Whittling Away with Dick Brooks - Cars

It’s time for Casper, The Friendly Kia to get his weekly check up.  He doesn’t really need it but it’s something I’ve done for a long time and will continue to do so.  It doesn’t take much time and makes me feel that I’m upholding my end of our partnership.  I turn on his lights and take a stroll around his perimeter, checking the lights and the tires at the same time.  I then pop the hood, check the oil, washer fluid, brake fluid, and the transmission fluid level.  About the only thing that needs looking after is adding some washer fluid.  Casper is so reliable and dependable that he’s almost no fun.  Standing there, staring at the miles of wire and plumbing pieces that are covering his engine, my mind wandered back to a simpler time when motoring was still an adventure.

My first car was a 1936 Chevy coupe, given to me my senior year by my Dad, which he had acquired for the then handsome sum of fifty dollars.  I loved it.  Just slightly smaller than the Queen Mary and powered by a mighty six cylinder motor, I was the King of the dirt road we lived on.  I learned just about everything I know about cars from that old Chevy.  It had all those endearing features that I sometimes wish had remained standard features on today’s autos.  The steering column was uncluttered, the only thing attached to it was a steering wheel the size of which can only be found today on buses and tractor trailers.  The windshield wipers had their own knob on the dashboard, labeled plainly in large white letters, “Wipers”.  The wipers were variable speed, driven by the car’s vacuum, the faster you went, the faster they wiped, when you slowed down, so did they.  The headlights had their own knob, “Lights”.  The dimmer switch for the lights stuck up out of the floor to the left of the clutch pedal and you mashed on it to turn on the high beams or to dim them.  The radio was a little round dial in the center of the dashboard with a knob on each side, actually, the real radio was the large box screwed to the firewall up above the passenger’s feet that was filled with glowing tubes.  The seat was comfy and about the size of the average modern loveseat.  Jutting out of the middle of the floorboards was the gear shift, a three foot chunk of rebar that you used to row your way down the road.  The trunk was the size of a modern loft apartment that in New York City would bring about $2000 a month in rent. I think my favorite feature was the little vent windows, you could crack them open just a bit to keep fresh air circulating or open them all the way so the air blasted you.  There was a vent in front of the windshield that could be opened for even more air, handy things, I miss them.

The Discovery Channel has been running a series of programs about the cars of the future.  My suggestion would be to look at the cars of the past.  The universal automobile already exists.  We need to bring back the Volkswagen Beatle.  The Type One had it all.  You could haul a bunch of folks in them, I had twenty three of my fraternity brothers in mine once.  They got about forty miles to the gallon.  If you bent a fender, you unbolted it, bolted on a new one and you were good to go with no huge body shop bill.  They had vent windows and knobs on the dash just like my old Chevy.  They were simple to work on, I broke my accelerator cable once and ran my little machine forty miles using a rubber band.  My tool kit was a little metal box which contained an adjustable wrench, a roll of electrical tape, a Phillips and a regular screwdriver, some wire and a copy of “The Complete Idiots Guide to the Volkswagen”.  With this simple collection of objects, I could rebuild anything on the Bug.

Casper’s one of my best friends but there’s not much I can do on him with my old tool kit, there’s nothing in it that I can use to do a diagnostic reading of his computer.  Life used to be simpler.

Thought for the week—What our country really needs now is more unemployed politicians.

Until next week, may you and yours be happy and well.

Whittle12124@yahoo.com