Measurement of a Man: Motors, Ponies, Mufflers and More

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009 | local info

In order to understand the really diverse men in my life, I attempt to size them up employing their personal relationships with their automobiles.

My father has now retired, but was a professional geologist. He has always been really outdoorsy. He’s best-known for chipping a stone here, gather a fossil over there. He is definitely a man’s man, but has never been very fond of any kind of machinery. Gears and engines have a way of revealing his inner savage even though he is a real gentleman. I can think of times when I was very young, watching my dad with his head under the hood of a car and hearing him cussing at the Industrial Age.

My father would regularly change the tyres on our Volkswagen camper, but I never saw him fawning over aftermarket center caps or grille work. While he would now and again dab some Rust-o-leum onto rusted places on the van or put water in the radiator, you would never see him take a Q-tip to the dashboard knobs or scrub the headlights with a toothbrush.

But Then, my father-in-law is unquestionably a car man. He can tell you the make, model and year of every vehicle that’s travelled down the Pennsylvania turnpike. His ideal way to spend a Saturday afternoon would be checking out a 1962 Chevrolet at a local Antique Club Car Show or scrubbing his own whitewalls.

He graduated rapidly from a pacifier to a pitchfork and wrench while growing up in a rural area of northern Pennsylvania. Learning all about animal husbandry and the ABCs of automobile mechanics was required of young farm boys. His interest in things with gizmos, wheels, and engines seemed to stick even though any affection for animals did not. He made the choice to leave the farm and go to university and he never looked back.

My hubby is a teacher like his pop and his father-in-law, but that is where the resemblance stops. He does not camp, collect rocks or meticulously wash his vehicles. His idea of a good afternoon is sipping java at Starbucks, grading tests and traveling along the bunny trails that are Facebook.

He keeps his car full of fuel, but would probably use his Toyota center caps as paperweights on his desk, than as a fashionable way to pimp his ride. Not that he has anything against someone who toils over their center caps. He vacuums his vehicle bi-annually, but is content to ride about town with “Wash me!” scribbled above his rusted bumper for a year at a time.

My daughter’s beau is a juiced up variation of my father-in-law. (I think they would bond quickly if sent together on an errand to a car parts store.) The Boyfriend got a aftermarket exhaust kit for Christmas and is happy as a clam now that his car’s exhaust rumbles deeply, letting everyone know he has arrived. “I can hear him coming a mile away,” my daughter grins, plainly in the throes of young love.

There’s not doubt that the relationships that men have with their cars can be complicated. On occasion, the car can be a reflection of a man’s maleness, while other men act as if their vehicles were a foe that are a nuisance to be subdued or at the very least, endured.

Some gentlemen give their cars names and others curse them. Some give their cars plenty of TLC and others claim bragging rights because their car or truck is beat up or has the most mileage. Car stories are exchanged over beers, like war stories used to be shared around a campfire.

Why else would the auto industry regularly sell billions of dollars in decals, auto alarms, hoods, exhausts, center caps, dash accessories, fancy headlights, window tinting, backup sensors, seat covers, rims, and chrome?

Whether the wheels in the drive are fodder for cussing or cooing, I think there’s some inevitable mechanistic mojo going on - something akin to “If you build it, he will come.”

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