Month: January 2011

I just happened to have a semi-sobering thought: I’m actually getting old. I can remember starting my car with a pencil.

Sometime about the first of 1971 or so, my parents presented me with a brand new orange Vega hatchback. Wish I still had it today, but those were disposable cars. While I did have it though, I lived in Iowa City, where I was going to college, on East Burlington Street (and later Dubuque Street) where we had to park around the corner on a side street which was completely occupied every night.

My buddies had junk cars and they knew how to make them go no matter what. It doesn’t especially get really cold in Iowa City that much, but sometimes it would long enough to keep a high percentage of those cars from starting because it was too cold.

I wasn’t “good” with cars then, I haven’t been since then and I’m never going to be, but there was one trick that worked surprisingly well with those cars. You took a pencil (kept handy with the car) and jammed it into the carburetor to richen the gas/air mix and that often worked.

I’d have to give it some thought, but it’s probably been three decades or better since I’ve been able to fix anything on any automobile or make it work any differently with anything so profoundly simple as a soft lead number two pencil…….