Yes. I can drive stick shift. I haven’t driven stick in decades, but I think I could pull it off if I had to. I mean, If there were a group of zombies coming after me and the only way to get away was to drive a standard shift car, I’d put in the clutch, put it in first and slowly pull away. That’s the only scenario I see where I would willingly drive stick again.
I learned to drive on a stick shift car. Not only was it stick shift, but it was a 1956 DeSoto tank of a car. My dad’s car. Learning to drive was torture. The stalling. The grinding of gears. The stop signs on hills! Lots of my friends, especially those who were into cars, would extol the virtues, and the fun, of driving stick. Not fun for me. Ever. But I have had a few interesting run ins with the “four on the floor” or the “three on a tree”.
Having to stop on a hill, for a stop sign or a stoplight, was my greatest fear. It remains so today, even if zombies were chasing me. There is apparently an art to pulling out on a hill without having your car drift backward into the front end of the car behind you. I am not an artist. And though I never did hit the car behind me I sure came close. Back in the 80s, I needed a car and didn’t have a lot of money. Buying a standard instead of an automatic was a lot cheaper. I can do this I told myself. I bought the Oldsmobile Firenza. The very first weekend that I owned the car, I found myself in stick shift on a hill hell. There I was on the Hess’s parking deck spirally ramp in lots of slow moving traffic. Just remembering this, I can still smell my clutch smoking!
Another time I had to drive a big stake body truck, stick shift of course, from Pfizer Easton to Pfizer Slatington. Before I began the trip I began to calculate all of the stoplights I may encounter on Route 248 and how many of them are on hills. By the time I got to the light in Berlinsville, I knew just how slow I could go to get there just as the light turned green! Now that is an art in itself.
The only time driving stick was a good thing was when it got me a trip to France. Apparently all rental cars in France are stick shift. My boss couldn’t drive stick so….”Denny, you’re going to France!” It worked out well. The France I was driving in, Paris to Limoges, was extremely flat. Fourth gear all the way. I’m so thankful that our plant wasn’t somewhere in the French Alps!
So if you ever see me driving down the street and you see me stalling a lot and hear a grinding sound coming from my car, you’d better run! Zombies are on the way!
A Semi-retired Kind of Life 