[For an open-mic performance of this essay, follow this link.]
My name is Van. I’m named after a car, the 1950s British racecar called the Vanwall. As you might guess, my father was a car nut. My younger brother is Cooper, but don’t call him Mini Cooper.
You’d think I’d be a car nut myself. But apart from primal
male lusting after Corvette Stingrays and the Maserattis and Ferraris we see
tooling around Katonah, I’m not. In fact, I’m a very cautious, even anxious
driver, the old guy who never exceeds the speed limit on the Saw Mill Parkway.
Still, I need to get around. I was very happy with a 2004
Hyundai Elantra I bought in 2005 at the Hyundai dealership in Stamford. It was
a corporate car, barely used and I happily drove it for over 13 years. That is,
until the steering seized up and the engine started smoking a few weeks ago.
Rather than get it repaired, I decided to put the money into a down payment for
a new car.
Me, a new car! The Elantra lasted longer than cameras, cell phones
and computers. But for all my mooning over American muscle cars and curvy Euro
roadsters, my practical turn of mind drove me in another direction. All my
research, especially Consumer Reports, pointed to the Toyota Prius. Reliable,
good for the environment, and I could get from a local dealer—a big issue since
Hyundai dealerships kept closing on me.
So last week I bought a 2015 Prius at Rivera Toyota in Mt.
Kisco. The leap in technology is amazing. Besides the battery power, the Prius
has a CD player. Was I the last person in Bedford, NY, to drive a car with a
tape deck? I drove around with boxes of tapes in my car so I could groove to
Miles Davis and the Texas Tornados; now I’ve donated most of them to Goodwill. I
even donated the Elantra to Goodwill.
I picked up the car on a Monday and faced my first test on
Tuesday as a nervous driver. I had to go to Norwalk for a dental appointment,
then to downtown Stamford to serve as the photographer at an event at my
employer’s office. That’s not much mileage, but the day had pounding rain . . .
and I was driving a new car . . . and I had to drive on I-95 . . .
Actually, for me, the anticipation is much worse than the
reality of doing. That applies to all kinds of life activities. I steered the
car to Norwalk, a good warmup. Then, true to form, I missed the convoluted
entrance onto I-95 in South Norwalk, but finally found an entrance a few miles
away in Rowayton. I immediately got the full I-95 fun ride: Rain, big trucks,
meandering lanes.
But what happened? Knowledge kicked in. I’ve driven I-95
plenty of times before. I knew where I was going and the traffic patterns. I
knew exactly what to expect when Exit 8 for Elm Street appeared. I found the
company garage, parked and that was it. The car worked fine and I liked the
windshield wipers that didn’t go “skree, skree” like a crazed raven when I used
them.
Little waves of relief rolled over me when I packed up my
camera to leave. All I had to do was get home. I hoped for blue skies that late
afternoon. Instead, the police had blocked off Elm Street under I-95 because the
downpour was flooding the roadway. Cars going north on Elm Street created waves
like speedboats. Rather than risk stalling my shiny new wheels in the sudden
pond, I exited on East Main – with traffic bumper to bumper, I couldn’t move
over to turn left. The street carried me east, further from where I needed to
go. Years ago I would have broken out in a cold sweat. This time, however, I
drew on my reptilian memory of having lived in Stamford for seven years, so I
knew the place.
I saw an intersection coming up for Glenbrook Road, which
goes north to where I used to live in Stamford. I turned right, turned around
in a parking lot, and headed north. The Prius crept north in the monsoon,
wipers slamming back and forth. I felt calm in the situation, like I had
threaded the needle of proper response. The GPS from my phone, cradled in my
lap, told me where to turn. As long as I kept moving north, I’d eventually get
return to the snug confines of Katonah, and I did. Once again, I learned that a
little life experience goes a long way in coping with anxiety.
I’m still making the car my own. My sense of space is
filling it in, that sensation when you and the car merge, like a hand in a
glove. I’m still plowing through the instruction manual, which has about 25
pages on how to lock and unlock the doors. I’m putting it through the paces of
the familiar ant trails I use to get around the area. For the first time in my
life, I set up that Bluetooth function on my phone to connect it with the audio
and map display of the car, although I haven’t figured out how to use it. But
that’ll happen. As I have learned, experience on the roads counts for a lot.
I’m looking forward to selecting a stack of CDs to keep in
the car. Which one will have the honor of being the first to spin in the CD
player?
Maybe I don’t need to feel nostalgic for the Elantra’s tape
deck after all.
