Musings.  Some Things Should Be Standardized (Part 1 – Cars). I Save my Car From Suicide – and Regret it, the Perfect Vehicle and I Learn Not to Press a Button With a Nuclear Mushroom Icon on it.

Some people are never satisfied; when the perfect widget comes along, they just can’t let it be: They have to keep tinkering with it.  The case in point:  The 1987 Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck. No one ever made a better truck and no one ever will.  The more they try, the more they screw it up.

I am a General Motors man – cars and trucks.  When it comes to trucks there are but two:  Chevrolet and GMC.  I wasn’t always that way:  my father was a Ford man.  He had two heroes:  Franklin D. Roosevelt and Henry Ford.  When I was a kid, I thought God’s middle name was Henry Ford.  But then I grew up and learned to think for myself.

My first car was a 1957 Plymouth Belvedere, which my father bought for $800 when I was in college in  1967.  It was two-toned blue over gray.  He repainted it with a brush, and did an amazingly good job.  He used to repaint gasoline pumps and signs when he worked for Standard Oil.  Here is his secret:  Use oil-based paint; be sure you get the surface perfectly clean and have two brushes and two buckets ready:  one filled with mineral spirits and the other with paint.  Paint a small section with mineral spirits, and while it is still wet, apply paint with the other brush.  The mineral spirits on the metal will thin out the paint enough that it will flatten out the brush marks and leave a smooth surface. 

The Plymouth had head-high tail fins, a 318 V-eight engine and a push-button transmission.  Yep, three buttons in a row to the left of the steering wheel:  one for drive, one for reverse and one for park.  Nineteen-fifties Americans were obsessed with push-buttons. The radio and air conditioner were manual – you sang to yourself and rolled down a window.  It was the only decent Chrysler-made vehicle I have been associated with. (I know, I know, all you purist: I ended that sentence with a preposition, but doesn’t that sound better than “with which I have been associated?”)

When I started to work for the Forestry Commission my work area had Ford, Dodge and Chevrolet (or GMC) trucks and John Deere and International-Harvester crawler tractors (small bulldozers).  I quickly learned that GM trucks and cars and John Deere tractors are far superior.  Now, dear reader, if you have not yet discovered that fact and drive another brand, don’t get mad at me.  You are entitled to your wrong opinion just as I am entitled to my right one.

The first new car I bought was a 1969 Camaro.  It was metal-flake blue with black racing stripes and hound’s-tooth upholstery.  What a car!  When Paula and I got married, she had a 1970 Plymouth Scamp, which was the same thing as a Dodge Dart – the brothers from hell. I sold the Camaro and used the money to pay off the Scamp.  I will say one thing for the Scamp:  It improved my spiritual life.  Every time I started somewhere in the thing I prayed that it would make it and when it invariably broke down, in those pre-cell phone days, I prayed someone would stop and give me a lift. The miserable little thing once tried to commit suicide. I had rented a house in the country near DeKalb and the car was parked beside the house, without even the key in it.  Paula got into it the next morning; it was full of soot and nothing worked.  I opened the hood and found that all the wiring had melted.  I should have seized the opportunity, doused it in gasoline and set it ablaze, but no, silly me: I had it towed to the dealer in Meridian for repairs.

This particular dealer once ran for Governor and was defeated and Nixon finally appointed him undersecretary of transportation. I think he was in charge of Amtrak, which probably explains why it has never made a profit.  If he was as big a liar as his shop foreman, he was probably responsible for the downfall of that administration.  How often did I hear:  “Yep, we will have it ready next Tuesday!” After about six months of waiting for that pie-in-the-sky-great-and-mighty Tuesday that never came, I finally just picked up the car and paid him for the work he had done and drove it with an incomplete wiring system.  The wires that fed the little side lights on the rear was never installed, but I did not need them anyway.

I had to deal with some Chrysler vehicles the Forestry Commission bought on low bid, and they were about as dependable as the Scamp.  But I never bought another one – and never will.  Now friends, I do not have anything against Chrysler Motor Company or you people who own their products (may God have mercy on you).  Even though many people claim the company has turned around, and swear by their vehicles, especially pick-up trucks (yeah, right), my religion prevents me from buying one:  I promised God that if I ever got rid of the Scamp, I would never buy another Chrysler product.  After more than 40 years, I have kept that promise. Don’t mess over me.  I have a long memory.

And then there was the Ford pick-up I bought. What a piece of junk! I had a 1974 six-cylinder Chevrolet pickup that I used to haul huge loads and to pull a 21 ft. sailboat all over the state.  In 1989, the Chevy had 150,000 miles on it, and I decided to replace it. I kept an open mind and looked at Fords as well as Chevrolets. I found a beautiful 1983 Ford with low miles and the price was right.  It was white with red trim, red velour seat covers and actually had air-conditioning (my old truck did not). I bought it and regretted the purchase immediately. It had the power of a ’63 VW bus, the muffler of a pulpwood truck and the dependability of a Yugo. I finally sold it for medical reasons:  My thumb got frost bitten from standing on the roadside beside the dead Ford trying to hitch a ride.

Now I know some of my extreme right-wing friends are mad at G.M. because they got into a bind when they made too many concessions to the unions and took a government bail-out and they deride them as “Government Motors.” And, some of my left wing friends deride them because they are made in America, and they hate America and American-made products. Come on, give them a break.  How can you not like a company that gave us the ’53 Corvette,’55 Bell Air, the ’57 Chevy with the roomy back seat in which about half of the babies of the era (maybe even you, dear reader) were conceived, the Cadillac Coupe Deville, the Astrovan (the best family all-around vehicle ever made) and the pinnacle of automotive achievement – the 1987 Silverado Pick-up Truck!

Perhaps the greatest day in my automotive life was that day in 1993 when I traded the Ford in on a 1987 Chevrolet Silverado.  Friends, that was in the day when Silverado meant something.  Now, Chevy sticks the “Silverado” label on just any old truck.  But back then, it was top of the line. It was beautiful – short wheel base, red over gray, twin tail pipes and chrome everywhere.  The interior was plush – deep floor carpets and velvet seat covers and head-liner. It had COLD air conditioning and an A.M. AND F.M. radio.  The controls were prefect:  The cruise control was on the end of the turn signal “stalk,” just where it should be, the horn was in the middle of the wheel, just where it should be, the radio controls were perfect – the volume knob on the left with the tenor-bass ring around it and the tuner on the right with the balance ring around it, and a row of pre-set station buttons under the radio, just where they should be. Temperature control consisted of three slide levers – a three-position vertical lever on the left that controlled the fan speed, with two horizontal slide controls centered under the radio:  the one on top controlled the temperature -- cold to the left and hot to the right with variables between.  The one below that was the air mix control – dash vents to the left and floor vents to the right, with again, variables between. It was just like it should be

The truck was just the right height – high enough that it did not hydroplane every time it hit a puddle, and low enough that you could stand on the ground and reach anywhere in the bed. It had two fuel tanks – one on each side, so you could fuel from either side of the truck. The 87 Silverado was just right in all respects. It was convenient, comfortable, powerful, efficient, a joy to drive and beautiful.

Compare this to the 1995 Ford Van the Forestry Commission assigned me.  Some dufus decided to put all the controls on the steering wheel!  There were two cruise-control buttons on the left side of the steering wheel – one to increase speed and the other to decrease speed.  There were two buttons on the right side of the steering wheel.  One was the horn and the one below that was the cruise control set/disconnect button.  Think about this: It took both hands to operate the cruise control and you had to remember that one of those buttons that looked just like a cruise control button, and was mounted only millimeters above it, was the horn. Every time a deer ran in front of me instead of blowing the horn, I set the cruise control, which probably accounts for the nick-name my co-workers gave the van:  Deer Slayer.

I semi-retired the ‘87 Silverado and bought an ’09 Silverado.  Compared to the opulence of the ’87, this one is pretty plane-Jane, and not nearly as convenient or comfortable.  For one thing, it is so high off the ground that you have to use a step-stool to reach anything in the bed. The radio controls are a mess – where the volume control should be is a small button with “!” on it.  I never have figured out what that thing is for.  The actual volume control is a great big hulking thing about the size and design of a pint fruit-jar lid that is positioned directly above an identical fruit jar lid that is the fan speed control, so every time I want some more air the radio blares, and vice versa.

My wife drives a 2011 Yukon.  You should see the controls on that thing: It looks like the console of the Spaceship Enterprise! Both sides of the steering wheel are chock-full of gizmos (even worse than the Ford van). Everything on the left has something to do with the cruise control and we have no idea what all that stuff on the right is.  There are no words – just icons, and one of them looks like a missile, and another like a nuclear mushroom-cloud. We are afraid to touch them. At least the horn is in the middle (I think). And all those knobs and buttons on the dash!  Some have plus signs, and some have minus signs, some have what looks like a ship’s propeller with an up or down arrow, and some look like a seated stick figure with up and down arrows.  Oh my!  My wife is the “techie” one of the family, and even she has not figured them out and she has had the vehicle for more than two years!

Some things just need to be standardized.  I say let’s start with automobile controls – and copy the 1987 Chevrolet Silverado pick-up truck.  They just don’t get any better than that.

You know, I think I will sell the 2009 pick-up and use the money (along with a chunk of my savings) to restore my baby.