Dad taught me a lot of things, but he never taught me how to drive a stick shift. Mom disliked manual transmissions, and as a result, every car we owned over the years, the Mustang included, was an automatic. This wasn't a big deal - until it was.
In the summer of 1990, I was a Midshipman on a training cruise with the Navy. When the ship docked in Norfolk, I met up with two buddies, Mike and Terry, also Midshipmen posted to Norfolk, and we drove to Busch Gardens in Mike's truck. We were celebrating Mike's birthday - his twenty-first birthday. Did I mention we were going to Busch Gardens? While we hit all the roller coasters and seemingly all the food vendors, Mike and Terry also sampled the available beers repeatedly. I, the only underaged person in the trio, became the designated driver. After successfully achieving a day of frivolity, Mike tossed me his keys, and we all clambered back into his truck for the drive back to base.
There was one slight problem. Mike's truck was a standard. The base was 50 miles away and I'm looking at an unfamiliar third pedal and a stick shift. Well crap. I was now getting dual verbal downloads of manual transmission theory from two tipsy guys. The better part of an hour was spent in the Busch Gardens parking lot working out the kinks in my hastily acquired skill set. With darkness coming on, they declared my training sufficient, and we started out. It was smooth sailing on the open highway, but as we got back into Norfolk, we were all more than a little anxious as I kept stalling at stop lights and stop signs. We approached the guard shack, and I was hoping we could flash ID's and do a rolling stop through the gate. No such luck. The guard held up his hand and brought us to a full stop. He gave each of our IDs a careful once over and then shone his flashlight in our faces. Three Midshipmen, one sweating bullets and two of them ever so slightly inebriated, were imagining all the worst scenarios.
Finally satisfied, the guard stepped back, waved us through, and waited for us to pass. Mike began a whispered mantra, "Don't stall. Don't stall. Don't stall." Terry was a little more succinct, "Crap. Crap. Crap." I ran through my mental checklist. Clutch in. Off the brake. Give it a little gas, watch the tach, and listen to the pitch of the revving engine. Time it properly, and ease off the clutch while giving it more gas. The truck shuddered ever so slightly and then rolled forward in the smoothest start I'd achieved all day. I'm pretty sure we were getting eyeballed by the guard as Mike and Terry whooped and hollered while clapping me on the shoulder.
Back in Auburn, after Andrea and I started dating, I borrowed her stick shift truck once and spent the entire day driving back and forth between Auburn and Opelika practicing stops on all the hills I could find to make sure stalling would never be a problem again. (By the way, did you catch that? Andrea drove a truck and a stick. Hotness.) The ability to drive a stick is becoming a lost art, particularly with the millennial crowd. But all is not lost. A young lady in Andrea's office was in the market for new car this past year. Her two criteria: it had to have a sunroof and it had to be a stick. There's still hope.
Back in 1961, the Duals released "Stick Shift". Typifying the "surf rock" of the era, it became their one and only hit, peaking at #25 on Billboard's Hot 100. It's also a rare instrumental featured in Rock-tober. Words sometimes become superfluous when you're cruising down the highway listening to a droning engine while slamming through some gears.
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