I was looking at my arms the other day. They are not much to look at, but I was reminiscing about way back times when my left arm was always darker than the right. This anomaly was due to the fact that when I was a young whippersnapper a car did not have turn signals. Thus, when you wanted to turn left or right, the law said you had to give a hand signal as to which way you were turning. That meant you stuck your arm straight out for a left turn, and half way with the hand up and pointing right for a right-hand turn. This is what the law required. It wasn’t necessarily followed as much as the law had hoped.
One reason for non use related to the fact that we lived in Pennsylvania where the winters could be severe. Therefore, drivers didn’t want to keep opening the windows to signal and freeze from the cold. You no doubt remember that back then you didn’t just push a button and the windows would go up and down. Nope, you had to hand crank the darn windows which made it that the cold would rush in and stay for some time. One advantage to this was that you didn’t have to drive for miles behind a car with a blinking turn signal – of which the driver was oblivious. However, you did have to drive behind someone, and you had no clue if he was going to make a turn or not.
Added to this was that just about all the cars had a stick shift. Thus, if you were at a stop sign, and you needed to make a turn, you had a problem. I mean, if you had the clutch in and needed your right hand to move the gear shift and the left hand on the steering wheel how were you to hand signal? Folks just don’t realize how easy they have it now. Things could get even worse. For example, my dad purchased a large panel truck so he could use it in his work. This truck had to be double clutched. That was kind of fun as at that age I thought I knew everything. Double clutching was one of them. I did not drive that truck a lot as my girlfriend at the time did not like to be picked up in it. I always thought that was a shame as I considered it pretty neat.
The old cars had some other neat apps. OK, they didn’t call them apps back then, but what’s in a name? For example, one car my dad owned had a button the floor. If you didn’t want to use your hands as you were shifting or turning etc., you could change the radio station by pressing your foot on the button. I also found that if you pressed the button half way down, it cut off the sound. Now if the girl I was dating back then had been willing to ride in the double clutching truck, I would not have been able to perform a nasty trick. She and I did not like the same music. She would pick out a station she liked and after a few minutes, I would push the button half way down and there would be no sound. We lived out in the country and there were not a lot of radio stations around at night. I would indicate that we had lost the signal. I would then change the channel while taking my foot off the button and say, “hey, here is a clear station.” By a happenstance, this station had the music I liked. Boy, no wonder she married a sailor!
The latter was good as it made certain that I was available when The Blonde in the house showed up in my life!
Barry Evans is a columnist for Villages-News.com.