I am not into cars, and I have always said that I would like to have owned one car in my life and be buried in it like a Viking in his ship. However, I have begun to realize that cars have changed as much as I have and maybe I do not want to go back to that particular ship.
The first car I ever drove was an electric blue Plymouth sedan which one could see coming from miles away. It had the advantage of never being hard to find in a parking lot. It came with a cigarette lighter and ashtray, one of the necessities of life as the world smoked in those days. In driver’s ed we were still being taught the arm signals for a turn. Arm signals??? Yes, one rolled, and I did say rolled, down one’s window which may have been open anyway as there was no air conditioning, and stuck one’s arm straight out the window for a left turn and crooked it at the elbow to indicate a right turn. My blue bombshell came with a turn signal indicator, however, which I turned on with ease. But the only problem was that it did not automatically turn off once I had completed the turn. That had to be done manually, so I spent much time merrily driving down the road indicating a turn I had already made miles back. The one offset to all of this was that when one pulled into a gas station, there was an attendant ready to pump the gas, wash your windshield and collect your money --- a teenage job now long gone. I had a relative who drove miles out of her way to get gas at the one station that still had attendants to service her. She was willing to pay extra at the pump for this service and sat in her car, with quiet satisfaction, as the windshield was cleaned.
A later car of my early married years was a blue VW bus, the most uncomfortable car ever made. I could have auditioned for a Greyhound bus driver after owning it. It came with the usual gas and brake pedal but had the addition of a clutch. That meant one was changing gears which had its moments on the hills of San Francisco. I am still amazed that I did not roll into the person behind me at a light as I frantically took my foot off the brake and placed it on the clutch to engage the car forward. But now the turn signal turned off by itself after the turn, but once one made that turn into the gas station, the gas pump belonged to you as did the windshield.
As the years have gone by, car exteriors have also undergone changes from the huge fins of the fifties to the more sleek appearance of today’s models. And inside, the cigarette lighter and ashtray have disappeared to be replaced by outlets for all the electronic devices of our lives, in addition to a map which shows where one is and ways to chart where one is going. Yet, in the depths of my glove compartment I will admit to a truly contraband article --- a paper map. I do use the voice on my phone, whom I have named Susie, to get me places but first I like to look at a map to tell generally if I am going east or west, north or south. I like to know what major roads I will be taking and a general idea of where I am going. I have been in a car with a talkative Susie who suddenly became completely silent because she did not know where she was. She had disappeared into the electronic ether, but luckily, I had some idea of where I was and what I was doing.
Now we are looking at cars that will drive themselves. As much as I have always enjoyed the freedom that a car brings and can still remember the elation of driving off by myself at sixteen, I am not sure I am ready to trust the idea of a hunk of metal that thinks it knows what it is doing on Interstate 95. I remember all the quick decisions I have made behind the wheel in my lifetime and do not think a car on its own can really be that responsive.
But the final problem is the CD player. As an audio book fan, I have worked my way through recorders that rested on the seat and jumped every time the car hit a bump, to tape decks which often ate the tapes to the current CD players. I have discovered with dread that the new cars have none of these. I will be forced to do something with my cell phone which, in spite of all its conveniences, is still a somewhat foreign planet to me.
So maybe while I do not have, nor want, my original car of 62 years ago, I will just stick with my current little red Toyota which I drive all by myself listening as I go to an audio book from the library while the air conditioning whirring away happily. Perhaps this is my Viking ship.