DRIVER'S SIDE DIATRIBE
By Al Vinikour  

Most everyone over a certain age loves to reflect on how great the good old days were. There were no terrorists, no economic crises and our eventual demise wouldn't take place for decades, which back then, taking into account inflation, was the equivalent of centuries and centuries of the good life. The only thing we had to fear (besides fear itself) was the Red Menace and who cared if the Russkies flew over the North Pole and dropped an atomic bomb?

All we had to do was get down under our desk and we were perfectly safe. We even had monthly drills to ensure we knew the proper way to drop down below so our only injury wouldn't be a mark on our heads from being hit by the pencil tray.

The other day I saw my doctor and we got to discussing our first cars. Turns out his first car was a 1984 Pontiac GTO with a four-speed and a four-barrel V-8. It was about 7 years old when he bought it and from the way he described the vehicle it was fraught with danger. He said he would constantly drive at speeds over 100 mph — sometimes burying the 120 mph speedometer. I didn't think that was such a great feat...we all did that. Some cars just took longer than others to reach that speed. But Dr. Doyle added a new twist to this ritual; he did it on tires that were balder than L. L. Cool J.

In other words, he was playing Russian roulette but instead of bullets he was using tire cords.

This got me to thinking of all the things we overlooked as teenagers that today horrifies us at how little we thought of "going into real estate" (as paramedics say when someone dies).  I could totally relate to this because I, too, drove on balding/bald tires because I didn't have the money to buy new or good used ones. Hell...in those days we'd pony up change and buy 50-cents or 75-cents worth of gas just to ride around. Was it just coincidence that when the roads were wet, either from rain or snow, our vehicles would be all over it like a cheap suit? No, we blamed the road commission for using too much oil when they resurfaced highways, never thinking for one minute of the slickness our cue-balled tires were encountering.

Another thing we seldom paid attention to was how much oil our vehicles were burning. It just seemed natural that about every second or third stop at the gas station for another purchase of less than a dollar's worth of gas that we'd buy a can of used oil to top off our reservoirs. Multiply this scenario by thousands upon thousands of similar instances and you had an entire town whose inhabitants would spend every driving minute obviously spraying for mosquitos.

I never realized that mosquitos didn't thrive in -15-degree weather because winter or summer, the blue smoke kept pouring out of those once-chrome, blackened exhaust extensions we were once so proud of. The thought never dawned on any of us that eventually those engines of ours could literally blow up in our faces and not only ruin our entire day, but make that day the last one we'd have on this planet.

Other things that were ignored because of money were engine tune-ups. Sometimes the firing sequence of our hopelessly-out-of-timing engines would resemble a cross between a Schwinn bicycle and a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. The drummer from Santana couldn't duplicate that sound if he worked on it for two years straight. Again...the engine was torn between continuing its life of misery...or getting its revenge for neglect by blowing up in the driver's face and taking him out.

Few of us during those years possessed a honey of, and trouble-free vehicle. But there was one thing most vehicles had in common; they were all clean. I don't care if you had a 47 Hudson that was held together by so much Bondo a Browning Automatic Rifle couldn't penetrate its rhino-like body or you had a new Ford convertible with a high-performance engine and the seats had imprints from the then-Kim Kardashian’s derriere; one could eat hummus off of them they were so clean. Every non-working or non-scholastic minute was spent washing and waxing one's "ride."

As we got older and started raising families the responsibility gene surfaced and truth-be-told we'd have to chugalug a gallon of Captain Morgan to wipe out the horrible memories of how close we came to death with the chances we took.

How many of today’s fathers who drove around then on bald tires loaded with plugs from chronic repairs are now putting helmets on their five-year-olds who are riding a tricycle? Oh, and don't forget the knee pads in the event any stones or other road debris hop up and hit little Claude in the leg. Forget that Dad had a hole in his firewall that the U.S.S. Missouri could sail through and that also would serve as the most direct route between a blowing-apart motor and your scrotum.

Just another example of how great life was in the last century. Oh, and remember this...do as I say, not as I did.