Many years ago, while my husband and I were still dating, I needed to go to Florida for a family wedding. Having just depleted every cent at my disposal to cover my graduate school tuition, I lacked the funds to procure an air ticket. To make things worse, my husband—who was then only a serious boyfriend—wished to accompany me and “meet the parents.” We both had about a week before school started, making this a great opportunity for an unexpected vacation.
I’m not sure where the idea came from, but someone recommended that we consider a “DriveAway car.” The concept is simple enough. Someone needs a car moved from Point A to Point B. Through a brokering system, they are matched up with drivers seeking transportation between the same locations. The drivers pay a small deposit on the front end to the broker service, and then collect the same amount from the car owners upon delivery of the car. The only out of pocket cost to the driver is the gas. We registered a request for a car from Boston to Miami hoping that we would find something that fit our timeframe; we also hoped we would not be handed some giant gas-guzzling 70s sedan that got 6 miles to the gallon.
Happily, we were informed that we would be driving a tiny Honda Civic. This was good news, until we arrived to pick up the car. The owner had decided to use this service to turn their car into a cheap moving van, packing the vehicle from stem to stern. The entire trunk was filled to capacity; after opening it, it was nearly impossible to close it again. On the back seat, a large steamer trunk was surrounded by boxes and clothing packed tight to the ceiling. There was no visibility—nay, not even a beam of light—from the rearview mirror. Furthermore, the owner had pushed both the driver’s and passenger’s seats as far forward as possible in order to cram more of their junk into the car.
Tom, who is six-foot-four, opened the driver’s door and attempted to squeeze himself into the seat. He stepped in with his right foot, but could not bend his legs enough to clear the opening. I am only five-foot-two; I piled into the passenger side and found my knees up against the glove compartment. We brought the dispatcher out to have a look at our predicament. Remarkably, he had very little concern for our situation. The car’s owner was long gone. They had no policy against an owner’s leaving personal items in the car. Beyond leaving the front seat “vacant”, there was no explicit requirement that they provide room for the driver’s own belongings. Or, as it seemed in this case, the driver.
After much debate, we insisted to the dispatcher that he produce a manager. When he arrived on site, we suggested that he sit in the car and try to drive it. He could not. While he had no sympathy for our need to store our personal belongings, we made progress by arguing that the car, delivered as it was with no driver visibility, was unfit for the road. He was furious to be inconvenienced, and even more irritated that someone had accepted a car in this condition. After a few phone calls, he gave us permission to remove the large trunk from the back and send it on a Greyhound Bus, COD, to the car’s owner. The only hitch was that we needed to take it to the bus station ourselves. Since Tom could not fit in the car at that point, he suggested that I drive. That’s when I saw the clutch.
I had never driven a stick shift before. In fact, in all the time we spent planning this excursion, the possibility of a standard transmission car never entered my mind. I looked up at Tom apologetically, and with my most pathetic tone confessed I could not drive the car. “You’re kidding,” he said. He learned to drive in rural Oregon, where apparently every car had a manual transmission. If you hadn’t learned to drive a stick, he contended, you hadn’t really learned to drive.
Not wanting to play this out in front of the DriveAway guys, I got in the passenger seat and Tom loaded my lap with the items that jammed the driver’s seat forward, giving him enough room to squeeze into the car. We drove to the bus station and unloaded the trunk, rearranging things in the back seat in order to clear a narrow path of visibility and some much needed legroom in the front. “Now,” he said, “you’re going to learn how to drive this thing.”
We drove to Tom’s house, which was situated on “Bartlett Crescent,” a semi-circular street that had very little traffic. He stopped in the middle of the road at one end of the crescent and showed me the basics: the gear pattern, the clutch, the RPMs. Then he slipped the car into first gear and moved it forward, releasing the clutch as he brought it into second. By the end of the street he had just reached third before it was time to stop. There he demonstrated how the car stalled if you simply step on the brake.
“I can do this,” I thought. Switching positions in the car, I took the wheel. But I couldn’t do it. Set in first gear, I tried to step on the gas while releasing the clutch, only to find that the car lurched and hacked like a chain smoker before stalling out with righteous indignation. We turned the car off while Tom told me everything I did wrong (and many things I had simply not done right). Then we tried again. And again. No sooner did it appear that the gear was finally ready to engage than I would reach the stop sign at the end of the street and step on the brake instinctively, thus killing the engine. It was hopeless.
Inevitably the words came out of his mouth. “Where did you go to school?” he asked, not without an intended dollop of irony. I assured him that ‘driving’ had not been part of Harvard’s core curriculum. Nonetheless, I felt justifiably humiliated by this unexpected turn of events. The next day we set out for Florida, driving straight through with only a few stops for food and fuel. The mocking, however, never ceased. Once we cleared the large metropolitan areas—somewhere south of Washington, DC—I was able to take the wheel for a couple of hours, managing to get the car into high gear on a lonely straightaway. I was glad to give Tom a rest. As long as he slept, I could recover a bit of my dignity.
We arrived at my parents’ house around 4:30 in the morning. Tom’s brain was crispy fried from a grueling drive, hardly in ideal shape to make a good first impression on prospective in-laws. My mother ushered him through the living room to my brother’s old room at the far end of the house, an architectural addition situated where a garage once stood. Tom dropped his bags in the room; I pulled him out to make proper introductions to my robed and yawning parents. At the threshold, he caught his toe on the small step, a vestige of the former garage. Down he went with a thud, landing prone at my father’s feet. My mother is still laughing today.
I like to think I am competent at many things, a fact I hope compensates for my one gross shortcoming. Fortunately, I have never again been called upon to drive a stick shift. That day of humiliation is all but gone from my active memory. But my poor husband Tom will never outlive the moment, over thirty years ago, when he fell hard for me.
Tomorrow's blog: God Bless the TSA
Tomorrow's blog: God Bless the TSA
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