Nope. It’s not there. The gearshift is definitely not where it always has been, and it’s not between the seats either. Instead there is this T Shaped gismo stuck to the lower right side of the steering column. No, it doesn’t run the wipers. It’s the new way to shift the vehicle and put it in park. You don’t move it, you twist it! There’s also a whole dashboard of blinking lights with symbols that somehow mean things but I’ll be damned if I can figure them out. The “universal” (really? universal for who, exactly?) symbols look like hieroglyphics and only God knows what they mean. I’ve studied the Hyundai handbook for hours. What are these Koreans trying to do? Conquer us by massively over-computerizing us? Oh, sure. Tell me again that my generation is not intuitive—we simply can’t intuit what comes next with computer driven things. I’M SICK OF THESE G D COMPUTERS. Is it actually a plot to make Americans unable to drive their cars?
Had to make a stop at an auto repair shop just a few days after we got to Florida—you know Florida, that place where the median age is 75. I was waited on by a guy in his 50s—a youngster by Florida standards. I sat in the very clean and comfortable waiting room of Boulevard Tire Center while the workers pulled a roofing screw/nail out of the right rear tire of my new Hyundai with 1300 miles on it (just under a thousand to get here from Ohio, the rest to find this shop). There is so much collateral damage around here from the last two hurricanes that piles of rubbish, furniture, mattresses, fences, palm trees sawed up, and house parts-roofs, siding, endless detritus all line the lawns and roadways. Of course, there are also hundreds of thousands of nails and screws, big and small, distributed all over the area. Running over one is inevitable. Drive down the center of the road whenever possible. That is the safest area to avoid tacks and nails.
Sorry about the rant……Anyway, a customer brings his handy glove compartment automobile guidebook to the repair counter and gives it to the attendant/owner who, it turns out, is a very nice man with a great sense of humor. How else could you survive in this new post hurricane world? The customer in his 80s complains, hands him the handbook and says, “I can’t read this……….print’s too damned small, it doesn’t make sense to me anyway. Something about tire alignment, something about vibrations in the front end. I brought it back a couple times since you guys put the new tires on but they missed it, Aaaah, take a look at it again, would ya?” I wonder to myself how many piles of debris he was unable to avoid hitting…
A lady walks in, explains that her car acts a little bit funny. It seems to want to pull to the right or left. Also, when you begin to slow down and eventually come to a stop there is a wumpa, wumpa, wumpa sound. The counter man says, “Oh that’s an easy one to fix. Just grab that first knob on the radio. Turn it clockwise to the right as far as it will go. I promise you won’t hear the wumpa, wumpa, wumpa anymore.” She breaks up. He yells back into the shop, “Bruce would you come up here please and check out the wumpa?”
The nail is out, the bill is paid and the counterman follows us to the car. He says, “We pull about 25 nails a day out of tires since the hurricane. Good for business, bad for customers. It averages about $40 per tire nail, a lot more if the nail goes through the sidewall, ya gotta get a new tire then. I see you’re from Ohio. What do you suppose the temperature is up there now?” Let’s see, it’s about ten o’clock on November first, so I say “It’s about 40 degrees” (it’s 80 here). The counterman continues, “I heard you talking about a hurricane when you were in the Navy. How long ago was that hurricane you experienced in the Tonkin Gulf?” I answered that I was about 20 years old then. “That’s what I figured,” he said (unsaid but inferred—you look to be pushing 80). I ‘m thinking, “Gee, good guess, youngster!”
I’m told that this particular car I bought can park itself. Hmmmm. I wonder how much satisfaction I’ll feel once I master how to make that happen and can yell, “Go ________(park) yourself!”
