“Brent drives everything like a stick shift.”
Summer. On Friday nights, Dad handed me a $5 bill. The first two to be spent on an AutoTrader magazine - a weekly ‘classified ads’ for local automobiles. The rest on two snow cones. One for him, one for me. I was always searching for the best flavor combination. I enjoyed the mystery. Dad always wanted Root Beer. I’d usually polish mine off by the time I got home, his half-melted on arrival. It was worth the effort.
Dad would thumb through the magazine throughout the evening, dog-earing some of the pages, highlighting others. I’d be the second to thumb through, dreaming of the day I’d turn 16 and buy a $2500 Ford Probe. Talk about “shooting for the stars”. I loved it. I learned a lot about cars in those years. Not always how things work under the hood, but I can definitely tell you the make and model of what’s barreling down the highway toward us.
Brent has always been a car guy. He owned a ’58 Corvette when he was a teenager. He probably had dreams of driving fast cars all his life. Instead, he found himself raising a family of 5 kids. The breadwinner. When I was a teenager, he was driving my mother’s hand-me-down, baby blue Ford Aerostar. At 6'4, he loved the leg room in back. He could put his boots on without exposing himself to the winter chill. Living the (mini) van life before it was cool. Earned respect.
Brent drove everything, including that minivan, like a stick shift. He knew how to squeeze every ounce of horsepower and torque out of a car. A genius in his own, very special way. He pulled up and down on that steering column shifter like it was a hot slot machine. He was shaving time and saving brakes. Gas mileage? Next question. I sometimes imagine his cars having Pixar-like personalities and faces, and every time I walk near one of ‘em, I’d hear the quiet sniffles and mutterings of “Help me.”
“Shift.”
I too, love cars. I’ve always told my friends that I drive everything as fast and hard as it’ll go. It’s not true. I want my vehicles smiling and thanking me every time I put ‘em in park. I want them to last. A car I don’t own? That’s another story. About 20 years ago, the manual transmission all but died. Not my manual transmission. THE manual transmission. Well, not all, but most. I guess the American driving public was favoring a more simple experience. One with less interaction and responsibility. WHO KNEW.
When you know a car well enough, you don’t need a tachometer. No numbers, no redline. You just know when to switch gears. It’s part intuition, part intellect. You just can’t run that hot for so long. And quite frankly, it makes no sense. It’s time to move more efficiently, forward, and faster. Run cooler. Breathe. We’re all going from one somewhere to the next. What a trip it can be. And as unpredictable as the road is, when I look forward, I see more of it. At least until it fades into the skyline. So for now, I’m gonna push the clutch in,
and shift.
