mrs. Patel down the street (that's like Smith in India) wanted two Mercedes, they'd have two Mercedes.

Why only one Mercedes, then?

Because two would be garish.