I have just been diagnosed as having a condition with the charming name of Trigeminal Neuralgia. Suffice it to say that I'm looking for a way to distract myself from a bit of chronic pain. Here's what I came up with.I'm going to describe something about starting cars that took me a long time to learn and then ask my readers to solve the little mystery either with their imagination or their knowledge of American automobiles. The story takes places in the summer of 1964 during a two month period between when I graduated from college and when I got married. I had a job "managing"a parking lot. The lot was right behind a large, downtown bank so most of the cars in it belonged to people who worked at that bank. They would pull in early in the morning and leave their cars, keys inside, for me to park. I had to get into the cars and figure out how to start them. I only got stumped one time.
If you are used to driving cars built in the last several decades, you can't imagine the variety of ways that a car can be started. Mostly today you just get in and turn the key. Simple, right? Back in the mid-sixties, not so simple. Many makes had a key that had to be turned, yes, but then after the key was turned to the start position, you had to do something else to start the car. The first few days I was on the job, it was easy. In fact I finished reading "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" without taking it home. For most cars it was pretty obvious how to start them. Many of the Chrysler products of that era had a Start button on the dashboard that you pushed. Easy. Some older cars had a starter on the floor that you pushed after turning on the key.
In the third week, I got into a car and it had neither of these devices. I turned the key, looked for a starter on the floor, or on the dash. Nothing. I turned the key every which way experimenting. Nothing. It had a shifter on the steering column, so I tried moving it up. Down. Nothing. I pulled it toward me while it was in reverse, then in first. Nothing. Pushed it away from me. Nothing. It was when I put the gear shift in neutral and pulled it toward me that the car started. Who knew?
It took me about a quarter of an hour to figure that one out, all the time with this car sitting in the way blocking the entrance.
Later that week is when I got completely stumped. I saw the guy drive in so I knew the car started somehow. It wasn't very old, so I knew there would not be some crank on the front of it. But here's the thing. Eight hours later that car was still sitting in the entrance to the lot (not blocking it entirely). Eight hours. I had been in and out of it I don't know how many times. I had tried everything I knew, pushed and pulled every button and lever on the thing. Nothing. It would not start. For long periods of the day, I would stay away from it and just think. "Ok, I am overlooking something. What are the possible ways to engage a starter motor from inside the car?" Then I would get back into into it and try again. I opened the hood and located the starter, but the wire that ran into the car was inside the lining and I could not trace it short of tearing the guy's car up. Which, you can imagine, I seriously considered.
There was no button on the dash, no starter button on the floor. The shifter just changed gears. I was about dead from frustration when the guy got out of work, came out to the lot, got in, and started his car.
Let's see how long it takes for someone to come up with the answer to how he started it. If no one thinks of it before this diary drops off the front page, I'll post an update with the answer. And apologies to you if you feel I have wasted your time with this silly diary. As for me, it's over an hour when I did not think about pain. Hoorah!