Shiftless....

          The first car I ever drove legally was a 1965 Rambler American. My Dad bought it when my older brother Charles got his driver’s license, and I shared it with him when I got mine. We also had to share it with Mom when Dad was driving the station wagon, or with Dad when Mom was driving the station wagon. Mom and Dad had 8 kids, so we were used to sharing a lot of things, but when you’re 16, it’s tough to share a car with anybody.

            I don’t remember exactly how big the engine was, but I do remember it was somewhere under 200 cubic inches. I got a ticket for attempted speeding once, but as long as you came to a complete stop when you were supposed to, we didn’t have too much trouble with the local police.

            It also had a 3-speed manual transmission, with the shifter located on the steering column, as I believe God intended. That’s where shifters were found for years for the most part, unless you had a really fast car, or sometimes a truck. Then it was probably on the console or the floor board. Even when you graduated to an automatic transmission, the shift lever was usually still on the column, unless you had bucket seats, which were cool if you were cruising around, but not so cool if you wanted to drive with your arm around your girlfriend.

            I’ve been driving legally for 49 years, and my truck’s shifter is still on the steering wheel column, across from the turn signal lever. Sometime back they moved the dimmer switch off of the floorboard and incorporated it with the turn signal lever. I handled that change pretty well, and only got my foot tangled in the steering wheel a couple of times before I adapted to the new location. I think most dimmer switches are in the same place now, and all you have to figure out is whether you need to pull it towards you or push it away from you to change from bright to dim.

            Sometimes when we travel somewhere with Mom and Dad nowadays, I drive their car. They have an automatic transmission, but they have bucket seats with the shifter on the console. I suspect if they would have had bucket seats years ago, they wouldn’t have had 8 kids and I wouldn’t have had to share so much. Anyway, whenever I drive their car, I always reach for the lever on the steering wheel column and turn on the windshield wipers before I get the car in reverse and back out of the garage. I’m not sure Dad believes my explanation that I’m just checking to make sure the wipers work just in case it starts raining, but so far he hasn’t challenged me on it.

            My wife traded cars a couple of weeks ago, and as luck would have it, they moved the shifter again, and this time it’s not even a lever. It’s a knob on the dashboard, and every time she lets me drive I spend the first couple of minutes grabbing air where things used to be, reaching for a key that doesn’t exist, turning on windshield wipers that don’t need to be turned on, and dimming lights that don’t need to be dimmed.

            I read a story the other day about somebody working on a car that drives itself.

            I think I’m ready.