Archive for November, 2009
Measurement of a Man: Motors, Mileage, Mufflers and More
I have several important men in my life that are all very different. In an effort to size them up, I have used the relationships that each of them has with automobiles in order to understand them a little better.
My father has now retired, but was a professional geologist. He has ever been really outdoorsy. He’s best-known for chipping a stone here, collect a fossil over there. He is definitely a man’s man, but has never been very loving of any kind of machinery. Gears and motors have a way of bringing out his inner animal even though he is a real gentleman. I can think of times when I was very young, watching my dad with his head under the hood of a car and hearing him cussing at the Industrial Age.
My father would regularly change the tires on our VW camper, but I never saw him fawning over aftermarket center caps or grille work. While he would occasionally dab some Rust-o-leum onto rusted points on the van or put H2O in the radiator, you would never see him take a Q-tip to the dashboard knobs or scrub the headlights with a toothbrush.
Then Again, my father-in-law is a complete car man through and through. I wouldn’t be surprised if he knew every make, model, and year of every vehicle that ever travelled the Pennsylvania turnpike. He is happy to spend a Saturday afternoon admiring cars at an Antique Car Club Rally or scrubbing up the whitewalls on his car.
He grew up in rural northern Pennsylvania and graduated rapidly from a teething ring to a pitchfork and pliers. Where he grew up, farm boys were expected to learn all they could about animal farming and automobile mechanics. He has maintained his passion for gizmos, wheels, and engines, but has no interest in animals. He left the farm, never looking back, and went to college.
My husband is also a professor; just like both of our dads, but that is the only thing they share. He doesn’t like to go camping, carefully washing his cars, or collecting rocks. He loves to spend his Saturday grading papers as he sips fancy coffee beverages at Starbucks.
He has no trouble putting petrol in his car, but he would probably use his Toyota center caps as door stops in his office before he would pimp his ride with them. No disrespect if you’re a center cap mind you. He makes the time to vacuum his car every other season and doesn’t mind riding around with the words “wash me” scrawled someplace in the grime on his car.
My daughter’s beau is a juiced up version of my father-in-law. (I think they would bond speedily if sent together on an errand to a car parts shop.) 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 smiles, obviously in the throes of young passion.
It’s true that men and the relationships they have with their cars are complex. It seems that these relationships can be an reflection of some men’s masculinity, while other men treat their cars as an adversary that’s a nuisance that must be conquered or suffered.
Some gentlemen give their cars names and some curse them. Some give their cars plenty of TLC and others call for 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 shared around a campfire.
This is the reason the auto industry sells billions of dollars worth of window tinting, aftermarket center caps, dashboard accessories, chrome, seat covers, rims, car alarms, backup sensors, hoods, exhausts, and decals.
Whether the wheels in the driveway are fodder for cursing or cooing, I think there’s some inevitable mechanistic mojo going on – Kind of like to “If you build it, he will come.”