by Curt Kovener
In I Corinthians we are told by Paul “When I was a child I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
Maybe that worked for the apostle formerly known as Saul, but for me and a good number of my contemporaries, we just moved on to more mature childish things.
My first car was a 1966 Ford Galaxie. It was not a sexy thing as it was blah beige or, as I call the color now, Old Man Tan. But it had a V-8 and that was important in my childish thinking in the late 1960’s.
Much to my father’s chagrin, the first thing I did was cut off a perfectly good stock muffler and installed a glasspack that didn’t muffle much of anything. But in my childish way, boy, did it sound cool…loud but cool.
I, along with my high school buddies, would spend hours washing & waxing our cars, detailing the interior, wiping brake fluid on the tires to make them shiny & black.
One guy had carpet samples covering the plastic floor mats covering the carpeted floor mats covering the carpeting of his car so his floor wouldn’t get dirty. He was also the guy that claimed his car ran another seven miles per hour faster on top end after he waxed his buggy because it made it slip through the air more efficiently. But I doubted his claim because of the extra weight of all of those multiple floor mats his car carried would have negated any freshly waxed slip streaming.
My childish ways continued for a time with two late 60’s Pontiac GTO’s, an Olds 442, and a 1969 Corvette convertible. My childish ways focused on horsepower, speed, and shine. And in the song by Meatloaf “Everything louder than everything else.”
Then my childhood ways focused on 4×4’s. There was a Jeep CJ-7, and a 1970 Ford Bronco half cab that I transplanted its anemic six cylinder with a Boss 302 engine. I still craved that loud and shiny ride.
Actually, we figured that if I had back all the money I spent on cars over the years, my accountant says that I could have retired about 20 years ago.
There have been multiple 4×4 trucks and four GEO/Chevy Trackers. I still drive one because it has 4-wheel drive for wintertime wilderness lane driving, a 4-cylinder engine which still gets around 26 mpg, and most importantly in my mature childish ways, my 6’7” frame fits in the mini SUV.
Admittedly in my maturing childish ways, the only time the vehicle gets washed is when it rains and approaching 20 years old, parts are getting harder to come by. But I am much older than my old vehicle and my parts are wearing out as well.
For about five years, we drove a Toyota Prius—the first hybrid auto—and my mature childish ways went from speed and shiny to enjoying the ultra-efficient 50 mpg. With gas over $3 a gallon, that kind of efficiency is one of my new bragging childhood ways.
But the Prius had less ground clearance (by a tenth of an inch) than my low-slung Corvette. And when it snowed in the wilderness, the Prius stayed parked. It just couldn’t navigate the hills and curves of the lane covered with fresh fallen snow.
So now my mature childish ways found a Toyota RAV-4 Hybrid All Wheel Drive. And it checks the boxes the Tracker does: I fit in it, 4-wheel drive when it determines it needs it, and (the big mature childish way) gets close to 45 mpg…in comfort.
And it is the first vehicle I ever had that talks to me. The experience is sort of like learning to drive in your teens with one of your parents riding with you.
So I suppose my early childish ways in autos have evolved from very speedy, shiny and loud to highly fuel efficient and quiet.
I should confess that my thinking of my childhood ways was inspired one recent evening enjoying the quiet of the wilderness when a loud truck—enjoying his/her childish ways—roared along the highway interrupting the silence as well as another of my mature childish ways: enjoying a chilled adult beverage.
