Tales in Motion: The Car Whisperer

It is said that the diagnostician is the highest practitioner of the healing arts, but more and more, as the medical process – like most things these days – becomes highly mechanized and the human touch is replaced by meters and gauges and algorithms, the art is dying.

And medicine isn’t the only one.

I know the diagnostician’s art is a lost one when it comes to automotive repair.

You might be able to put it down to the increasing complexity of today’s engines. Or the emphasis on time/motion studies which seek to shave seconds off of the professional’s performance.

Whatever the cause, it’s been a good while since I’ve seen a mechanic do anything more than hook the car up to the heart-lung machine, I mean the electronic diagnostic panel, and follow the instructions that are issued thereby.

My goodness, in the old days, you didn’t need to know what you were talking about at ALL to spout off at will and become a valued member of the discussion when it came to auto repair.

If the fellow two doors up the street was in his driveway with the hood up, it was a force as natural as water seeking its lowest point for people, singly at first, then in small groups, to wander up there to give their advice.

Knowing not the slightest thing about the underlying problem – why, in other words, the car was sitting in the driveway with its hood up and its owner poking around the engine with a flashlight – wasn’t an inhibitor at all, in fact perfect ignorance seemed to accelerate comment.

Take this fellow over in the railroad striped bib overalls, shirtless under the heavy stained cloth, drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon in series seemingly for his health, as though it were simply an earlier version of today’s sport drinks.

He might mosey up the car and look on as the owner poked around, muse a bit, and then seemingly order his thoughts, “say, is that carburetor from the factory or is it rebuilt?”

This was apparently the one fact he needed to know before understanding a final diagnosis. He was like Sherlock Holmes in this way, who was always reluctant to express a theory of the crime without first having all the facts.

The owner would either know or not, but whatever the answer was, Mr. Pabst would nod sagely as if that confirmed his worst suspicions. He would grimace and shake his head slowly from side to side, ‘mmm, hmm,’ he would intone, ‘mmm, hmm, I just got one of my feelings that might be the case.”

And that was that!

He would step back satisfied, as though an initial conjecture had proven true, and the other men in the driveway it seemed to me would move aside with a new respect and make way for him.

I wanted to do that, I wanted men to step aside at each of my very utterances!

Oh, I didn’t want it so badly that I would actually check out a book on engines or take a class in automotive maintenance.

No, I viewed those as intermediary steps between full ignorance and full wisdom that you were better off discarding entirely in the interest of efficiency.

Now that carburetor line, let me go ahead and admit right here before some uanthorized biographer of my life points it out for you, was a favorite of mine, and I can’t recall a time when it didn’t do for me exactly what I wanted it to: provide me with a seemingly meaningful question that few or only some knew the answer to, give me the opportunity to nod my head slowly at the reply as though I had suspected as much, and allowed me to name the only actual piece of automotive equipment that I knew.

I say it was a favorite line of mine, but in truth it was my ONLY line. For one thing, I could remember it from day to day, which was never the case with the more technical discussions.

Automotive maintenance wasn’t an area that you could afford to demonstrate your ignorance in in my town in those days, but with my carburetor question I always felt well-armed.

A man could be jacking up the rear of his car, the right back tire clearly flat, and I was never above asking him in passing if his carburetor was new or rebuilt.

In truth, there wasn’t much I WAS above when it came to such situations, you are at a natural disadvantage in discussions when you have no idea what you are talking about, who could blame me for employing my one saving phrase whenever I could?

For all I knew, word got around town that while I may be idiotic in most other matters, I was the go-to man when it came to carburetors.

It was the automotive equivalent of one of those fellows – I’ve been this guy too – who wanders through the art gallery remarking on the patina of this or that old master, or nods approvingly in the movie’s at the cinematographer's use of contrast in his compositions, or turns with a frown to a lady sitting next to you at the opera and asks if the mezzo isn’t singing a bit too bright tonight.

Whatever those things mean.

Well, those things still presumably mean what they have always meant, but not so with my carburetor. I can’t point to the exact month or year that they ceased to be part of your ordinary engine’s innards, only that my question had less and less application, and people soon started looking at me strangely if I asked it of a recent vintage car and then if I asked it at all. It took something in the nature of an intervention from friends to keep me from entirely losing my reputation and if you want to know the truth, I still haven’t fully recovered.

If you see me today, please know that it’s been a long dark period since then and that now, whenever I walk past a disabled car, it’s all I can do to keep my head high and my lip from trembling, manfully brushing tears from my eyes, recalling the glory days. – lsm