On Thursday the $20 admission fee ($18 if purchased online) was waived for adults over 62. That was a deal impossible to pass up, and so it was that I found myself at the
San Mateo County Fair.
In the vintage-auto exhibit was a car from my childhood, a 1950 Plymouth. This one had enhancements my grandmother never had, most notably an embellished hood, but it looked like the same black car.
I checked the interior to make sure. There was the shifter that extended from the right side of the steering column, and there was the front bench seat.
Grandmother would let me stand (I know, horrors) next to her as she backed the Plymouth out of the driveway. She would press in the clutch, and I would pull the handle down into first gear. Yes, thought this 4-year-old, I am driving.
Manual transmissions are rare enough today, but manufacturers no longer make steering-column-shifters at all. They were developed to accommodate front benches, which have also gone the way of the dodo bird.
As have little boys who stand next to their grandmother, "helping" her shift the gears.
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