I don’t know about you but I find it useful now and then to take a moment to contemplate the vast spectrum of human emotions. There are those among us who harbor fantasies about how homo sapiens are rational, thinking beings; they are no doubt considering only themselves, forgetting about the rest of us. Free of such delusions, you know and I know that what fuels the fire of living and inspires most meaningful action are such things as love and hate, joy and despair, moments of serenity balanced by occasional moments of utter terror, and what not. Stated most simply, it’s all about the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, playing out in infinite variety as each of us wends our way through life, and ain’t it grand?
While modern neurological science, with its brain scans and cleverly designed experiments, works hard to define and categorize and reduce all emotion to some catalogue of biochemical and electrical events, many of us have little need for elaborate explanations of what we simply know as the experience of living, on the most immediate level. It is the stuff of our lives in every waking moment and the rest of the time in our dreams, for those that remember them.
Let us not get too hung up on cause and effect here. Figuring out the immediate so-called trigger of your latest wave of feelings and related thought can be as immediate and obvious as that tsunami on the horizon filling you with fear and horror, or as unfathomable as the joy and contentment you felt just a moment before this, watching the waves crash upon the beach and pretending you’d finally arrived in paradise, if only for the weekend.
It’s even more complicated than that: any current emotion is but a consequence of one or more immediate triggers in the now, stirred into a rich stew of associated memories, some of them conscious, some submerged in the subconscious. With all this in mind, who can blame us for accepting the limits of our understanding of these matters and calling it a day? But let us not give up so easily!
As it is with emotions, triggers come in infinite variety. There are those related to how well we are making our way through life – succeeding or failing in our academic and economic, intellectual and creative pursuits (the whole thrill/victory and agony/defeat thing) – as well as finding general satisfaction and contentment (or lack of same) when not pursuing anything in particular, in life’s more passive moments. The current state of the world suggests that many nowadays struggle greatly with this, and it’s not a good thing.
The emotional triggers linked to physical well-being, or lack of it, operate on the most primal level of all. The effects of hunger and thirst, fatigue and pain can dominate the moment, and nothing triggers the awesome power of our survival instinct more than a serious illness, hello darkness my old friend. Being free of these effects, rested and energetic and physically able, is to be on top of the world, ready to cope with the slings and arrows of the day, good morning star shine the earth says hello!
What’s left are those triggers and emotions that are part and parcel of so-called relationships. Behold the multitude of triggers and emotions channeled through our connection with other people! You have your own lifetime of experience in this regard, most of which has hopefully been of a positive nature, and maybe you’ve worked hard to improve the odds of your having positive relationships in the future, an effort well worth making. Or things have gone so endlessly awry that you’ve given up on people entirely and worked hard to minimize their presence in your life – “simplify, simplify” as Henry David Thoreau (who preferred to live by himself in the woods) once advised. Most of us lie somewhere between these two extremes, where a lifetime of social relations can best be summed up as a mixed bag, and what’s wrong with that?
People are but one segment of the world of living things. Some relate just as intensely to their pet, or to birds and whales, the trees and flowers and insects in their garden. Can you see how ridiculously far this can go? Chances are you know it because you’ve lived it, and merely recalling associated memories can trigger a whole new wave of emotions in this moment. If you think you don’t still miss every cat or dog or whatever non-human was ever your pal, you are kidding yourself.
Then there are those relationships we have with the inanimate, better known as things. A work of art is a thing, and art is legendary for triggering powerful emotions; one could say the purpose of art is to do exactly that. Those items in the world of objects we call “art” represent kind of a special case, discussed ad nauseam throughout history and up to the current day It is one you can peruse at your leisure if the subject grabs you, and be forewarned you could be at it for quite awhile.
Here we shall take a much humbler approach, and seek to get to the bottom of what’s emotionally at work when it comes to the more mundane, say your favorite comfy chair or pair of slippers, or that perfect paring knife you bought for big bucks when you were in Germany, a trigger for the most pleasant of emotions until the day you cut yourself with it, badly, as you’ve always kept it incredibly sharp. In this context there’s that famous line of poetry about the guy who measured out his life with coffee spoons, and just what was he getting at?
As a modern person, consider your considerable involvement with your so-called “device.” Unlike your relationship with your favorite teapot or wonderful collection of antique clocks, your electronic window on the world may be crucially important to your way of life, but the operative feelings involved bear no trace of warm sentiment. If love’s got anything to do with it, it is a love borne of dependence, and as any marriage counselor can tell you, most such affairs tend to end badly, so thank God this is all about objects and not living things.
In the end your wonderful device is a mere appliance, like your refrigerator or rice cooker, which you love until it stops working, at which point you replace it with a newer, better one. Like any appliance, you take your chip-filled plastic and aluminum partner totally for granted, which is as it should be. It also doesn’t hurt that the technology, as complex as it is, has reached a level of incredible reliability. Of course losing your battery charge or finding yourself in a connectivity dead zone at the wrong moment can potentially arouse all kinds of emotional mayhem, but surely that’s never happened to you, and never will, at least until it finally does, in which case heaven help you.
If our relationship to most inanimate objects is essentially mundane, with occasional warm feelings and minor irritations, what is there to say about our relationship with our vehicles, which some have described as a “love affair?” If you’ve lived long enough and owned enough cars and trucks or whatever over the years, memories of love and hate, joy and terror, occasional bliss and persistent low (and sometimes high) levels of anxiety come with the territory, especially if you’ve ever been impoverished. With most of the inanimate objects in our lives, it’s Ozzie and Harriet; with our vehicles it can be more like Liz and Richard, or Ike and Tina, or Ben and Jlo.
These thoughts came to mind after we recently dumped (which is how it felt) our trusty Mazda 6, an affair of a dozen years. In some ways, it was a simple case of moving on. The thing was 15 years old, after all, facing a new round of replacements of pieces that had worn out, though we had the money to cover it – so how to explain the guilt, the sense of mild betrayal? We’d always treated it with respect, which meant regular oil changes and what seemed like constant brake repairs. There had been occasional moments of excitement, like the time the power steering pump dumped all its fluid and it became almost impossible to control the car’s direction, a moment of terror followed by a very laborious upper body workout to avoid hitting things. Unforgettable, as such events always are.
Or that time the fender liner (who’d have thought there was such a thing?) fell out and kind of exploded, unleashing a scary display of warning lights as we bombed along at 70. Talk about thrilling! Or the time we took it in for a routine oil change and our trusty mechanic noticed all the transmission fuel lines had rotted away, foretelling immediate doom and a very expensive repair, which never happened, as he’d caught it just in time. Had the car valiantly fought off a tranny meltdown in the middle of nowhere out of some desire to spare us the drama? Did it know we might’ve dumped it back then and there, if that had happened? Does every car owner get caught up in this kind of magical thinking, at least sometimes?
Maybe not, if they’re one of those people with the means to buy a new car every few years, who do the routine maintenance as required and know to get out before aging takes its toll on reliability. Also, nothing shouts to others one’s financial success in life more than a new car. Of course nowadays it’s often as not a charade, with people of humble means taking out multi-year loans and leases they can barely (or not at all) afford, in order to drive the latest and shiniest and most impressive. These financial adventurers are often only one missed payment away from seeing their symbol of success rudely repossessed, as ugly an emotional moment as one can imagine. This sort of thing happens all the time, and it’s nothing new, but the phenomenon in these precarious economic times seems to be rampant, foreclosure rates on the rise. Better to just use your device (they can’t repossess that, can they?) to impress the world with concocted evidence of your wonderful life. On the other hand, nothing beats the thrill of brazenly showing off in public, for which your vehicle is the perfect vehicle, so to speak.
Aside from playing the conspicuous consumption game, your vehicle also serves as a vital means of expression of your identity, a trigger for everyone you encounter, out there on the street, even if you kid yourself that it is nothing of the sort. Sociologists and psychologists and cultural observers have long known this fact. Your vehicle, like your clothes and hairstyle and tatoos, sends an unmistakable message to others about who you are (or think you are), though admittedly this message can often be vague or subtle or misinterpreted in ways you never intended. Does driving a small car express your practicality and desire to tread lightly on the planet, or do some people (who know nothing at all about you, and so what?) see you as boring and cheap, or worse, poor? Today more than ever, some vehicle brands can express the values of an entire culture and lifestyle, think Jeeps, Priuses, or any pickup you can name, for starters.
At the other extreme lies the infinity of mid-size blob-shaped AWD so-called “sport utility vehicles,” whose sheer numbers shout herd mentality, where the emphasis is on utility (the car as appliance) and all notions of “sport” lie deeply shrouded in mystery.
To get personal, what projected message did this writer have in mind when he put factory “Porsche” stripes on his clapped out (but beloved and sometimes reliable) ’67 Rambler American station wagon, back in the day? Or when he laid a whole John Deere color scheme on his equally well-worn (but beloved and even more reliable though not always) ’78 Volvo? Were those some attempt at mocking his poverty at the time, or were there other, deeper, psychological and cultural messages at work, about which he himself might not have been aware? Is it possible he just like the way his efforts looked?
What about the recently abandoned Mazda? Looking at the pictures, you will notice it has gray, painted wheels. Does that show this writer, well into maturity, still possesses a bit of the aesthetic whimsy expressed in his youth? Or conversely, is it just another desperate desire to scream to the world that his bland run-of-the-mill mid-size sedan is special, as is he and you better not forget it?
As with all such complicated things, both answers bear some truth, and there is a third, practical side to the story, as well as another bit of evidence that the world is going to hell. We are speaking here of the current state of hubcaps. Which nowadays all look the same, unimaginative variations on a spoked theme, in a bogus attempt to imitate the more expensive alloy wheels seen on all the better vehicles nowadays. Which wouldn’t be so bad, except that being an inexpensive covering for the humble steel rim underneath, they are all made very cheaply of plastic, with some kind of wire attachment ring. A ring that all too often fails in its attachment duties, if the roads are decrepit enough, which is the reality hereabouts.
After that car had shed itself of enough hubcaps over the years (which we foolishly kept replacing, in the hope that things would somehow improve, a familiar pattern when relationships go wrong), this writer finally saw the light and said to hell with it, went out and got himself a couple quarts of Rustoleum Battleship Gray, and you can see the splendid result. Or splendid for the first year or so, after which things rusted to a state of total unsightliness, at which point you can imagine the message this relayed to others, something not good.
This particular case study gets more interesting when one learns that by some incredible co-incidence, the guy up the street happened to also have a Mazda 6, one that made his own very distinctive and remarkable statement about himself, one that was as different as can be from whatever ours subtly projected. Just look at this car! What does it say to you? Something exciting? Beautiful? Scary? All of the above, and more? Can you imagine driving this low-slung beauty on Boston’s potholed streets, some of which now have speed bumps, including ours? Perhaps it’s no wonder that this unforgettable car has sat at the end of his driveway, out of the way and forlorn, for many months, at this point. He may have considered selling it, but how could one ever part ways with something into which one has poured so much of oneself? Perhaps he never will, unlike yours truly.
If these two Mazdas express different aspects of love, which car suggests to you crazy passion, and which expresses almost the opposite, whereby one barely detects any emotion at all? Which would you drive if you had to choose, keeping in mind that we only go around once in this life?
The fact is, if you live long enough, at least in North America, where owning a car is usually a no-brainer or often a no-choicer, you’re going to pass through a number of vehicular relationships over the years. These affairs tend to have bright or ugly beginnings, starting with your relationship to the various sellers. The best case scenario is when there is no sale at all, whereby some family member or acquaintance gives you some wheels, either for free or at a good price, with an honest rundown of the vehicle’s past and some idea of what you might expect in the near future.
The worst case, far too common in this imperfect world, is the so-called “dealership experience,” an intense traumatic ordeal of several or more hours, layered with a veneer of trust and good will while it’s really a battle of wits and wills, of winning and losing. The art of the sale dictates that the buyer come out feeling like a winner no matter what the outcome, and a masterful salesperson can display genius in achieving this.
Between theses two extremes are purchases from private sellers, low key and often pleasant affairs, made less risky if one is careful and does the research beforehand. Nowadays, it’s easer to do good research than ever, a rare case of where tensions are being lessened in a world where this almost never happens any more. This does not, of course, preclude the possibility of unpleasant surprises for the buyer a few miles down the road, but part of the romance of car ownership is the constant reminder that life always has its unknowns, which makes it all the more interesting.
Fifty years ago, however, it was still mostly a crap shoot. This writer tried to cover his bases by purchasing his first vehicle from a trusted acquaintance, the local guru of VW microbuses, if you can imagine such a thing. It was a ’58 camper, already 14 years old but with a rebuilt engine, 40 horse. Half the air cooled VWs sold throughout history have come with rebuilt engines; think about that. It topped out at about 60 mph but not to worry! The speed limit back then was fifty five, when we all lived in an alternative universe. It had a nifty table that converted to a bed, and louvered windows, with curtains! Being handy I bought the DIY repair book, as there was no vehicle cruder and self-repairable than those iconic 1930s technology “people’s cars”, that started out as one of Adolf Hitler’s pet projects. It was a long long time ago.
Here’s the adventure part: driving it, you were looking at a speedometer and odometer, and that was it. If the little red light came on it meant you were overheating; if it was the green one, you needed to get gas. If you saw the green light, there was a lever you pulled to access a few extra gallons, which on my car did not work. It goes without saying that over the course of a couple of years, I ran out of gas a few times, and rebuilt the carburetor once (remember those?) without realizing the tank was dry. Youth! That car was unceremoniously abandoned on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago when the rebuilt engine blew up, despite my having religiously adjusted the valves every few months, like the repair book suggested. Imagine the emotional power of that moment: disbelief, anger, embarrassment and even shame (was it my fault?) followed by a sense of guilt and betrayal, as I took transit home and waited nervously for word from the city. Which never happened, leaving only bewilderment and wonderment over what the hell finally happened to my trusty steed.
Those cars, by the way, are nowadays a cult item, especially the camper versions. Is it nostalgia? Do those who pay big bucks for them actually drive them, on their million acre Montana ranches or private tropical islands? Has my very old and particularly rare bus, assuming it still exists, had a fabulous makeover and is now trundling along the roads of some paradise somewhere? I’ve got my automotive fantasies and you have yours, and if you claim to have none, you’ve not looked deeply enough into your emotional subconscious. I suggest hypnosis.
Any lingering negativity from that dark day in Chicago eventually evolved into warm feelings – isn’t resiliency a great thing? – with the next car, a ’65 Chevy Biscayne that was donated by my partner-at-the-time’s mother, God bless her. It was gigantic, with only two doors, each of which was awesomely heavy and took a mighty effort to open and close and watch out for your fingers! We were able to stuff an impressive amount of our worldly belongings into the vast trunk and interior to make the move from Chicago to Massachusetts, but being truly impoverished at the time meant we drove it very little, as that behemoth put the guzzle in the term gas guzzler. Did the pioneers crossing the prairies have a special place in their hearts for their conestogas?
The flip side of the much ballyhooed joy of car ownership is that nothing reminds you more of your poverty when you own one and struggle to pay for gas and maintenance. We barely drove it, got by with walking and riding bikes and buses, and finally abandoned it in a snowbank in downtown Northampton MA, which swallowed it up and cast it into oblivion, same as happened with that bus in Chicago. A pattern seemed to be emerging here, about which this writer, up to then a straight shooter, was not especially proud; the operative emotion was desperation, tinged with a rough edge of shame, nothing that a few years of psychoanalysis might have cleared up, which of course never happened.
The elusive joys of motoring finally came in the guise of a Rambler American wagon, remember those? Why should you? It was reliable and fun and in a fit of whimsy and identity confusion I blessed it with “Porsche” racing stripes along the doors. Such a simple gesture, such a positive effect, with so many people responding to it either with bemusement or total confusion. For some reason it was also dead reliable, most problems not beyond my growing bicycle mechanic’s skills. The highlight of this was passing the emergency brake test on the state safety inspection, by rigging it up with a brake cable from a bike. It only worked one time but it was at the right time, and we laughed all the way home, though the moment of truth, whereby you pulled on the lever and put it in “drive” to prove it would hold, was terrifying until success was assured. Every car owner should share such a thrill. That car was finally gifted to the kid who worked at our bike shop, and I suspect he pulled those stripes off the first chance he got. Whimsy was not his thing.
There followed the ’69 Chevy Malibu wagon, almost a lost memory (every life has a few relationships like that) insofar as in less than a year it got stolen and torched. Imagine the bafflement and disbelief, to walk out to the street to find it gone, followed by days of waiting for word from the police, then troubling thoughts about its violent and senseless end. It was that car that had transported a friend to the hospital to have her first child. The unexpectedly upbeat ending to this story came about when that new mother took up a collection to help us buy a replacement, unbeknownst to us. What you have in the end is bittersweet.
That bit of charity led to the Volvo, where whimsy prevailed again, this time with a can of yellow paint that spelled out a salute to John Deere and all things agrarian. Who said old junky cars can’t be fun? It took us on some great camping trips, had an annoying overdrive that failed regularly, which made it really loud on the highway, but the stick shift and comfy seats were a plus. Otherwise memories run a bit sour, like the time it had its rear tires slashed by the psychopath down the street when we parked in “his” spot, a crime that like so many went unpunished, though our neighbors were sympathetic and apologized for not warning us about him.
Then there was the heater core that failed. Heater cores are cute little radiators that sit somewhere hidden under the dashboard; when the Rambler had the same problem, I’d simply taken a hacksaw and carved out a hole, yanked it out and replaced it, back when life was so simple. It turns out Volvos in those years were infamous for requiring that a trained mechanic totally disassemble much of the interior to attain access. The heater core itself cost maybe a hundred bucks; the twelve hours of labor required added up to quite a bit more, leading to shock and resentment. That car died when the frame rotted away. Final emotional verdict: once again, bittersweet.
Improving finances led to better things, as sometimes they do. The ’84 Honda Civic wagon, small and nimble, with four speeds and a blast to drive, was a great car, at least until the water pump failed, ripping out the timing belt and destroying the engine. And that, shortly after I’d asked a mechanic if the pump should be replaced, to which he’d said “not yet.” To this day I can recall the sound of that belt tearing, followed by silence, and yet another shocking ending that left enduring traces of rage and PTSD, as the cost of repair was prohibitive under the circumstances.
In an attempt at achieving better reliability, we transitioned through a couple of Camrys (Camries?), the supposed “gold standard” for that measure. As gold standards go, both came pretty close, though both relationships started with a few reservations; any mature adult should always have those, if they’ve learned anything in life about new starts with strangers, for which buying a used car is a textbook lesson.
The first Camry looked like a good deal, as all potential used car purchases look in the beginning: lowish mileage from Vermont, evidently well maintained, good price. The reason for the good price was a solid layer of rust coating the bottom of the car, which turned out to be a veteran of the salty winter roads of the Green Mountain State. Was it a thin veneer, not to be a problem? As with any new relationship, a used car purchase contains elements of anxiety and doubt, unanswerable questions and crafty calculation (that is if one considers oneself crafty, which is most of us, and if we are honest with ourselves are we not all fools in the end?).
Crafty or not, we got eight pretty good years out of that car, until the rust finally did it in. There were no lingering bad feelings, something akin to an amiable parting of the ways. An amusing feature were the seat belts, where the shoulder strap ran back and forth on a track in the ceiling when you clasped the buckle. Every car represents a moment in technological history, every new innovation either welcome or infuriating, depending on how attached one was to the past. Some of us still miss the vent window, and you’re forgiven if you don’t even know what that is.
Having occasional or frequent moments of self-doubt is part of being alive; lingering self-doubt is the name of the game with used car purchases, though maybe not in your case, in which case are you not kidding yourself? In the case of our second Camry, one could say we were asking for it, but the deal offered was very very enticing. The catch was that it came with what is known as a salvage title. For the unfamiliar, salvage title cars tend to be great deals, the reselling of cars that’ve been declared “totaled” by an insurance company. The vast majority of car buyers won’t go near them, even though whatever repairs have been done to make them drivable are subject to rigorous state inspections. As relationships go, it’s kind of like considering marriage with a triple divorcee who also has a sparkling personality and a good job, who may have finally gotten their act together. Friends will tell you this is too risky and will try to talk you out of it; the more perverse among us will see this as kind of a dare and take our chances, to hell with common sense. And so it was with this risen-from-the-dead Toyota.
Salvage title notwithstanding, the gold standard for reliability it was not, needing endless exhaust and front suspension parts over ten years. Our trusty mechanic had warned us about these problems, peculiar to ‘97s, but we took our chances and paid the price, over and over again. Forewarned is forearmed, at least now and then. Of course no long term partner is ever perfect; one accepts the partner’s occasional annoyances and quirks as passing events, thankful that they at least never betray you with some deal-breaking disaster, some equivalent of a blown engine. In the end that Carry gave us ten good years, which in summation were unremarkable – a regular coffee spoon of a car, so to speak, a pleasant and forgettable tale which to many equates with the perfect automotive experience.
It’s just an appliance, after all, and who in their right mind would want their refrigerators and washing machines to tell anything but a bland story of functional perfection? Should this not be the same with one’s wheels?
Though the emphasis here has admittedly been weighed towards the negative, the greater point is that a car is not a toaster. Our vehicles hold the promise of rich experiences, positive and negative. They carry us along through this wonderful and precarious, adventurous and problematic and sometimes dangerous life, which can get sometimes get downright emotional, if you’ve been paying attention. If you haven’t, that’s okay! Chances are you’ve your own stories similar to the ones told here, if you’ve been driving and owning cars for enough years. In your case maybe it’s been a totally sweet and uneventful ride, in which case you might’ve missed out on some rich memories. Take it from this guy: if you’ve never blown an engine, you haven’t lived. Just kidding!
Which brings us to the current state of affairs, thus far a honeymoon of two months with a 2018 Honda Fit. This was a move contemplated for at least a couple of years, when a slew of new apartments in the ‘hood made available street parking scarcer than ever. And no, we have neither a driveway nor a garage, and welcome to Boston! Purchased from a dealer for the asking price, like-new and heavily warrantied. Not haggling over price made the experience (mostly) easy and pleasant, but let it be said that dealerships make lots of money on financing and don’t like it when you pay cash, especially if you also turn down their various offerings of extended warranties. Such a strange world!
It’s eight years old, not at all new but new enough as far as we can tell, and when one is infatuated, as happens with all of the best love affairs, one is not especially scrupulous and heaven help us. By current North American standards it’s tiny, which is a trump card in the game of finding a parking spot on the street around here, but that also makes it wonderfully nimble and fun to drive, a perfect match for Boston’s sometimes ridiculously narrow streets.
In a fit of what might be called mature whimsy, we have embellished it with a tasteful door graphic, nothing as confusing or hilarious as the Rambler Porsche, but some gags are best told only once. It is also an attempt to distinguish our car from all the other dark gray Fits out there, especially the one that lives right on our street, and is it time to do some soul-searching around why some of us found this to be intolerable? Is it okay to think this was just an innocent aesthetic impulse, arising from the simple belief that it looks pretty good? Can one be too introspective sometimes? At least I withheld the impulse to put a Power Wagon graphic on there somewhere. There was no way that would’ve fit, anyway, at least not in a way that looked good. Wait – maybe across the hood!
PS Honda Fits were no longer sold in North America after 2020 due to poor sales, but they are still produced and sold today as the Jazz the world over; Boston is a very active market for used ones because this is one place where they truly are a good fit, no pun intended