Baby you can drive my car.

          According to the calendar, this post will appear on February 23^rd, so maybe by then the blizzard we lived through in the Northeast in late January will be a distant memory.  But while it’s still fresh, I’m here to sing the praises of my car, which handily conveyed us throughout the worst of the storm.  It’s a 2023 Subaru Outback, with the turbo 2.4 liter engine, and I’m not being paid to say so.

Indomitable Subaru Outback

            My father was a mechanical engineer, and for him breathing was the only thing more important than his cars (family, country and school ties came after that, though I’m not sure in what order). I’m a creature of suburbia, having lived in city apartments only three and a half years out of a long life.  This means cars have also been a full extension of my being, as necessary to survival as arms and legs.   I don’t remember learning how to drive, because this was just something we did from the moment we could see above the dashboard.  Acquiring a divers license was a simple formality easily accomplished on one's sixteenth birthday.

            The world will be better off when self-driving, electric cars take over, but for some of us, car guys, something will be lost.   

            If you’re looking for relevance to a blog focused on crime writing, I’ll refer you to Lew Archer and Philip Marlowe, who spend a lot of time driving their mid-century jalopies all over California, or a great fresh talent, Shawn Cosby, whose hotrods live at the center of the action.  My main protagonist owns a 1969 Pontiac Grand Prix, an impossibly enormous and powerful hunk of Detroit Iron he drives for no other reason than it belonged to his dead father.  One of our legendary mystery writers said that a detective’s work mostly entails driving around in cars and interviewing people.  I can’t remember which one, but the conclusion is inescapable.  A lot of mysteries involve wearing out shoe leather, but the vast majority require a drivers license and the willingness to test local traffic laws.

            In life as in fiction, cars are a means to an end, but the journey can be just as important.  Odysseus had to make do with creaky ships, cowboys and knights errant had their horses, but we’re lucky these days to slip behind the wheel of a stupidly wasteful device that, appropriately powered, thrusts us back into the seat and hurtles us over macadam with heedless intent.    

1965 Chelsea Grey MGB

            A few weeks after graduating from college, a friend and I got in my '65 MG and drove from Pennsylvania to California on a circuitous route that covered about half the lower 48.  We weren’t trying to mimic Jack Kerouac, or Martin Milner and George Maharis, we just felt like doing it.  Since road trips and narratives are inextricable, this was a tidy novel of experience that defies calculation.  I recommend it for all young people, though I’d use something a little more cushy and commodious than an MGB. 

            We know rationally that cars are not living beings, but the ones of my youth were animated when christened with names.  An abbreviated list includes Alice Blue, Dudley, The Silver Goose, The Blue Max, Vinnie, Ford Maddox Ford Ford, El Clunko, Vance and Jeanne la putain. I had one of the first Accords that I named Jane Fonda the Honda, and whenever my toddler son climbed into his car seat he would say, ‘’Hi Janie!’’. 

We maintained those cars mostly ourselves, spending lots of time under the hood and chassis, on creepers with grease on our hands and drips in our eyes.  So maybe intimacy with their inner workings created a bond impossible today, cars being black-box computers on wheels only knowable to high tech diagnostics.  That’s true of my Subaru, though its

Brake job on The Silver Goose

personality still leaks through the circuitry and into my subconscious.  The basics prevail.  It’s an internal combustion vehicle with pedals and a steering wheel, and it goes where I point it and apply thrust.  And most importantly, responds to the little turns and twitches of my fingers and the instantaneous judgements of my eyes and reptilian brain. 

James Taylor said it best:

Now when I die
I don't want no coffin
Thought 'bout it all too often
Just strap me in behind the wheel
And bury me with my automobile

              

 

Life in the Fast Lane

You can’t exactly call a car an inanimate object, since you can use it to drive to San Francisco, or to the 7-Eleven, so clearly animated.  Though it’s not alive, not in the fashion of a German Shepard, goldfish or your Uncle Lou. 

I grew up in a car family, imbedded in a surrounding car culture, in the 1950s and 60s.  My father worked hard at his job, maintained our house, and worked on cars, to the exclusion of everything else.  To us, cars were no less creatures who lived with us than our various dogs and cats, and to a lesser degree, the children.  Our cars had names and the tradition was honored by my friends as well, so I spent satisfying time in Alice Blue, the Blue Max (no relation), Vinnie the Volkswagen, Dudley the Dodge, The Silver Goose, the Silver Queen (also no relation), Mr. B (my car) and Tootles, my mother’s name for her 1947 Plymouth which she drove fast enough to frighten Mario Andretti. 

    We all fixed our own cars in those days.  You only consulted a mechanic in the direst of straights.  And they needed a lot of fixing.  I had to change the spark plugs and distributor points on Mr. B on a regular basis, replace brake shoes and pads, and attend to the constant disintegration of exhaust systems, batteries, carburetors, starter motors, solenoids, and rocker panels, which I patched with sheet metal salvaged from an old refrigerator.

Safety was never a consideration.  Seat belts had yet to be required, and occasionally slamming your head into the dashboard was considered encouragement to improve your driving skills. 

I don’t remember learning to drive, since my brother and I had hurled whatever junkers were cast about the house through the trails and fields of our neighborhood from the time we were tall enough to look out the windshield. 

    What does all this have to do with writing, the mission of this blog?  When I created Sam Acquillo, my first and most enduring protagonist, I gave him a 1967 Pontiac Grand Prix, an impossibly oversized and stupidly over-powered hunk of Detroit iron, because that was the type of car I was raised on.  It was an obvious thing to do.  I made his father a mechanic (like mine, though my dad was an Ivy League graduate and corporate executive, which did nothing to dilute his thuggish devotion to internal combustion, in his cars and himself.) 

I’m sure you can be a male American mystery writer and never include a dumb car in the narrative, but not if you’re from my world.  It’s as essential as a divorced spouse  or an everyday bartender. 

Cars today are serenely smooth, quiet and efficient.  They are computers with engines attached, and I don’t know the first thing about fixing them.  The average minivan could probably smoke a souped up ’67 Mustang off the line, but there’s something missing.  I’ve had a string of Audis, and some have sparkled with personality, including the two aging versions my wife and I still cling to.  The Subaru that’s now my everyday ride is even more refined, and I love it, but it’s too good.  There’s no rattle and roll, no coughing start, no deafening wind noise, errant squeaks or intermittent, mysterious surges of power.  There’s a big digital screen filled with functionality I’ve barely scratched, ways to drive without holding the steering wheel, a four-cylinder turbo-charged engine (four-cylinder?!) that leaps from green lights, and constant reminders to behave in a more responsible and socially conscious manner.

In other words, entirely tamed.  And taming.  We’re better off for it, but I’m grateful that I got to live in the Wild West of unfettered, lethal and exhilarating car-crazy abandon, when I was too young to know how lethal, and too lucky to suffer any permanent harm.