My attitude toward cars has ‘shifted’
(Originally published May 2024)
Time changes a person.
I was recently thinking about the first car I ever bought, a Datsun B310 “fastback” coupe, and how carefree I was back in my youth.
In 1988, during my sophomore spring at Middlebury, I began to dream of having my own wheels (so I could feel like an adult, but with someone else still doing the cooking and cleaning). When I saw an ad posted by an upperclassman for the well-used silver car, I scrounged up $450 and bought it.
I don’t remember how old the Datsun was, but it had seen some things. In my eagerness, I overlooked its thirst for a biweekly quart of oil and the grinding noise it made in its nether regions during sharp turns. And that it had a manual transmission.
“I reasoned that if I didn’t know how to drive a stick on Friday leaving town, I sure would by the time I got back on Sunday.”
I did not know how to drive a manual.
I had had a few manual lessons as a teen. But my intellectual understanding of shifting was far more advanced than my hands-on skills. Still, lots of real dummies I knew could drive a stick. How hard could it be?
In the stop-start confines of our little town, it was harder than I had anticipated.
In 1988, the lower part of College Street was still a two-way. The incline leading up to the Main Street intersection (now the roundabout) meant that I would often find myself stopped directly in front of what was then Lyons Place. There, students eating creemees outside could watch me—right foot on the brake, left foot on the clutch, heart in my mouth—attempting to put the car into first without either stalling out or rolling backward into the vehicle behind me.
I soon learned to drive through campus and approach town from South Main just to avoid humiliating myself on that hill in front of an audience of my peers.
I knew that if I could just get on a road where I could cruise along in fourth or, dare I say, fifth gear, I could get the hang of shifting. But downtown Middlebury was not that place.
A week after I bought the car, I decided to make the three-plus-hour trek down NY-22 through New York to my home in the southwestern corner of Massachusetts. I reasoned that if I didn’t know how to drive a stick on Friday leaving town, I sure would by the time I got back on Sunday.
That took moxie, something I have since run out of.
Once I turned onto Route 74 in Cornwall, I felt like everything was going to be all right, as long as I didn’t have to stop—or, more to the point, start moving again. And I would have had it pretty easy if not for a paving job on Route 22A that required me to inch along a few feet at a time for nearly 15 minutes.
Sometimes I managed to slide into first. Other times, I lurched and stalled. A few flaggers laughed and pointed at me. But I only cried once.
As I predicted, by the return trip I had begun to feel comfortable with, even confident in, my shifting.
I was not, however, prepared for my tie-rod end or some related part to hand in its resignation, effective immediately, on Sunday afternoon, somewhere around Hoosick Falls. I have no memory of how I found a mechanic, paid for the repair, or got back to campus, but I bet it seemed like less of an emergency then than it would today.
I’m different now; I can’t handle automotive surprises of any sort, and I tend to overreact. The last time my check engine light came on, for instance, I keeled over stiff, like a fainting goat.
This past Sunday afternoon, I was returning from Burlington in my boring but reliable 2014 Equinox. I thought I recognized the tailgater behind me, who I believe was thanking me in American Sign Language for sticking so religiously to the speed limit.
But the rear windshield was dusty and smeared, and I couldn’t see well. When I turned on the wiper, the blade moved, but no wiper fluid dribbled onto the glass. The reservoir was empty.
College me wouldn’t have cared. But current me treats all car problems, from a failed Bluetooth pairing to a blown transmission, the same way: by panicking.
Don’t worry; I got home safely. Mark and I disagree on how I handled the situation, but I stand by my actions.
Like I told him: What’s the point of paying for roadside assistance if we never use it?
