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I Hate Cars
It has come to my attention that many a man returns fondly later in life to the things he hated in his youth. My grandfather was an avid gardener, and in his teen-aged years my father was forced to endure many a weeding expedition. He swore he would never be like his father, gardening, tending to roses. A lawn was quite enough to take care of. It was better with many shade trees so the lawn wouldn’t grow as fast. Of course, I heard all of this while I was weeding said lawn, but I was assured that my task was nowhere near as arduous as his had been. Late in my teens, Dad (supervised as I) planted some chrysanthemums beside the house. He still insisted that he would never plant roses. I grew up, got a college degree, got a job, and moved away. Dad retired down to rural Missouri, where he could experience the small-town atmosphere he had grown up in. Within a few years, we were talking on the phone when he told me what he had been doing that week. He had been planting roses, of course.
That job I had gotten was for a computer company, and for awhile my boss’ boss was a character originally from West by-God Virginia. He had grown up poor in a hard-scrabble existence. Back then, nobody would take charity if they could help it. They just grew their own food as best they could up in the thin and poor soil of the mountains. They grew and ate a lot of beans and corn. He hated that growing up. He swore he would get a job where he could afford to just buy food from a store, where he didn’t have to raise crops, and he would never do it again. Well he got a good job, became a manager with decent pay, and bought a house. Before long, he was looking out at his back yard thinking, “I could grow some corn in that corner yonder.” After a few more years, he was buying a new house with a bigger yard so he could have a larger garden.
In both cases, the things these men hated in their youth became what they treasured as they got older.
Not me, though. I have never come close to being infected by the thing that bored me most in my youth. You see, my father was a caraholic. He loved to go to car lots and look at the new cars. When he bought a new car, which was probably a bit more frequently than he could afford, the next day he would be stopping by the other dealerships to see what they had. This would not have bothered me, except for the number of times I was dragged along on these expeditions. Say that he took us out for pizza or maybe for ice cream after dinner. After whatever treat we were getting, on the way home, we would end up in car lots. These stops seemed interminable. He would carefully look at anything that he might not have seen on the lot before. I remember listening to Mac Davis’ song, “It’s Hard to be Humble,” while sitting in the car in a car lot while my dad looked at the offerings on display. Occasionally, he would make the excuse that as a policeman, he had to keep up with all the makes and models so he could easily identify them in an emergency situation. We knew the truth, though. Dad just loved cars and wanted all of them. If he could have had a new one to drive every day, he would have done that.
At a fairly young age, I came to the conclusion that a car was just transportation. That was all it would ever be for me. That doesn’t mean that I go out of my way to find ugly cars. I happen to think that the four cars I have bought in my lifetime have been fairly good-looking, for the class they were in. All were sub-compacts. I could have afforded larger and more luxurious vehicles at times, but what is the point? My only use for a car is as transportation. My first only lasted three years before it was murdered on the road by a woman who was digging in her purse while driving. I stopped for a red light signaling a bridge was going up. She didn’t see me or the bridge until it was too late for my car. The second one lasted past the car payments. The third I kept for about thirteen years. The fourth I bought used from my brother. Always a mistake, in my brother’s case, but it was only a mild one this time. I had to replace the clutch, which my brother didn’t even know was burned out. (Never let him drive your manual transmission car. He has owned at least three, and has no idea how to tell if a clutch is smoked.) I bought it for about $1,400 ten years ago, and it still serves me well. A few repairs? Sure, but only about $4,000 in total over ten years. It’s a good car. By model year, it’s now 24 years old. Next year, it’s officially a classic car. I’ve never owned a classic car before. I will not care if I still own it when it’s an antique. I have no desire to go car shopping. Ever. This trend does not seem to be reversing itself, and I am far older than my father or that boss of mine were when they started reversing their hates into loves.
Whoa! Whoa! That bridge is going up!
So, you want to talk about cars? Have fun. I’d rather talk about just about anything else. Differential equations? Sure, better subject than cars. The armor used by cuirassiers through the ages? Why not? Military formations and how Napoleon improved them? I’ll bite. Varieties of roses and the climate zones where each does best? I’ll give the subject a listen. Chariotry and how it led to tanks? Eh, too close to cars for me. Seeya, Tank Boy. I’ll go talk with the ladies about something less boring, like make-up or television shows or how that girl said such-and-such to so-and-so and her word choice just seemed so catty. Or maybe I’ll go read a book. But not a book about cars.
How about you? What horribly boring activities are the memories of your youth engraved with? Have you later come to appreciate whatever you hated then?
Published in Group Writing
This morning I was racing this old Audi up Eu rouge at Spa. Then I paused the sim and spent a little time in the photo mode. I love cars.
Back in 1966 at 21 years old I got a Shelby GT 350 Mustang. It was my dream car. I spent a fortune on it, and a further fortune upgrading and maintaining it. In my first year of teaching I drove it to work in Bedford-Stuyvesant and parked it in a garage near my school. The garage owner requested that we leave our keys in the ignition in case he had to move the car during the day. I did so.
One day as I was leaving the garage I saw a seriously seedy looking guy giving me a lookover. It made me nervous, but I ignored my impulse to go back into the garage and grab my keys. That was a mistake. That afternoon the car was gone and I didn’t get it back for two weeks. At that time it was parked next to a Cadillac that had also been stolen. stripped, and burned. Mine would have been next. IF I had been smart I would have left it and let it happen. Instead I drove it home. The following weekend when I was driving it up the New York State Throughway to race it in the Ellenville Hill Climb it blew a valve.
Apparently, during the two weeks it had been driven around Bed-Stuy it had done so on the cheapest, lowest grade gasoline. The engine was pretty well irreparably damage, and, of course, the insurance company took no responsibility for mechanical damage done to a car following a theft. Several months worth of my piddling salary as a first year teacher got most of the damage repaired, but it never seemed the same to me ever again. I eventually sold it for a tiny fraction of what it cost me, and likely what it was worth, but there is no market for such equipment.
That was the end of my love affair with cars. I have, over the years, owned a lot of different cars, VW beetles, VW Microbus, Mitsubishi jeep, various species of Toyotas, and a Dodge pick-up truck, most recently a Scion XB. I bought the Scion because it got terrific gasoline mileage which was really needed as my commute daily when working was 100 miles a day.
Now the Scion gets less than 2000 miles of driving a year. Both of my bicycles get better than three times that mileage. The less I have to do with gasoline powered transportation the happier I am. The message I learned from the Mustang was that a car is nothing but an easily stolen hole in the ground into which you throw money. Other than a brief stint as a stock broker, I have never made a big salary, and even that was ephemeral. Watching an expensive piece of equipment decline in market value almost daily while gasoline prices were eating up my disposable income made cars something I could tolerate but never love again.
Contn. Below
I wonder how much disliking the things we were forced to do in our youth is just a normal form of teenage rebellion? I was raised in a household where if you didn’t want to do it or it didn’t need to be done, you just didn’t do it. I’m not suggesting parents should emulate that model, but I don’t have hang-ups about specific chores or household duties. In fact, I rebelled in the opposite direction. My inclination is to be meticulous in these things.
The other one. When we were younger (I was still living in Illinois, so definitely 1980’s), I once needed to borrow his truck. The second I got in and started it moving, I knew the clutch was burned out like a forty-year stoner. After I returned the truck, I mentioned it to him. He was totally startled about it. So, fast-forward about twenty years to 2007 when I bought the current car from him and his wife. I start to drive off and realize I am about to drive 300 miles with no clutch to speak of. I apparently made a face about that, and he saw it. He came over to me, “Is there something wrong?” “Yeah, the clutch is totally burned out.”
I am fairly certain that the brother your age would know a burned-out clutch. He probably also would not burn one out. He worked at a gas station and as a mechanic for a few years in high school and working through college before he first moved to Texas.
I like mush.
I figured you would. That’s why I mentioned you in the conversation Starter.
A favorite quote from H.W. Tilman comes to mind when I think of my bicycles, “For the man who travels by his own devices no day is dull and no journey without an abiding interest.”
Perhaps another example. My parents couldn’t care less about politics, but I spent much of the summer of ’87 watching the Iran Contra hearings.
Amen to that.
My dad was a geologist. So even as an ignoramus I’ve forgotten more about rocks and minerals than most people will ever know. He once took my brother and me on a trip to the Four Corners states. We stopped all along the way for lectures on stratification and the look of things millions of years ago.
Now I take pictures of rocks, among other things.
I’m jealous. I’ve developed an interest in Geology, but only a superficial knowledge so far. I hope to spend thousands of hours in retirement doing the kinds of things your dad did.
Plus it’s Monza this weekend, wazzup!
Are you signed up for group writing this month? With the theme of “Cars,” you should be.
Nope, don’t see your name on there, @spin. Get over there and sign up. You can sign up for racing or just write one called, “My Other Car is an Abrams.”
I always fail at group writing assignments.
This time, you’ll do fine. It’s a passion.
I’m going with the car thread. I hate car shopping. My husband does too. So, we drive his ’81 Honda Accord with well over 200,000 miles on it. He bought it brand new. Manual transmission and the original clutch. It is the car my husband taught me how to drive manual. And it is amazing that it survived my incompetence. It looks awful – hail damage from a NE Oklahoma thunderstorm that was breeding tornadoes, dent when a deer ran into us in SE Kansas, and rust damage from the three years it spent outside in Central New York State. But it is so much fun to drive – a peppy little engine that can still purr like a kitten. Back in 2000, we thought she might be on her last legs (wheels?) so we began hunting for another car. We bought a 2000 Civic. Hated the process of buying her. We weren’t happy with what the dealer offered so we walked away. A couple of days later we got a call and they came down in price. We went back to purchase her. We’ve never darkened the door of another dealer. The Civic is doing well with over 200,000 miles too. She is our road trip car. And we still think of her as the new car.
The deer ran into you?
My hatred of car shopping is second only to my hatred for job hunting. But, unfortunately, I like cars. I generally buy the nicest one I can reasonably afford and drive it for 200K miles or until somebody hits me, whichever comes first. I’ve lost two to accidents. Once they’re over 100K miles it’s hard to justify extensive repair work unless that car is somehow exceptional.
I agree. I’ve never been a car guy. My wife has a black car of some kind.
Cars was fine. Hated Cars 2. Haven’t seen Cars 3.
Well, as I have said before, I don’t really like to use that word. But I can remember a number of things that I disliked as a youth.
Bringing water from the well to the kitchen in a bucket. Had to reel it up from the well since didn’t have a pump. If it was for a bath in the galvanized wash tub, then it had to be heated on the kerosene powered stove. Oh, those were ‘slightly’ dangerous suckers.
Bringing coal from the coal pile for the living room heater, the only heated room in the house. Emptying chamber pots daily.
Going to school. I really disliked school.
Of course, none of these things were optional.
I hope our people today don’t make some major miscalculations and take us back to the things I didn’t like because there’s not much to like about them. Indoor plumbing and central heating are nice things. And we have many nice options for education if we can dispense with the grip that government and unions have on the process.
I appreciate automobiles more since playing a video game series called Forza: Horizon. It enables one to experiment with hundreds of vehicles, fairly simulated in physics as well as stunning graphics. So it’s possible to quickly and cheaply feel the difference in virtual driving.
Without video games, how many vehicles other than your own would you drive in a lifetime?
It certainly hasn’t made me an aficianado. But at least I now have a better appreciation for weight distribution, FWD vs RWD vs AWD, handling on various kinds of terrain, etc.
That said, all I really care about when buying a vehicle is reliability, cargo space, and gas mileage.
I was wondering if that would elicit a question. We were driving back from visiting family in NE Oklahoma and were on US-75 highway heading back home to KC, Mo. It was late and my husband was driving. He spotted the deer early enough and has amazing reflexes (he played sports in high school). He swerved to avoid the deer and almost completely missed it. But it ran into the right rear of the car just above the wheel. My animal loving sister-in-law only asked about the deer. (It continued on its way across the highway.) She seemed unconcerned about her only nephew who was a toddler and sitting where the deer hit.
I once did a contract gig that was 50 miles away from me, and since I had no car at the time (living in Manhattan), they rented me cars for two years, mostly by the week. During that time, I drove about every American car out there. (Cars, not SUVs, vans or pickups.)
So, have I mentioned that I was employed by a GM subsidiary for years and serving in GM plants and operations? But I’ve never been a car guy.
I applied for a job as a valet at an expensive restaurant for precisely this reason.
I dislike mush.
I’m not sure I’ve ever had mush. I’m not even sure I know what it is.
But this reminds me of a story. I went to a little school near Charlotte. During freshman orientation, we went to a camp for a few days. There were a lot of Yankees in the class. In the morning on the first day, we queued up for breakfast. The guy in front of me got to the grits and said “Give me some of that soupy porridge.” The attendant said “That’s not porridge, that’s grits.” The reply was “Give me a grit, then.”
My usual response in a situation like that would be “It was delicious.” Or “it’s at the butcher right now” depending on when the accident was.