VW Vamoose
Sep. 9th, 2021 02:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evening_tsarFor someone who's anything but a grease monkey, it's amazing how sad it was to see a scrap dealer tow away my Volkswagon Jetta.
I won't say it was my first car, because my first car was a Mazda whose brakes failed on the 403 and nearly got me killed. I will say it was the first car I got good use out of, and which didn't slide into oncoming traffic on the Red Hill Expressway.
I suppose we grow attached to machines which we use with any amount of regularity and develop any amount of comfort with. I can say with confidence I spent more time in that car than in either of the homes I occupied during the time I owned it. It was made homey by the scattering of bric-a-brac around the seats and glove compartments - maps, pens, cds, shaving razors, dental floss, mouthwash, half-a dozen pairs of mismatched winter gloves - all comfortably within arms reach. Commuters learn very quickly what constitutes "arm's reach". With a good stereo and scorching seat warmers, it could be a very comfortable home away from home indeed.
As comfort and familiarity grows, the vehicle becomes an extension of the body, an exertion of the personal will. One learns, intuits, exactly how much pressure to apply to the gas pedal, exactly how far the objects in the rear mirror are, exactly how much space is needed to safely stop. One learns both the capacities and limitations. Can it make this turn? Can it fit in this spot?
One navigates the dashboard by touch alone and grows fluent in a kind of braille - this button for this radio station, this button for the ass warmers, this dial to increase bass. It has to be done this way because, in a car, one is supposed to be watching the fucking road - which is what makes modern touch-screen dashboards such a monumentally moronic Darwin-Award Worthy idea. Granted, I never could figure out the windshield wipers, but I could switch cds - yes, it was that old - without batting an eyelid or taking said eyelid off the road. I could manoeuvre that car like a Mongol Calvaryman could manoeuvre his horse.
I can't be the only one who thought about his car a little bit like a horse. For one thing, this supposedly inanimate object is actually quite animated - it comes to life with a roar and race toward the horizon. It radiates heat, needed to be fed and watered. One could hear its beating "heart" and feel its innards vibrating under you ass. You can judge the state of its health by the sounds it makes, and could be forgiven for mistaking the grinding of bad transmission with the agony of injury. Then there are spluttering, dying breaths of an alternator that just won't go anymore. It managed to spit out my Motorhead cd, then went quiet. "Broken" was the last song to blare from her speakers.
So the superstitious tendency to anthropomorphize is already there (not dissimilar to sailors, I suppose, towards their boats). That, and the cartoons and storybooks of my childhood tended to anthropomorphize everything from kitchen utensils to vegetables. So I'm quite used to thinking, quite against my will, that just about everything out there is imbued with some kind of feeling. I'm probably one of the only people who genuinely empathized with Tom Hanks in "Castaway", when goes to pieces over losing his volleyball.
Now I'm trying to get used to my brother's gass-guzzler, which he sold to me before fleeing abroad. The volume controls are on the wrong side of the steering wheel. There's no thermometer or compass in the dash. The horn sounds like a timid mouse - it won't scare a seagull. Still, it's not lurching violently every time I pull past a STOP sign, so that's progress.
And the stereo will play MP3s. Hmmm. . .
I won't say it was my first car, because my first car was a Mazda whose brakes failed on the 403 and nearly got me killed. I will say it was the first car I got good use out of, and which didn't slide into oncoming traffic on the Red Hill Expressway.
I suppose we grow attached to machines which we use with any amount of regularity and develop any amount of comfort with. I can say with confidence I spent more time in that car than in either of the homes I occupied during the time I owned it. It was made homey by the scattering of bric-a-brac around the seats and glove compartments - maps, pens, cds, shaving razors, dental floss, mouthwash, half-a dozen pairs of mismatched winter gloves - all comfortably within arms reach. Commuters learn very quickly what constitutes "arm's reach". With a good stereo and scorching seat warmers, it could be a very comfortable home away from home indeed.
As comfort and familiarity grows, the vehicle becomes an extension of the body, an exertion of the personal will. One learns, intuits, exactly how much pressure to apply to the gas pedal, exactly how far the objects in the rear mirror are, exactly how much space is needed to safely stop. One learns both the capacities and limitations. Can it make this turn? Can it fit in this spot?
One navigates the dashboard by touch alone and grows fluent in a kind of braille - this button for this radio station, this button for the ass warmers, this dial to increase bass. It has to be done this way because, in a car, one is supposed to be watching the fucking road - which is what makes modern touch-screen dashboards such a monumentally moronic Darwin-Award Worthy idea. Granted, I never could figure out the windshield wipers, but I could switch cds - yes, it was that old - without batting an eyelid or taking said eyelid off the road. I could manoeuvre that car like a Mongol Calvaryman could manoeuvre his horse.
I can't be the only one who thought about his car a little bit like a horse. For one thing, this supposedly inanimate object is actually quite animated - it comes to life with a roar and race toward the horizon. It radiates heat, needed to be fed and watered. One could hear its beating "heart" and feel its innards vibrating under you ass. You can judge the state of its health by the sounds it makes, and could be forgiven for mistaking the grinding of bad transmission with the agony of injury. Then there are spluttering, dying breaths of an alternator that just won't go anymore. It managed to spit out my Motorhead cd, then went quiet. "Broken" was the last song to blare from her speakers.
So the superstitious tendency to anthropomorphize is already there (not dissimilar to sailors, I suppose, towards their boats). That, and the cartoons and storybooks of my childhood tended to anthropomorphize everything from kitchen utensils to vegetables. So I'm quite used to thinking, quite against my will, that just about everything out there is imbued with some kind of feeling. I'm probably one of the only people who genuinely empathized with Tom Hanks in "Castaway", when goes to pieces over losing his volleyball.
Now I'm trying to get used to my brother's gass-guzzler, which he sold to me before fleeing abroad. The volume controls are on the wrong side of the steering wheel. There's no thermometer or compass in the dash. The horn sounds like a timid mouse - it won't scare a seagull. Still, it's not lurching violently every time I pull past a STOP sign, so that's progress.
And the stereo will play MP3s. Hmmm. . .
