In order to understand the really disparate men in my life, I attempt to size them up using their personal relationships with their automobiles.
My father is outdoorsy – a geologist by profession, although now retired. Nick a rock here. Gather a fossil there. He is a man’s man, but has never showed any affection for machinery. Although brought up to be a gentleman, engines and gears had a way of bringing out the inner savage. Some of my oldest memories involve my dad bent over some engine, cussing out the Industrial Age.
My father would invariably change the tires on our VW van when they needed it, but you would never see him admire aftermarket center caps or custom chrome grille work on a vehicle. You might see him checking the H2O level in the radiator or putting some Rustoleum on spots that had rusted on the van, but you would never see him using a toothbrush to scrub headlights or using Q-tips to clean the knobs on the dash. These things just didn’t take place in our garage.
My father-in-law, on the other hand, is a car man all the way. He knows make, model and year of everything that’s likely ever travelled the Pennsylvania turnpike. Scrubbing whitewalls or ogling a 1962 Chevy at the Antique Car Club show is his thought of a well-spent Sunday.
He graduated speedily from a pacifier to a pitchfork and pliers while growing up in a rural area of northern Pennsylvania. Learning all about animal husbandry and the ABCs of mechanics was expected of young farm boys. His interest in things with gadgets, wheels, and engines seemed to stick even though any fondness for animals did not. He made the decision to leave the farm and go to university and he never looked back.
My husband is also a professor; just like both of our fathers, but that is the only resemblance they share. He doesn’t like camping out, carefully washing his cars, or collecting rocks. He loves to pass his Saturday grading papers as he sips fancy java drinks at Starbucks.
He has no trouble putting fuel in his car, but he would in all likelihood use his Chevy center caps for paper weights rather than using them to floss his ride. No offense to hard working wheel center caps. He makes it a point to vacuum his car once in a while and doesn’t mind driving around with “Wash me!” on the back window indefinitely.
My daughter’s beau is a juiced up variation of my father-in-law. (I think they would bond rapidly if sent together on an errand to a car parts store.) The Boyfriend got a performance exhaust kit for Christmas and is content now that his car’s exhaust growls deeply, letting everybody know he has arrived. “I can hear him coming a mile away,” my daughter grins, evidently in the throes of young passion.
There’s not doubt that the relationships that men have with their cars can be complex. On occasion, the car can be a manifestation of a man’s masculinity, while other men act as if their vehicles were a foe that are a nuisance to be subdued or at the very least, tolerated.
Many name their cars, and others blaspheme them. Some treat their vehicles with TLC, while others declare bragging rights because their car or truck is beat up or has the most mileage. Car stories are exchanged over beers, like war stories used to be told around a campfire.
Why else would the auto industry continually sell billions of dollars in decals, car alarms, hoods, tailpipes, center caps, dash accoutrements, fancy headlamps, window tinting, backup sensors, seat covers, rims, and chrome?
Whether the vehicle in the drive is fuel for cussing or cooing, I’m apt to suppose there’s some kind of mechanical mojo in there – something reminiscent to “If you build it, he will come.”
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