(»This is Cars of a Lifetime, so I’m gonna tell the whole story, back to the first roots and shoots of my awareness of cars. There’ll be some chronological turbulence in this post, folks, so keep that seatbelt fastened.«)
When I entered this world, my parents had a 1970 Dodge Dart, a butter-yellow (officially “Cream”) Custom 4-door with a tan interior, 225 engine, automatic transmission, air conditioning, and a probably-AM-only radio, which I saw from the infant carrier tethered into the back seat. How do I know it had the big six and not the 198? Because it had factory A/C, and you couldn’t get the air with the small six.
They were neither of them a car enthusiast; they bought the Dart as a transport appliance, guided by favourable Consumer Reports ratings and generally positive prior experience. That being so, few pictures were taken of the car, and I’ve never found any of just the car. But I did have some results by goldpanning through the family photos and Super-8s I digitised over the years. Here’s a clip made shortly after my mother broke her leg; that’s her parents helping out, and I guess my father’s the cameraman:
How do I know it had the 225 and not the 318? Because I remember, very clearly and at age-old depth, what it sounded like. One of the first sounds I remember in this world was one I heard on one of my first few days in it: the gear-reduction starter cranking the Slant-6 engine. That and the growls peculiar to the 225, and the first-gear whirring acceleration windup and deceleration spindown of the Torqueflite transmission—these sounds carved canyon-deep impressions in my mind. Here’s three of us four (dad behind the Pentax) on July 4, 1976. The American Bicentennial was an especially big deal there in Philadelphia, but I didn’t really care on account of being only five months old:
And here’s a pic from 1977, with mother and sister looking for all the world as though they’re living in 1977:
I spent my first few years trippin’ balls; my early childhood was just fantastically psychedelic. The boundaries were weak or nonexistent among my senses, which resonated and ricocheted and echoed off one another in ways that made their own beauty, humour, and/or internally-coherent sense. I regularly saw patterns and got jokes and laughed at what outside observers would have perceived as noise, nonsense, and non-sequitur; that’s probably why Lewis Padgett’s short story “Mimsy Were the Borogroves” makes my socks roll up and down (it starts on page 52 of the February 1943 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, which can be had for the clicking here).
All to say I was very perceptually open and attuned, and cars seemed to offer what felt like the highest concentration of fascinating shapes and smells and contours and textures and sounds (especially sounds), not even counting any scenery—though of course there was that, too.
So: 1970 Dodge Dart. When we’d arrive home from somewhere, mother would unstrap me and put me over her shoulder as she walked toward the front door. From this vantage point I could see dad closing up the car. The last thing he did after closing the driver’s door was to push the vent wing window closed from the outside. The vent wing window and its part of the doorframe were triangular and curved, and the way the curves and angles went from all disjoint while open to perfectly lined up as it pivoted closed struck me as just uproariously funny. It was one of the first things I laughed about.
The car’s concave backglass delighted me; it made me smile because of its shape and how it distorted the reflections off its outside surface. I really liked the rear bumper’s combination of angles and lines, and the shape of that round chrome remote-control sideview miror Chrysler put on everything. Inside, there was a rearview mirror bracket that looked nothing like any container of fingerpaint I ever saw, but I could see its intrinsic fingerpaintness, plain as day. It had a sort of word-sound about it, too; it sat there up there going “press-press”. I’m sure my folks thought it was just random toddler-babble when I said “Dip your finger in the press-press”—yes, I remember saying it, and it made perfect sense to me.
The dome light went “most” and the shoulder belt clip went “much-much”. The head restraints went “Bome-ba-da-dome”. The concave backglass had a complicated word-sound association of its own, but it wasn’t really pronounceable. Same with the contour of the stamped steel doorframe below the glass/above the trim panel, and the folds in the vinyl near the seat’s mounts. The door lock knobs didn’t look or (I’m assuming) taste anything like blueberries, but they went “Thurston” and had an intrinsic blueberryness.
And the window crank knobs (they went “neighbour”) and the gearshift knob were collectively really cool; they sang like a choir in a manner I could mimic by bringing my thumb and first two fingertips on one hand together in a triangular formation.
In retrospect it was all very trippy; these weren’t just pleasing shapes, they sounded, tasted, and/or smelt good, and they talked and sang! It’s called synaesthesia, and I rather wish I’d got to keep more of it.
Now, grandpa (mother’s father) also had a Dart, a very nicely equipped 1972 Custom, also butter yellow—a different one that year, called Sun Fire Yellow—with a froggy lime green vinyl interior. It was “desirably equipped”, as Consumer Reports might have said; it had the 225 engine, automatic transmission, power steering, power disc brakes, air, and a bunch of comfort and convenience options. Grandma and grandpa lived a few states south, and so over the years I got to ride in grandpa’s Dart on the occasion of a visit. Many of the same elements were present—the “much-much” shoulder belt clips, the “press-press” fingerpainty rearview mirror bracket, the “most” dome light, the blueberryish “Thurston” door lock knobs, the window crank/gearshift knob chorus, the doorframe and backglass contours, and of course the starter, engine, and transmission sounds.
Part of my attunement was an eye for minute differences, and there were plenty of them to notice. The green versus tan interior was a gimme. The head restraints were shaped differently; from the back these ones said “Pome”. From the side they went “green bean”—one of the closer connections to consensus reality; if you’ve ever opened a pack of frozen cut green beans, you’ve probably seen the curved, pointy little end piece, which looks strikingly like the side panel of those head restraints—especially in that froggy lime green colour. This metallic-green one is the closest I could find a good pic of:
Another relatively accessible reach: the windshield wipers said “drink-drunk, drink-drunk, drink-drunk”, one word at each end of their travel. The ’72 rearview mirror, though, when set at just such an angle, went “Something”, and the seatbelts’ chrome tongues said “Mimsy”(!).
The turn signals on grandpa’s Dart merit special mention, because they sounded unusual—to everyone inside the car, I mean; this wasn’t a synaesthetic thing. They went “tick-DIZZzz! tick-DIZZzz! tick-DIZZzz! tick-DIZZzz!” Later, as a teenager with my own car, I spent years chasing that turn signal sound. I tried every flasher I could get my hands on at parts stores and NOS parts vendors and in wrecking yards—no luck. I put a want ad in the Slant-6 News magazine, but nothing came of it. Maybe it was because the ad was taken out by phone, and my sound effects weren’t correctly transcribed!
Eventually I gave up, which wasn’t the end of the line. Telling more about the tick-DIZZzz! turn signals right now would be getting ahead of myself, though, so I’ll head back to the main road by a bit of a circuitous route; what came before the ’70 Dart? Well, on my father’s side, the Dart’s immediate predecessor was his ’62 Plymouth Savoy, his first car, bought in ’64 or so when he was in his early twenties. 225 engine, pushbutton automatic. Here are my folks, just married in December ’68, about to leave in it with my uncle (mother’s sister’s husband) driving:
Before we all worried about mercury in fish, dad’s father concerned himself with fish in a Mercury; specifically this ’63 Meteor:
Dad sometimes used it:
And before that came the ’56 Plymouth my dad learned to drive on:
Like father, like son…
…on multiple occasions:
I think it had an automatic transmission, the Stern family’s first, probably inspired by expensive transmission repairs necessitated by my aunt’s difficulty learning to drive the previous hand-shift car.
Again working backwards from the wedding, my mother had a Ford Fairlane of one description or another; it suffered a cracked engine block. If I understand the history correctly, by that time she and my father were enough of an item to go on just the one car, the ’62 Plymouth. Prior to the Fairlane, mother had a VW Beetle named Blau Hilde, a blue nineteen-fiftysomething model her folks had bought new. The Beetle suffered a cracked engine block (um, mother, dearest, what were you doing to them?) which led to the Fairlane. And she learned to drive on her folks’ 1950 Ford, which was dubbed “Screwloose” on account of the whole car seemed to perk up when grandpa retightened the screw holding the turn signal lever.
Her father had tended to favour Buicks and Oldsmobiles, as I understand it—that looks like a ’62 Buick in this brief clip from around 1972 or ’73, though I don’t know if that car was his or grandma’s:
I don’t recall hearing about any other Chrysler products, so the ’72 Dart was an unusual choice. My folks probably expressed satisfaction with theirs, and that might have influenced him.
Now, my mother’s father was about average height, about 5’9″, and the Dart was his car. My mother’s mother, on the other hand, was barely five feet tall and drove a great big ’71 Cadillac Calais 4-door hardtop, gold with golden brocade upholstery—the car in which I first encountered power locks and windows. Even this base model was still a Cadillac, designed and intended as a feast for the senses of a buttoned-down grownup; it really went to eleven for a sensorily-emphatic kid such as myself. The front end wasn’t just massive, it was at least three miles wide and two miles tall, with all kinds of textures and details and word-sounds. I loved the full-height taillights at the ends of the fins. I can’t find any pics of her actual car, so this publicity shot of a fancier model will have to stand in. Right colour, but grandma’s did not have a vinyl roof (and was the better-looking for it, I think):
Grandma drove the Cadillac in the stereotypical manner: passersby could see only a little wisp of grey hair in the driver’s seat; she looked out at the world through the crescent formed by the top of the steering wheel with the dashboard. I have no idea how she managed not to hit anything, but her Cadillac was undinged when it got badly traded in on an ’87ish Town Car.
In 1985 when grandpa was 72, my sister was 14, and I was 11, my grandparents offered my parents the Dart. It was in lovely condition, but it needed a heater core—the smell of coolant inside the car told the tale. My mother threw ice and lightning: “NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT!”, she hollered at the top of her lungs. Drawing on her vast automotive knowledge gained by experience with the Beetle and the Fairlane, she proclaimed “IF THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE HEATER IT MEANS THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE EXHAUST SYSTEM AND THE ENGINE’S GOING TO CRACK! IT’S NOT SAFE AND WE AREN’T HAVING IT!” My sister was disappointed because it was a car and she was within yearning distance of a learner’s permit. Me, I was bitterly disappointed because I had always really liked Slant-6 Darts—especially yellow ones, in accord with Scripture; particularly that yellow one. Thanks heaps, mother.
Not long after the rebuffed offer, grandpa ran a red light. The Dart got knocked 30 feet down the road. Grandpa walked away, but it was the end of the Dart—and, I think, the end of his driving days.
Alright, enough begats; now back to my folks’ ’70 Dart: that car got replaced during the 1978 model year. The new car was a built-to-order ’78 Chev Caprice Classic in metallic carmine red. I’m saving the pics of it for next week, but here’s the one from the brochure:
Yack! What?! No! Wrong colours, wrong shapes, wrong lines everywhere, it sounded wrong…I was inconsolable about it, grieving at all of about 2½ years old. “Where did the yellow Dodge go?” I asked my parents. “Somebody drove it away”, mother said. “Why?” I asked. “The air conditioning stopped working and we decided it was time for a new car”, dad said. “Why not a new yellow Dodge?” I asked. Mother explained to me, in that matter-of-fact way grownups sometimes do when they think there’s no chance the child will understand, that a Dodge wasn’t a good kind of car to buy any more. Years later they told me they had in fact first gone back to the Dodge dealer, and the salesman kept apologising as parts were falling off the Aspen while they tried to test drive it.
This close attachment of mine to the Dart provided fodder for clever conversation at a few dinner parties; mother would quip that they “should have kept the Dart so Daniel could take the motor apart someday”. Good for a polite chuckle. Careful about the jokes you make, though; the gods are listening. I didn’t get to take apart that particular Dart, but years thence I filled up my folks’ garage and basement with parts of many other Darts. Things that make you go “h’mm”; perhaps the physicists grappling with the nature of time are right with their conjecture that all moments happen simultaneously; perhaps time’s walls are thinner when one hasn’t yet learnt how thick they are supposed to be.
That’s not the only story that makes me think so, either. One day when I was very small, certainly less than two years old, one of the orbital adults (parent of a daycare “classmate”, I guess) came to pick me up for some entirely legitimate reason. A play date, a group outing to the zoo or something, or maybe just a ride to the daycare centre, something like that. My mother picked me up and carried me out the house, and as soon as I saw the other adult’s car in the driveway I freaked out and melted down. It was a sky-blue VW Type 3 wagon:
For reasons I can’t articulate now—and certainly couldn’t then—it terrified me. I knew, certainly, that I must not get into that car. Any other car, but not that one. As a toddler I had the customary zero say in what happens, and only one tool, so I used it: I kicked and screamed and cried and howled at top maximum volume. I viscerally remember feeling like that car was an unspeakably horrifying threat. The grownups’ tone cycled fruitlessly through reassurance, bafflement, cajoling, annoyance, and finally, in the end, resignation: whatever trip was cancelled; the other grownup got in the wagon and drove off, and with the threat gone I was immediately fine.
Anyhow. Eventually I came to grips with the Dart’s departure and found the Caprice Classic had some interesting elements of its own, with word-sounds and other fascinations. From an adult retrospective, that car was a big technological leap: their first with electronic ignition and a catalytic converter, first with unitised lap/shoulder belts in front, first with rectangular headlamps, probably first with disc brakes, first with side-impact guard beams in the doors.
A couple years later we moved to Denver in it, and I’ll pick up next week with that story.
Oh, one other thing: I did get to keep a faint shadow of my childhood synaesthesia; perhaps someday one of my nieces or someone will ask what it was like to ride around in big American cars of the 1970s, and then I’ll play this for them:
The violins are the first-gear windup and spindown of a Torqueflite or a Turbo Hydramatic. The bass guitar is the engine growl. The cymbals are those rattles in the dashboard and doors. The kick drum, that’s what happens when you’re cruising at a steady speed on one one of those roads with transverse expansion joints spaced exactly at the car’s wheelbase. In my head, at least!
Yes indeed Daniel, that was a very trippy trip! I can totally identify with your strong childhood feelings. I don’t think I had any synaesthesia but I was intensely aware of shapes and textures in cars from an early age.
I too freaked out when the tow truck came for the family car at 2 1/2, my parents were shocked at my reaction and put me in the house. One of my first memories is crying at the front window as the 1960 Pontiac departed on a hook.
And was there a better transportation appliance in 1970 than a 4 door Dart with a 225 six and 225/auto? I think not.
Truly, it was the Toyota Corolla of its day.
To your folks (and mine), the old car was just…the old car, due for replacement, with little more emotional significance than a new toaster or refrigerator or living room carpet.
To you (and me), the old car was a big, significant chunk of the world, and its departure was traumatic—if this can happen, then what else is going away? The bed? The house? The parents?
Daniel: I laughed out loud while reading this, as I could “hear” the sounds you described! My slant 6 experience was confined to a (bad) purchase of one, that unbeknownst to me, had a hole in the block, with the end of one piston sticking out! It was hidden by the doghouse around the engine (A Dodge van) but amazingly, it ran! Lesson learned: be wary of shady, small lot, used car salesmen! Since my ultimate goal was to convert it to a V-8, it didn’t faze me that much. I also read “Mimsy Were the Borogroves” as I was/am a voracious devourer of science fiction, and I am acquainted with Cerrone! I also remember crying hysterically upon watching a truck open up the driver’s side rear of my dad’s street parked ’55 Ford. I think it just goes to show that people have a LOT more in common with others than they may be aware of!
No, no, no, you lucked out; it was the salesman who didn’t know what he had and sold you a very rare Slant-5!
“…the windshield wipers said “drink-drunk, drink-drunk, drink-drunk”, one word at each end of their travel….”
In between the travel, the windshield wipers on my Dart went “Squueee-a” on the upward pass, and “Meee-ooo” on the downward.
Re the pic of the Plymouth licensed as AFT 057. I had a license number once which was AFW 027. I did a double take at first.
AAAWWW to that picture with Mom and the children in it. We had a 1973 Dart Custom with the A07 package that included most of the optional equipment. We also had A/C. AM/FM radio. Great car even though it was sluggish. It always ran.
An insightful and humorous account of your childhood experiences. Now I see the font of your automotive passions! It all makes sense, in a trippy way.
I did not experience synaesthesia, but did of course obsess on the sounds, shapes, smells and other details of my earliest automotive experiences. I could identify VWs up in our third floor apartment, passing down on the street from their sound.
And yes, childhood really is psychedelic, as I rediscovered during my hallucinogenic era. Cars really came alive again for me,
I’ve always been interested in the roots of our automotive obsessions, and this is the best documentation I’ve read yet. Thanks for taking us there.
That was a fun read Daniel, I am am looking forward to the next installation. I totally get the word sounds but how about smells. My dad had a 356C when I was a little guy and the interior just had the right smell. being allowed to pull the release for the fuel filler door was a real treat too. I was quite disappointed when the parents said that little brother and I had outgrown the back seats and dad sold it and came home with a brand new orange ’75 Honda CVCC. It never smelled right to me.
Wow, that must’ve been quite a jarring sensory shift, from the Porsche to the Honda—sights, sounds, and smells!
An enjoyable read, Daniel. I did not experience cars in the same way, but as some others note I was enthralled with the feel, sounds, shapes and colors of the many cars that surrounded me from my earliest memories. I have an isolated memory of feeling the swell of importance at being asked to help my father change a tire on our 1961 F-85 wagon when I was perhaps 2 years old. Having now had three children who cycled through that age, I am pretty sure I was the opposite of help.
And having spent much time in A bodies of that vintage I can appreciate those details that captivated you. And a 70 Dart with air conditioning – pretty high living!
Finally, your Mother’s pithy explanation that “a Dodge wasn’t a good kind of car to buy any more” in 1978 – for a lady concerned that a leaky heater core will crack an engine block, she nailed this one hard. 🙂
I have known the author as an “internet friend” for north of 20 years now, and met him in person at least twice, once to purchase a car from him.
All I can say, Daniel, is that this piece is very well-written and more than adequately gives the reader an insight into the person that is Daniel Stern.
What a great read!
As usual with your stuff it made my brain a little bit bigger, so thank you.
Y’welcome, and thank you kindly!
Excellent read Daniel! I am impressed with how many of your childhood observations you remember and articulated so clearly. When I was born, my parents had a fairly similar competitive car, a yellowish 1967 Chevy II Nova with a 250 six. It was the car I took my first ride in home from the hospital. It’s amazing the impact that car can have on a young boy. I know I my interests were heavily influenced by the cars I grew up around too.
Thanks, Vince! It surely is amazing what kids absorb—and how much of it, eh!
Amazing recollections Daniel, right up there with the stories of rlplaut and of course Paul with his auto-biography series.
I am like you – just a little anyway.
I vaguely remember at the age of 3 of being afraid of our new 1955 Chevy when my mother first brought it home and possibly crying when asked to ride in it for the first time.
I also didn’t like the fully exposed rear wheels on mid-50s Buicks, so when I had to ride in my great uncle’s car, I wasn’t very happy about it.
Much later as a teenager, I characterized the sound of the turn signal flasher in our new 1967 Chevy Bel Air as “tick-oon, tick-oon.” Strangely, the new 4-way flashers were nearly silent – did GM use separate flasher units for the turn signals and 4-ways back then?
But the kicker has to be when at a very young age, my younger brother and I developed a great dislike of cars with split windshields. We made up a name for these older cars, dubbing them “tee-kee cars.” (This was well before becoming aware of the word “tiki,” which was exactly the way we pronounced our made-up word.)
So one fine summer day, my young aunt’s boyfriend (and future husband) showed up at our house in a 1951-52 or so Chrysler convertible to take my aunt, brother, and me to the famed Kennywood amusement park not far from us in Pittsburgh, Pa. The park is now a US National Historic Landmark.
I loved going to Kennywood, but there was one small problem – I’d have to ride in a teekee car! Thanks to K.T. Keller’s reluctance to offer the latest styling features in his practical cars, the Chrysler of the early 50s (along with Plymouth, Dodge, and DeSoto) was still saddled with the dreaded split windshield, with each pane of glass as flat as a board. I put up a full-blown meltdown about not riding in the car, even if it meant giving up a trip to Kennywood. My aunt and future uncle couldn’t make any sense of my behavior. My brother did go and of course had a wonderful time. I stuck with my principles, dammit!
Thanks for the kind words!
“Tick-oon” or “tick-doong” is bang on target for a whole lot of ’60s cars with the flasher clipped to part of the metal dashboard so as to amplify its sound enough for the driver to hear it over the din of their cigarettes. Yep, the hazard flasher was separate, and usually not mounted to a soundboard. I’ve got more to say on the subject in a future COAL instalment.
If I put myself back as close as possible to that early-childhood frame of mind, I can see “tee-kee” being a perfectly sensible, obvious name for split-windshield cars; one panel would be the “tee” and the other would be the “kee”, but only when they were right next to each other; hence, “tee-kee”.
The ’73 Dodge Polara I owned as a teen had turn signals that went “dee-poah, dee-poah”, increasing in tempo as the engine revved and slowing as the engine resumed idling.
That car was chock full of onomatopoeic opportunity, between the same reduction gear starter your Dart had (neearow neearow neearow rhizzzz!) to the shaking v-twin a/c compressor mounted smack between the 360 V8 intakes (choogachoogachooga) to the melodic whine of the aging Torqueflite automatic as it slipped badly between first and second, causing the engine to race before catching second gear (woo-aahhh-ooo!).
Being I’ve worked on mechanical things most of my life, I still make these word associations. So nice to know I’m not the only one, though I got a hint I wasn’t by reading Don Martin comics in Mad Magazine. He was an absolute master of word-sound effects!
It is quite amazing to me, the variety of ways people vocalise the sound of Chrysler’s geared starter—or starters, I should say, because there were many changes made to them over their 25-year usage, most of which made differences to the sound. I’m planning a piece about it.
Your description of the slipping Torqueflite reminds me of a trip in a Washington DC taxicab in the early ’80s. It was an aged Coronet, and it struggled to let go of first gear, so at what should have been the end of the usual windup whine it began to oscillate in frequency until it finally managed to pick up second. I can still hear it clearly in mind.
Oy, that paint-shaker A/C compressor. Much more durable than it needed to be, and an NVH nightmare with its inherent racket and its very peaky torque loads that set up all kinds of belt noise.
Don martin: Effyeah! Somebody’s taken the trouble to cattledog them in alphabetical order.
At four years old, I had a name for the Mopar starter – I called it the “cocoa filter” and amused my grandma when I would often ask her guests if their car had one.
I love this! Do you recall why you called it that?
Marvellous! As children, both my sister and I assigned random words to things because they just sounded right.
My boys, now grown, did the same.
I’m seeing this trend emerging in my granddaughter (or perhaps this is wishful thinking on my part).
I still find certain words, including certain surnames, really funny. For example, the surname “Hunter” has always made me think of small plump pink pigs. I have no explanation for this. I hope no CC-reading Hunters are offended; really, it’s me!
I’m so glad one can be relatively anonymous on the ‘net. 😄
Okay. Now that there are at least a handful of others who’ve come forth, I need to admit that I had a few names for various car parts, functions, and sounds too. I remember some readily, though I’ll have to dig around in my brain a bit to come up with a more comprehensive list.
Never did have name for the famous Mopar starter, as my formative years were spent mostly in GM cars. Not that all GM cars sounded exactly the same, but it was easy enough to tell if it was GM, Ford, Mopar, or something else. Sort of like you could always tell a 6.2/6.5 from a Navistar from a Cummins diesel back when… with your eyes closed. I digress.
Arg! Darn Auto”correct” – I meant “Ginter”, not “Hunter”.
Our ’72 Dart Custom I remember had a “dashoot, dashoot, dashoot” sounding turn signal flasher until it was replaced a few years later when it acquired a “tick boing, tick boing, tick boing” sound similar to the 4-ways.
I daily drove a ’74 Dart from 2007-14 so there are plenty of familiar sights in this story.
I remember seeing many of your comments on some of the A body sites in those days, and used your trick for making the side markers blink with the turn signals, so thanks 🙂
Y’welcome! 🤓
Oh, that was most enjoyable, Mr Stern.
Like a number of others, I had a car-phobe thing, absolutely hating to ride in the parish priest’s Mk2 Corona – and no, not for THAT reason, he was a lovely man – because of the evil in the ornate, grinning wheelcaps! True story. And I too bawled my eyes out when our ’58 blue and white Kombi was driven away for the green and rust ’63 one (though in retropsect, it should have been my dad crying considering the heap he’d just been conned into).
I too had some form of synaesthesia, but mine operated just out of reach: everything had sounds or odd significances but I could only rarely shape it enough for words. I could when very young, as I do remember my older siblings rolling about the place once when I was about 2.5, because they asked me what the sound of different colors and so on was, and I’d answer without realizing not everyone saw things like this. That’s likely when I learned it was all a bit unusual. I might add that it still sits there today, if even further out of sight, and also note it’s never been a blind bit of use to me!
I wonder if you’ve stumbled on something here. No-one else in my large family has the slightest interest in cars, and yet I was noticing them from when I can first remember (which is nowhere near what you can, btw, maybe about 2 onwards). Is there perhaps some combination of perception, from your full-on synaesthesia via folk like me to ones not aware it of it operating, which gets early comfort or relief in the combined sensory overload that cars present? Most car people can’t really explain their obsession when asked: perhaps the endless need for knowledge, news, gossip, experience, sight sound and smell of them common to all car nuts is an expression of some constant return to satisfy or sooth a perceptive itch from before we even knew it was in us.
Looking forward to what I learn next next week.
That is a really interesting idea, and I think there’s probably something to it. The inside of my head is a very noisy place, and I’ve always had a frustratingly short and flimsy attention span. My first year in university, I discovered if I put a song or a piece of music on infinite repeat, it would serve as a sort of mental chewing gum and I could get fractionally more work done. I would’ve driven my roommate to homicide with endless hours of Sheryl Crow’s “All I Wanna Do” if he hadn’t had enviably superhuman powers of concentration.
The focus on little details of cars, when one is a small child, may be something universal, at least to “car people”. As a four-and-a-half year old, I got to ride home in the back of the family’s newly purchased Mustang fastback. Sights, sounds, feels. The way the shapes of the pieces of the car were a combination of all new, and others as flashbacks to the Falcon that had been traded in for it. The little running horse logos on the keys and the glove box door. The slides for the quarter vents, that a small kid in the vestige of a back seat did not have the strength or leverage to manipulate. The sounds of the engine and the “snicks” of the transmission as it was put through its gears. The descending small howl on downshifting, to slow down the car with the gearbox.
I still have the car, and to be around it is an exercise in sampling those little cues of early childhood, all in the larger stage of time having passed, the car existing out of all original context, and of living in the world of somewhat advanced adulthood. Daniel, if you don’t have a yellow Dart and you can swing it, I highly recommend finding one. Just realize that the reminiscence is an incomplete experience, a bit like pressing your face to the glass, looking into the past. But still well worth it, IMO.
Those little noticings don’t quite go away. Having replaced the ignition switch and starter on my 25-year owned Dodge pickup, the starter doesn’t sound quite right and the switch feels “wrong” when I turn the key. This time around, I attribute it to resistance to change due to age, and a bit of the “get off my lawn” mentality at work.
Find a Dart, you say? Ohhh, I’ve been there, done that, collected the set of T-shirts…and if you wanna find out how the story ends, you’ll hafta read the book! (i.e., the rest of my COAL series).
What year is your Dodge pickup?
Daniel, this is an incredible bit of writing. I applaud your courage in writing about your childhood experiences. I so enjoyed it. (Your commenters have written some very good stuff too; it’s with misgivings that I try to add anything to the discussion.) I suppose that if one in a thousand can relate, that still makes many millions of us worldwide.
I’ve often felt that I had some variation on synesthesia, more related to sounds than colours. There’s a bit in Percy Faith’s A Summer Place instrumental hit of 1960 that always reminded me of the sound of a Powerglide or TurboHydramatic 400 torque converter. I always loved the sound of hydraulic lifters ticking too. I was delighted to read someone describing a happy small-block Chevy starter as saying “VOO-VOO-VOO”, whereas one cranked by a weak battery said “wow-wow-wow”. The starter in Dad’s ’67 Chrysler said “GANG-GANG-GANG-GANG”.
Certain chrome badges on cars were magical, as were certain dashboards; somehow they transported me into a world of infinite possibilities.
The smell of an old domestic survivor at a car show can immediately transport me back to my childhood – that particular scent of raw gasoline, stale cigarette smoke, and strange odiferous rubber and plastics seems to go right to the reptile brain.
I also found Mimsy Were The Borogroves almost indescribably clever. It’s been a few years; time to read it again.
Thank you again!
Thanks for the plaudit, #35. “VOO-VOO-VOO”…interesting. I can get onside with that if I try, though to me the Chev starter was more like “Should’ve-Could’ve-Should’ve-Could’ve” (for extended cranking) or “CHENkaVROOM” (for an engine in perfect tune that starts right up). And I’ll add your “GANG-GANG-GANG” to the remarkably long list of ways people vocalise a Chrysler starter.
Badges and dashboards: yep, we’re speaking the same language.
As to the smell: it bugs me that gasoline no longer smells the way it’s meant to. Not that I go out of my way to smell it, but today’s oxygenated, alcohol-adulterated stuff just smells wrong.
Interesting read. I found it annoying and hard to read at first. It took me a few minutes to appreciate it. But I read it again and now I get it. You expanded my knowledge. Two parts of the story resonated with me. My family had a 72 Chevy Kingswood wagon. Our neighbors across the street had a lime green Dodge Dart Swinger. One day my mother backed out of the driveway and lightly bumped into the Dart. The entire door caved in. The Chevy had a tiny speck of green paint on the bumper. The Darts ran forever, but the body quality was horrible. It was 40 years before my mother admitted that it was really my sister who was driving, on her permit, who was driving when the car was hit. My mother lied to my father and the insurance company. Now regarding learners permits, my father sold the old 63 Chevy Wagon a week before I got my learners permit. I had grown up in that car. I waited for years to be able to drive that car. He would not let me do it. I missed it by one week. I never forgave him.
I wasn’t sure how much tolerance readers would have for this material, so I appreciate your persistence.
Oof—hard luck on that Chev wagon. X-(
This is a truly great piece of writing, regardless of its subject matter. What a ride this takes one on. I’m going to “mimsey-up” for the rest of this series.
So many “emoto-sensual” memories and experiences were conjured by this.
For example it put me in mind of the endless thought I put into the little symbols on the knobs of the radio in my mother’s Vega. My grandfather must have spent an hour explaining why that particular symbol made some kind of sense as the tuning knob indicator.
Thanks, MTN!
This is the first time I’m seeing that radio knob, to my recall, but yeah, I can see how it could spur quite a long discussion between adult and kid. But it also strikes right at the design issues involved with the likes of controls and displays: how do you quickly, clearly, and unambiguously convey meaning via a small, simple pictogram such that someone who has never encountered it before will immediately understand it?
Well written Mr. Stern ! .
I’m late to this party, thanx for linking it in another of your wonderful and thoughtful articles .
In the early 1970’s Datsun’s transistorized turn signal flashers made a similar sound, I well remember it and made sue my 20 year old ’78 Lil’ Hustler pickup had the right one…
This article and the comments had me going back in my mind to Pops 1937 Bentley St. James Coupe and his brand new direct import 1954 VW Kombi ~ I loved riding in the ‘way back’ over the engine where the heat kept me warm in the New England Winters and the distinctive sound put me right to sleep often .
-Nate
Thanks, Nate. If you would like to read more of my (or anyone else’s) posts, just click my (their) name in the byline under the post title.
Grandma drove the Cadillac in the stereotypical manner: passersby could see only a little wisp of grey hair in the driver’s seat
My 5’1″ grandma traded her ’64 for a ’70 Calais, which had a high seat back even with the restraints removed. From many angles, it looked like no one was driving. She soon got a ’72 Calais, which was somewhat better for her when reversing and not black inside, so it felt more open.
I’ve commented before that I’ve only owned 4 cars in 47 years driving, but actually my first car was a ’59 Plymouth “Fire Chief” pedal car bought in Covina, Ca. My Dad probably had the first of 2 Rambler wagons, but his first car (bought new after college) was a stripper ’56 Plymouth Plaza, in coral, it had the flathead 6 and column mount manual. He bought it before meeting my mother, (who just stopped driving this year), she learned to drive on my Grandfather’s ’51 Chrysler Windsor semi-automatic but has never been very comfortable with anything but an automatic, so both Ramblers were 6 cyl automatic. I also had another toy car, a ’62 Plymouth, but it must have gotten thrown out when we moved from Pittsburgh to Monroeville, my parents moved quite a bit in their younger years due to my Dad’s job…he started working on semiconductors on his first job out of college in ’56 and other than the job he had when I was born, worked in that area until he retired in 1990 (he also by then settled down to the house my Mother still lives in; unfortunately Dad left us 5 years ago.
He really didn’t own that many Mopars, other than the Plymouth, he also had 2 Dodges (’80 and ’86). He had another of the same cars your parents had, a ’78 Chevrolet Caprice, which I think was the plushest car he ever bought; though current cars come with power windows/locks, air conditioning, and AM/FM stereo, this was the first car he ever bought that had all of them, and they were all optional at the time.
My Parents used to leave us in the car when they would go shopping (probably people would be aghast at that now) but we lived in the Northeast and the car never got too hot, and they wouldn’t do it in the Winter (we lived in Vermont twice and the problem would be more the cold than the heat). We were probably a pain to shop with, likely twice as fast without us in tow, but we got to know the inside especially of all our cars pretty well The one that stands out in my mind is our ’65 Olds F85 wagon with the disappearing ash tray (into the dash). There wasn’t a lot for us to do when waiting, so I spent lots of time looking at other cars as they went by, playing with the buttons on the radio, and tormenting my sisters.