(Part Two of "Christmas 1985")

It wasn't too long after I received my first car, a 1975 Chevelle Malibu, that it began to give me trouble. The big car was plagued with a series of random mechanical failures and maladies that left me on a first name basis with the tow truck driver from Smith's Chevron. He still sends me Christmas cards.

Anyway, such problems would not have been a big deal if not for the fact that I, unlike other teenage boys, had the mechanical prowess of a turnip. I knew guys that could simply frown into an engine bay and correctly diagnose a mechanical problem, whereas I would still be fumbling with the hood latch. My father tried to help me work on the Chevelle, but after several minutes of watching me whack randomly on various engine parts with the wrong size wrench, he would elbow me aside and do it himself, knowing that I could cause more problems than I would fix.

After arriving home in the passenger side of a tow truck for the fifth or sixth time, I began to petition my father for newer, more reliable wheels. I had a few friends that drove Japanese cars, never had any problems out of them and could drive for months on a single tank of gas, so I decided that this would sound sensible to him. And, because these same friends had cars with five speed transmissions, I decided that I wanted one too.

"You've already got a damn car." was his usual response to my initial inquiry. Or, "But I just bought you a damn car!" Once again, I could sense that it was pointless to continue asking, so I began working on a plan. I would convince my mother that I needed a new car. Next time she asked me to run to the grocery store for her, I would tell her that I didn't trust the Chevelle to take me that far. "That far" was exactly one mile further than my daily commute to school. When that time came, however, she responded by tossing me the keys to her Volvo. Curses! I was going to have to think of something else. That something else came a lot sooner than I had expected. Actually, I had nothing to do with the "something else" when it happened, but it was beautiful.

I had just finished gassing up the Malibu at a Chevron Station across town. When I tried to start the car and leave, nothing happened-- not even a click. That Chevron station was of the variety that you rarely see anymore-- a gas station with an actual garage and actual mechanics, so there were plenty of guys with grease under their fingernails available to assist me. After frowning into the engine compartment for three or four seconds, one of the mechanics decided that my starter had gone out, and that he would be glad to fix it right there, but it wouldn't be ready until the next day.

Ordinarily, I would simply have the car towed back to the house and whack on engine parts until my dad shoved me aside and did it himself, but not this time. My dad was on a business trip and not due back in for better than a week, and the car had to be fixed immediately. I had to call my mother, who was none to happy about having to traipse across town to pick up her mechanically retarded son at a gas station. I don't even remember what I was doing that far from home, but it turned out to be what got me in another car. When my father called that night, she gave him an earful about that (insert obscene adjective here) car that he had bought, and how there was no way in hell she was going to continue to tromp all over town when that (yes, insert another one here ) car left her son stranded somewhere. Needless to say, my father grudgingly took me car shopping the next weekend.

Car shopping with my father was almost as tedious as driving with him. His goal in car shopping was to find every way possible not to buy a car. And this wasn't just because he wasn't happy with the idea of me getting another car, he would do the same way when car shopping for himself. The fact that he hated every car we looked at didn't help matters either. It was either too expensive, too small, too ugly, too cheap, too hard to work on, too red, too blue, too white, too truck-like, too car-like, too expensive to insure, too hard to find parts for or too nice to be owned by a seventeen year old kid. We looked at dozens of cars over the next few weekends before deciding on a 1980 Toyota Corolla SR-5, a sportier version of the standard Corolla with a sunroof, louvers, a Kenwood stereo system, aluminum wheels and a five-speed transmission. The car was perfect, the price was right, and I had a new car. Except for one small problem… I didn't know how to drive a straight shift, which meant my dad was going to have to teach me.

Just like when I got the Chevelle for Christmas a year and a half earlier, I found myself sitting on the porch, gazing at my prize. Only this time, the car seemed to be mocking me. Thought you were hot stuff 'till I came along didn't ya? You're not so tough… lemme see ya try to drive me. You can't 'cuz ya can't drive a stick! Ha! I scare ya, don't I? The car was right… I was scared, and it didn't help much when my dad came out and announced that we were going out to drive.

I expected him to drive the car out somewhere to a deserted parking lot or sparsely populated foreign country somewhere before I climbed behind the wheel, so I was horrified when he gave me the keys.

"Okay," he said. "Let's go."

"What?" I asked, dumbfounded. "I can't drive that thing!"

"What do you mean you can't drive it?" he fired back. "You're the one who wanted a five speed."

"I meant I wanted you to teach me how to drive a five speed." I said.

"Do you mean to tell me," he said, leveling his gaze at me. "That I went to all the trouble to find you another car and now you're telling me that you can't drive it?" These were the kind of things that always made me furious with my father. He knew that I couldn't drive a stick already, he was just saying that to get under my skin.

"No!" I said, almost shouting. "I want a five speed. It's exactly what I wanted! I just need you to show me how to drive it!"

"Are you sure that you want more driving lessons with me?" I didn't. But I wasn't about to tell him that.

"Yes sir." I replied, hanging my head in defeat and humiliation.

"Okay then. Let's go." He said, and folded all 6'5" of himself into the passenger side of the Toyota.

The family had moved since I got the Chevelle in 1985. We no longer lived on a busy street, so I did not feel the need to turn the car around in the driveway and go out nose first as I did in the first outing with the Chevelle. Oh no, there was a completely different, even more daunting challenge awaiting me. That challenge was our driveway…. A monstrous slab of concrete that went straight up at a ninety degree angle. A chain link fence ran across the bottom of the driveway, separating it from a back yard that was sloped even more drastically than the driveway. But that wasn't all…. the end of the driveway at the street was flanked on either side by large trees with low hanging branches, so that you had to stop and carefully peer up and down the street, then continue backing out. I had done this many times… in an automatic.

I knew enough about straight shifts to know that you had to hold the clutch in to start the engine, then "level off" with the gas and clutch to get moving. No problem. I pushed in the clutch and fired the engine.

"Now you need to…" my father began.

"I know, I know." I said, cutting him off. "Level off with the clutch and gas smoothly."

"Okay." he said with a slight shrug of his shoulders. I vaguely remembered him making that same comment in that same tone of voice with that same shrug years earlier, but I dismissed the thought.

I leveled off with the gas and clutch, and the little car lurched violently forward and stalled. I heard him sigh loudly, and knew that if I looked over at him, he would also be shaking his head. Suddenly, I remembered when and where I had seen that shrug and heard that sigh before. I was six or seven years old and had been arguing with my father for several minutes about whether or not it was safe to stick a paper clip in a light socket. He let me win the argument and proceed with my "experiment" which left my hand numb and my britches soggy. He sighed and shook his head the exact same way then.

"First," he began, "You didn't level off. You kissed the gas pedal and dumped the clutch. Second, you're in first gear. We really ought to go backwards, since that is, technically, the only way we can go. Next time, put it in reverse, then give it more gas when you start to let off the clutch."

Not feeling anywhere near as confident as before, I fired the engine again. This time I managed to get the car moving in the right direction. It lurched violently backwards and rocketed up the driveway before I knew what was happening.

"Stop, damn it!" he yelled at me, and I stomped the brake just as we reached the top of the driveway. Fortunately, I knew to push the clutch and brake together to keep the engine from dying, but I had another problem. I was at the very top of the ninety-degree driveway, the nose of the car pointing almost straight down.

"Now what do I do?" I asked, and was told to "finish backing out." Duh. Thanks dad. Needless to say, when I released the brake, we began rolling forward. I had completely forgotten about "leveling off" as we raced towards the fence and the back yard beyond. I also seemed to have forgotten about the car having brakes until he broke the spell.

"You know that if you crash through the fence the dog is going to get out." was all he said. He heaved a big sigh again when I got the car stopped. "Okay," he said, sighing again. "Let's give it another try."

My next run at the driveway was the complete opposite of my first. I squeezed the gas and eased the clutch, moving the car backwards about an inch every thirty seconds. He was sighing again.

"Give it more gas." He said. I did, and the engine revved higher but the car wasn't moving any faster. "Less clutch." He said this time. I eased more off the clutch and the car began moving faster. The further I backed up the impossible driveway, the more he chanted "more gas, less clutch." Finally, we reached the top and came to a stop. The nose of the Toyota was pointing straight down again. Looking both ways beyond the trees, he told me that the road was clear.

Remembering something I had seen a friend of mine do, I put the parking brake on, then eased off the brake pedal. The car groaned, but it held itself at the top of the driveway. Hand on the parking brake, I began leveling off on the pedals and slowly releasing tension on the hand brake simultaneously. Next thing I knew, I was on the street, pointing in the right direction. My dad never said, but I thought he was really impressed by my little maneuver. Of course, years later, he confided to me that he thought it was a really wussy thing to do at the time, but it seemed to bolster my confidence. After all, far greater challenges awaited me on this particular drive.

On the street, I managed to get the car going with minimal lurching and shifted all the way up to third gear with no gear crunching or stalling. I was just starting to feel pretty proud of myself when I realized that I was headed straight for the steepest hill in our neighborhood. A hill with a STOP sign at the top that intersected the busiest street in our neighborhood. Even worse, the road disappeared around a curve on both sides, which means that you have to get out there and accelerate to fifty miles per hour or better to avoid being surprised by a speeding car rounding either one of the corners. Once again, this was no problem for me-- in an automatic.

So here I come, in my first outing in a straight shift and stop at the top of this hill. I put my blinker on and mustered all the courage and determination I could. Both ways seemed to be clear, so I started to pull out. Instead of going forwards the car went backwards and stalled.

"Just do the exact opposite of what you did on the driveway." my dad volunteered. By George! I thought. It could work! With that, I thought that I could pull it off-- my confidence soared... then crashed to the ground when a car driven by some impatient doofus pulled right up on my bumper and started blipping his horn at me. I grumbled curses at the doofus as I re-fired the engine. "This take off has got to be clean." my dad told me. "That guy is right on your bumper, so you can't roll back any when you take off." He made it sound maddeningly simple.

Surprisingly enough, it was. I just purred right on out there with hardly a lurch. However, as I was halfway out in the street my dad announced that there was a car coming from the right, and that he hoped the guy had good brakes. I responded by tromping on the gas pedal and barking the tires through my first two lightening fast shifts. I got out there fast enough that the other car didn't even have to slow down.

"I hope that's the last time you pull a stunt like that!" he shouted at me. "You keep on doing that and you'll fry your clutch and tear up your transmission. Not to mention the fact that you nearly got us creamed back there!" Now it was my turn to sigh.

"Kept us from getting squashed, didn't it?" I was quite pleased with myself for my little maneuver, and I couldn't hide my proud smile.

This was normally the kind of smart ass remark that earned me a good cuffing, but I think he had picked up on how I was feeling. "That was pretty impressive." he said with a smirk. "Just don't do it again."

The rest of the day passed much in the same fashion, with plenty of stalling on hills, sloppy takeoffs and close calls, but I was beginning to feel more confidant. By my third day with the Toyota, I was relaxed enough to actually turn on the stereo. By the fourth or fifth day, I wasn't even nervous about taking off on hills.

Pretty soon after that, I was running all over town without worrying about breaking down, my days of riding shotgun in a tow truck far behind me. Things began to happen fast at this point.... graduating high school, going to college, my first apartment, my first serious relationship, my first real job, my first time moving back home. That Toyota was there for all of it.

By 1993, the Corolla had 160k on the odometer, so I knew it was time to start looking for another car. The Toyota had been well-driven and well-loved, and had served my needs for six years. When I traded it in on my first nearly-new car ( a 1992 Ford Probe with 15k miles) my salesman told me that the Toyota was "on it's last legs." I had to resist telling the salesman not to say that so loud, so the car wouldn't hear. As I drove away from Adamson Ford in downtown Birmingham in my nearly new Ford Probe, I glanced in the rear view mirror and saw the Toyota sitting there in front of the garages. It did look like it was on it's last legs, and I could have sworn that it looked downright forlorn, like it knew it was being left behind. As silly as it may sound, I felt like I was abandoning a beloved pet and moving across the country.

When I got far enough away from the dealership, that feeling began to fade and I turned my attention to my new car... the Probe had a strong and sure footed feel to it. It still smelled new, and the iridescent blue paint job dazzled under the spring sunshine. I pressed the accelerator harder and climbed up through the gears, loving the feel and the sound of it all, and the Probe and I rocketed off towards the future.

I was in love again.

2001 Steve Wingate