Vehicles

Lately I have been thinking about the cars that I have known. I know, it should be about the people that I have known but cars are interesting.

One time I sat outside of the place where I worked and watched all the vehicles go by on the freeway. What an interesting concept. They are a lot like people. They come in various shapes and sizes. While I was watching I saw a big truck go by followed by a very small car. Then there was the snazzy expensive car going around the pickup truck. They come in all colors and conditions too. Some cars are so well taken care of and others are so beaten up.

What they all have in common is that there is an intelligent being (Hopefully) sitting the in driver's seat in command of where it is going. A vehicle really is just an artificial body. The purpose is to get the intelligent being from one place to another faster than they can in the flesh body that they inhabit.

All the cars that I have known seem to have a personality that goes along with their looks. Like pets, I have named the ones that I have known personally. I remember a really hot,red-Dodge Dart that had trouble keeping it under 70 miles per hour. I rented her to a guy that wanted something to take him to Phoenix. I told him that she was spunky. (In the early '70's, I managed an Avis franchise.)

Avis story: I had a middle aged French couple come in and all I had was standard shifting vehicles left on the lot. They didn't speak any English. They showed me that they wanted to go to Yosemite so in pantomime, I showed them how to use a standard shift. When they drove off the lot, I followed them. When they got stuck in the middle of an intersection, I parked and showed them again how to let up on the clutch while applying the gas and shift gears. I followed them for a few more blocks until I was sure that they were going to be all right. I did this hoping that someone would do this for my parents when they were traveling somewhere that didn't understand English.

How about the little blue Sprite? Larry and I went to Las Vegas in one that we had in the early '60s. Going from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, one climbs into the high desert. We were going to meet my sister Donna and her husband there. Now in the high desert at night in the wintertime, it gets really cold and this little car had a heater that got smaller and smaller as we traveled. I remember reaching behind the seats into the back of the vehicle and opening the suitcases to pull out our bathing towels to stuff in the braces of the soft top and then pull our bathrobes out to put around us. We joked that when we got there someone would have to chip us out of this little car. This Sprite was so funny; we played tag with trucks all the way there. We would zip up a hill and pass a truck, then on the downhill side they would go flying by us.

Automobiles have become a symbol of independence. For many years, when I was in California we only had one car, a station wagon to take all the things one needed for our family. When Larry was gone, I would be at home without the freedom to do anything. So he got a car for me. It was an old pink Cadillac. Remember the fins and the long fronts on these cars? They were a challenge because one never was sure how far from the building you were parking. You couldn't see where the back or the front ended, but it took my kids and my neighbors, along with their kids to the lake north of Merced many times.

Larry drove a Blue VW bug when Loren was very little. So whenever Loren saw a VW bug, he called it a Daddy Car. And it was. He carried a VW bug Hot-Wheels (small toy car) with him in his pocket. When Blaine was old enough he always had a different Hot-Wheels car in each of his pockets.

My father had Dodge vehicles because the Dodge dealer in Shawano was a friend of his. Dad had Dodge trucks for his business. One of Dad's theories was that people like to deal with successful people. So every three years he traded in his car and got a new one.

I can say that I am personally responsible for damaging one of these vehicles twice. Once I had a car full of girls that was being chased by a car full of boys and I went around a corner too closely. We pulled the fender out and Dad was somewhat understanding. The second time that I damaged this same car, I had to pay for it. In that case, I had used the extra space that a fire hydrant takes up to do my parallel parking. The hydrant in from of Koepsels store was really leaning out into the street (the whole sidewalk was sitting at a 30 degree angle) and as I backed in to the spot behind it, I heard a screech as it sliding down the side of the car. It looked like it had been keyed on the passenger's side.

Do we give more attention to our cars than we do to people? When I first married Vern, his sister-in-law told me that he had washed the paint off his first car. I believe that because Vern likes to have everything he owns look just so.

What do our cars say about us? Some people have cars that are always clean inside and out. Other cars look like they belong to a person who is living out of them.

I have never owned a new car but I remember the smell that my Dad's cars had. When I was working for him, he wanted me to have a new company car. Somehow that didn't work for me. As a divorced woman, I needed to have my own things. Having my own car did that for me. Plus I had a teenager and I didn't want to be responsible for a company car with her driving.

One day when I first came back to Wisconsin from California, I left the office for lunch and drove out to a stop sign. It was winter and icy but I was being very careful. While waiting for the light to turn green, I watched a car that was spinning out of control coming over the hill in my direction. My first reaction was to slam my car into reverse and get out of the trajectory. I looked behind and there was someone sitting right behind me so I couldn't shift gears. I crossed my hands over the steering wheel, put my face into them and waited. The car hit, knocking all the windows out of the other car. There was an old man in it and without windows; he would be cold waiting for the police, which another person had called. My right front fender was damaged but I was warm and cozy. I told him to get into my car while we waited. He was so upset and worried. He was sure that he would lose his license to drive. (Remember this is a sign of independence. We all want this for as long as we can hold on to it) I'm not sure if he did or did not lose his license but when I went back to work, my co-workers wanted to know what had happened to my car. I told them that I do anything these days to meet men and I met a really nice one from Gillette.

When I got custody of my Mother because Dad died and Mother had a mild case of Alzheimer's, (they called it Sundowning because she became very upset at dusk.) Mother went with me all the time. It was like having another child to watch. For a while she had complained that she never got to drive anymore. So one day when we were at Walgreens, about 4 blocks from our house, I asked her if she would mind driving home because I had a terrible headache. It was early afternoon and the traffic was nothing. She got into the driver's seat and drove us home. She drove straddling the center line at about 5 to 7 miles per hour. I didn't say anything but just allowed her to do this. After that experience, she never asked to drive again. When I told Vern about this, he couldn't believe what I had done this. He brings it up from time to time even now. Mother had been driving since she was a teenager on her parents farm so not driving was a very important loss.

Cars don't seem that important to me as they seem to be for others. I feel that I am driving for everyone around me when I go out. I even mention to others that in every vehicle you see on the road, there is a person on some drug sitting in the driver's seat. Sure it might be just an aspirin but everyone is on something. There are very few people who are not taking some drug at this time.

So a really good day for me is to do all my errands on my bike and not take my car out of the garage. When I have to drive for a long ways, I find myself getting worn out just driving. I have even taken people to appointments and after driving them home, I have to give myself a pep talk to get home myself. Sometimes my car sits in the garage for almost a week without being driven. This is one of the nice things about living in a very small town.

When my son was trying to talk me into getting a computer, he mentioned that he understood my feelings about artificial intelligence. He felt that it was similar to my feelings about artificial bodies (Cars), artificial flowers, even prints of paintings. Boy,what does that say about me if I can only have the real thing?