Getting started

With the warm weather earlier this week, I found a little time over the noon hour to get away from the office. I found a rather secluded place, rolled down the windows in the car, grabbed the book I’m reading and left the woes of the world faraway.

And then I heard it ... Somewhere in the distance, I listened as somebody was attempting to start their vehicle. You know the sound. Someone is turning the key, and the engine is trying ... yet it just won’t turn over. For lack of a better way to describe it, it sounds something like “Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch ...”

Immediately the sound took me back to a place in time, when “Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch ...” was a fairly common sound in my life. In my late teens and early 20s, it seemed as if every car I had always had something wrong with it. From alternator issues to bad battery cables to fuel pump problems to clogged fuel filters, I learned a lot about cars when I was young. I never had a brand new car until I was much older, so car problems were the norm rather than the exception.

I can’t tell you how many times I would leave my house or apartment, jump in the car and hear the dreaded, “Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch ...” It was a sickening feeling of sorts because the sound usually translated to dollar bills. In other words, “Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch ...” usually meant a trip to the repair shop, where labor charges were often more than I made in an entire week back then.

As the “Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch ...” continued every five or six minutes in the background during my lunch hour, I couldn’t help but think of the times long ago, when I would raise the hood to the car and jiggle the battery cables to urge the engine to turn over. Likewise, I became proficient at taking off the lid to the carburetor and sticking a screwdriver inside some gadget to achieve the same result. I also mastered the ability to hook up jumper cables. I’ve replaced car batteries and air filters, changed flat tires and diagnosed more fuel filter, starter, spark plug and alternator problems than I care to remember. While I don’t think I’d be a candidate for a job at Joe’s Midtown Auto Repair in Princeton, I can usually hold my own when it comes to talking car issues ... or at least I can pretend to know what I’m talking about.