Bob Miller
Occasionally, I have a brainstorm. I was thinking about how much things have changed in the last 50 or 60 years. (OK, I didn’t say it was a genius type of brainstorm, but at my age, any insights can be brainstorms.)
And the first thing my mind thought of was how automobiles have changed. I learned to drive behind the wheel of the family ’54 Ford, with my dad smoking a Camel in the passenger seat. It was a manual transmission with the three speed gear shift sticking out of the steering wheel.
Back then high schools actually had driver training courses and good ol’ Mr. Mercer was my instructor — emphasis on ol’. I can’t remember the make of car that the school had for us to practice on — probably a big hunkin’ Oldsmobile.
It rocked back and forth so it was more like steering a boat than a car. Well, of course, it was a manual transmission —automatics were rare back in 1963. And on the very first day when I shifted it into first gear and popped the clutch, I accidentally laid about six feet of rubber.
Good ol’ Mr. Mercer sternly told me, “Hey, there will be none of that!” It may have been the only strip of rubber that long I have ever burned.
I looked in the rear view mirror and my friend Roy had a big grin on his face. Somehow I passed my drivers training even though I ran a red light on Charter Way in Stockton.
Fortunately, good ol’ Mr. Mercer was turned around talking to Roy in the back seat and didn’t notice. But Roy did! I can still picture how wide-eyed he got when I glanced in the rear view mirror at him. Yes, the angels were smiling down on me that day.
I didn’t really have a love of cars until I dated a girl in JC. It was 1966 and Linda drove a white Mustang with red leather (vinyl ) seats.
On our first date I had taken her to a dance in the family ’54 Ford. Apparently, “That was enough of that,” she thought.
On our next date, she told me to get behind the wheel of her ‘stang. My mouth dropped nearly to my chest. This hot car had four on the floor!!
I told her — without feeling embarrassed — that I felt like Parnelli Jones when I drove it. The only downside with it — bucket seats and the gear shift right in the middle — made make-out sessions a little awkward at the drive-in movie.
Do you remember them? James Bond was very big at the time Linda and I started dating, although watching the movie wasn’t the main attraction for either one of us. I feel sorry for young people today who don’t have access to drive-in movies.
Now here is the most amazing thing. Linda and I didn’t last but when I got a job at Yosemite High School in 1977, I met Sharon. And Sharon drove a hot forest green Mustang — with a five-speed gearshift on the floor!
Boy were the angels smiling down on me! Sharon and I have lasted nearly 48 years together. I jokingly tell people that the only girls I fell in love with drove Mustangs.
I think that automakers have stopped making manual transmissions, except for some SUVs. Too bad.
I still drive a 2004 Honda Accord that is a stick shift, and despite Sharon’s complaints, I don’t want to give up the fun of driving it. Automatics are so boring!
The only time I’m glad to be driving our automatic Toyota Venza is when I’m stuck in stop and go traffic on the 101 going to a Giants game.
Another big change in American society is how kids entertain themselves. Heck, for many years my brother and I would tell mom and dad that we were going to take our bat and gloves to the school to play 500 or we were going to kick the football out in the street or go to the neighborhood park and play unsupervised tackle football with our friends.
They would say, “OK, just be back in time for dinner.” Nobody in the 60s or 70s was a helicopter parent. In fact, if we wanted to play ditch with the kids in the neighborhood — climbing over fences and hiding in rose bushes — mom would just say something like: “Well, be careful of the Marlette’s dog and watch out for cars.”
Maybe when it got too dark to see clearly, she would come out on the porch of our home and yell, “Hey, time to come back home!” A bottle of iodine and a band aid fixed just about anything — bruises, cuts, even concussions were not taken that seriously.
I wince at the fact that kids nowadays are glued to screens all the time.
Where has the imagination in game playing gone? Shoot, when I was in fourth and fifth grade, I would take my plastic army soldiers out in the backyard — you know, the kneeling bazooka man, the crawling rifleman, the charging soldier with the bayonet, the machine gunner, etc. (Do they even make those plastic soldiers anymore?)
I would set them up in the flower gardens or on the patio if it was raining and zoom my metal F-86 Sabrejets and Flying Tigers around dropping mud clods or bricks on them — blowing them up.
There were plenty of sound effects to go with these battles — “Kabow! Booom! — as I knocked the soldiers to smitherines! Oh, the power I felt, the ability to wipe out whole armies without any feelings at all.
Of course, I could pack up my soldiers at the end of the war and put them in a shoe box for another day. Eventually I grew up and realized how awful war really was and how much the enemy was so much like me — just a puppet or expendable pawn in the hands of their leaders.
I guess nowadays kids get just as big a charge out of blowing up things in the video games they play. Those games never caught my fancy, but I must confess that I like watching war movies — Saving Private Ryan is my favorite.
Bob Miller is a 48-year resident of the mountain area and a former English teacher, football/baseball coach at Yosemite High School. He keeps his brain sharp as a Q-tip by substitute teaching at the overly ripe age of 78. He enjoys traveling and taking short hikes with his wife and grandkids. And reading such books as “The Cat in the Hat” and Bill Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods.” He thinks what the world could use in these crazy times is a good laugh. He can be reached at writerbob46@gmail.com.
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