We Auto Know Better

As far as the east is from the west, so far has [God] removed our sins from us. Psalm 103

Why are people so cranky? I’m not going to comment on national or international affairs; that’s not my role. But I do find myself increasingly agitated with a world that seems, itself, to be increasingly agitated. It’s like everyone has buttons, and their buttons are either being pushed, or they’re running around pushing their neighbors’ buttons every chance they get.

What on earth is going on?

I have studied the matter and do believe the fault lies with Detroit. Not the city, but the automotive industry. Now, please hear me out.

When I was a child, I enjoyed watching Saturday morning cartoons with my brother and sisters. We would delight in Bugs Bunny, Tom & Jerry, Woody Woodpecker, and the like. We had our favorite characters and knew which studios produced the creme de la creme of animated mayhem (Looney Toons, by a mile). 

While we were occupied slurping down corn flakes (or a wheat, oat, or rice alternative), Dad would finish his coffee and head outside. He’d make his way to the car, pop the hood on the Studebaker, grab a few small hand tools out of the trunk, and start moving things around the engine compartment. After a few minutes, Howard from across the street and Ron from next door would join him and ask, “Hey Fred, what’re you up to?”

Dad would tell them, “Oh, time to adjust the carburetor (or clean the spark plugs, or change the timing, or …).” He’d grown up tinkering with cars all his life, and if it was Saturday, he was going to find something under the hood that he felt needed fixing. The three of them would bury their heads under the bonnet and discuss cars, motors, kids, wives, sports, politics, or anything else that was bugging them that day. My Dad’s Studebaker was a Study-baker!

Today, of course, cars are so well designed and put together, there is nothing a commoner can do under the hood. There’s nothing to adjust or fix, so neighbors no longer gather ‘round to discuss or debate the Topic du Jour. The interesting thing, though, is conversations seldom devolved into binary sets of black and white, right or wrong, liberal or conservative. 

They shared common values, and they embraced those values. They stood united against fascists, Nazis, and Commies. They were perplexed about more complex issues, such as civil rights, school bussing, or integration. They didn’t question that every American was entitled to enjoy the same rights, privileges and responsibilities of every other American. Like everyone else, they didn’t know “how” to level the playing field, but they knew the playing field “should” be level. 

“There’s such a thing as basic fairness” was a chorus that often rose from beneath the hood, like the kyrie sung in church. Although their thoughts regarding Martin Luther King, Jr. and the NAACP were sometimes colored by those who slandered him and the movement in and out of government (or what we called “The News”), they agreed that people should be judged by the “content of their character and not the color of their skin.”

I appreciate that the automotive industry is doing everything it can to build cars that last longer, go farther, run smoother and more cleanly than ever before for the sake of a better environment, but it does so at a cost of a reduced unity that backyard mechanics (or seamstresses) sewed into the social fabric of our too-brief post-war nation on Saturday mornings. 

I don’t like to point out problems for which I’m not also willing to suggest solutions, of course. It is true that the auto industry will never reverse-engineer our world into anything like those halcyon days of the 1960s, but they don’t need to. They simply need to add a feature that will require drivers (whom I’d label auto-crats) to get under the hood weekly to maintain optimal functionality. If they included an espresso machine and pop-up flavor squirter, that would be even better.

Maybe we’d learn how to talk to one another in a civilized manner once again so that even a grizzled old introverted geezer like me would be willing to go out to see what’s up here in this, our auto-corrected valley.

Keith Axberg writes on matters concerning life and faith. Author of newly released: Who the Blazes is Jesus? Good News for a Vulgar World (available through Amazon in Print and e-book)