The men in my life are diverse, so when attempting to size them up I employ their relationships with cars as a path to help me understand them best.
My father has now retired, but was a professional geologist. He has always been very outdoorsy. He’s known for chipping a rock here, gather a fossil over there. He is unquestionably a man’s man, but has never been very fond of any kind of machinery. Gears and motors have a way of revealing his inner beast even though he is a real gentleman. I can recall times when I was very young, watching my dad with his head under the hood of a car and listening to him swearing at the Industrial Age.
My father would invariably change the tires on our Volkswagen van when they needed it, but you would never see him drool over aftermarket center caps or custom chrome grille work on a vehicle. You might see him checking the water level in the radiator or putting some Rustoleum on patches that had oxidized on the van, but you would never see him using a toothbrush to scrub headlights or using Q-tips to clean the knobs on the dashboard. These things just didn’t take place in our garage.
My father-in-law, on the other hand, is a car man all the way. He knows make, model and year of everything that’s in all likelihood ever travelled the Pennsylvania turnpike. Scouring whitewalls or squaring a 1962 Chevy at the Antique Car Club rally is his thought of a well-spent Afternoon.
Growing up in rural northern Pennsylvania, he speedily graduated from teething ring to wrench and pitchfork. Farm boys acquired the ABCs of mechanics along with animal husbandry at an early age. The affinity with engines and wheels and all the associated gizmos stuck, although fondness for animals did not. He left the farm to go to college and never looked back.
My hubby is also a teacher; just like both of our fathers, but that is the only thing they share. He doesn’t like camping out, carefully cleaning his cars, or collecting rocks. He loves to pass his Saturday marking papers as he sips fancy coffee beverages at Starbucks.
He keeps his car full of petrol, but would in all probability use his Enkei center caps for paper weights instead of using them to floss his ride. No offense to hard working wheel center caps. He makes it a point to vacuum his car once in a while and doesn’t mind driving around with “Wash me!” on the back window for a year or more.
Our daughter’s boyfriend is exactly like my father in law, but a bit more juiced. He got a high performance muffler kit as a gift last month and has been excited ever since beyond his tailpipe growls deeply. You can see that our daughter is in the throes of love when you listen to her talk about how you can hear him coming from a mile away.
There’s not doubt that the relationships that men have with their cars can be complicated. On occasion, the car can be a expression of a man’s maleness, while other men act as if their vehicles were an enemy that are a nuisance to be subdued or at the very least, endured.
Many name their cars, and others blaspheme them. Some treat their vehicles with TLC, while others declare bragging rights because their car or truck is beaten or has the most mileage. Car tales are exchanged over beers, like war stories used to be told around a campfire.
Why else is the auto industry capable of selling billions of dollars of chrome, rims, seat covers, backup sensors, window tinting, fancy headlights, dashboard accoutrements and aftermarket center caps, exhausts, hoods, automobile alarms and decals?
Whether the wheels in the drive are fodder for cursing or cooing, I believe there’s some inevitable mechanical mojo going on – something akin to “If you build it, he will come.”