Benjy finally ran out of gas, laughter-wise, and sighed, “Oh, gosh….”
Usually, I had to explain jokes to him. This time, he explained the joke to me. “Deathmobile, Dad. Just like Grandpa’s Corvair.”
I got it. It was funny, certainly funnier than what happened next.
“So, guys,” said Kenny, “the next Grand Prix is comin’ up. And it ain’t really in France, it’s just over in West Virginia. I’m thinking it’s time for me to get off my tail and race again; they said I could if I put hand controls in the car. So I’ll need a race team and I’m thinkin’ it should be us—Team Deathmobile. What do you say? You want to go racing?”
Benjy’s eyes bulged and his jaw dropped. I thought he was about to levitate up to the barn roof.
I, on the other hand…
“I could race?” Benjy gasped. “In a real car?”
“Hell, yes! That’s the point!” said Kenny. “The three of us—a team!”
“But they must require a driver’s license,” I said, hoping to let Benjy down easy, “and Benjy doesn’t have one.”
“Oh,” said Kenny, deflated. “I figured you did. You’re old enough.”
“I can get one!” Benjy insisted.
“But will the state let you have a license?” I murmured, still trying to let Benjy down easy. “You always say they discriminate against you.”
“I’m not letting them discriminate against me anymore!” Benjy roared. “I want to race!”
“Hell,” Kenny unhelpfully interjected, “it ain’t really even a race; the goal is just to keep a junky car rollin’ to the finish. There ain’t no Dale Earnhardts out there.”
“Denny Hamlin is my favorite driver!” Benjy exclaimed. “He grew up in Virginia! He was Sprint Cup Rookie of the Year in 2006! And I beat him in my video game every time!”
“There ya go!” encouraged Kenny. “Sounds like yer ready to race.”
“The state has some concerns about Benjy driving,” I gently warned, “so it seems premature to be talking about him racing. Maybe in a year or two, but for now…”
“Heck, have you seen some of the drivers on the road lately?” Kenny interrupted, waving me off. “He can drive better than them, I’ll bet. Cain’t ya?”
“I want to try!” Benjy declared. “I want to race and overcome discrimination!”
“There ya go again!” Kenny shouted, raising his hand up. “Let’s go race this garbage!” Benjy slapped him a high five.
I was stunned. It had been Benjy, not me, who had decided he would not try for his driver’s license. He felt he was taking a principled stand against the DMV’s insistence that a person with Asperger’s provide medical records and undergo extra testing before being awarded the privilege of driving an automobile upon a public highway. I confess I had not tried very hard to persuade Benjy otherwise; I was just fine with his not driving an automobile. Like many with Asperger’s, his reaction time was slow and his coordination poor. And what if Benjy became distracted reciting his stories to himself while he was behind the wheel? Like the DMV, I was worried about safety. I believed the DMV’s cautious approach was fair.
But suddenly, that had all changed; now Benjy wanted to drive. And race. Not just in a video game, but in a real car. Yet, to put him behind the wheel on a racetrack, where concentration, skill, judgment, instinct, and reflexes would be vital, even in a race of junk cars that was just for fun—I didn’t see how I could let him.
“You said you wanted to help me to live independently,” Benjy fumed as we drove home and I shared my concerns. “Driving will help me live independently.”
“Benjy, I’m not saying you shouldn’t get your driver’s license. But of course I worry about you driving, because I’m your parent and I love you, so I always worry about what could possibly happen to you. That’s the way parents are.”
“You said you’d help me find my own place,” he said insistently.
“But, until a few minutes ago, you were adamant that you wouldn’t drive because of the DMV’s discrimination. What happened to that?”
“I was afraid they wouldn’t let me,” Benjy said, gazing out the window. “So I didn’t even want to try.” He turned to me. “But now I want to try. I can drive, Dad. I can do it.”
What would Annie say, I wondered? She’d always been a protective parent; while the thought of Benjy driving had merely worried me, it gave her nightmares. Now would she just say no? Maybe she would, but she wasn’t here anymore; I was on my own. “Benjy, I will help you try,” I said. “But you’ll have to demonstrate to both the state and me that you’ll be a safe driver on the road, for your sake and for everyone else’s. As for racing—I just don’t see how anyone can race who doesn’t even have a license yet.”
Benjy stared straight ahead, teeth clenched. “If I try hard enough, I can do anything. Mom always said that.”
Mom also said that under no circumstances should he drive an automobile, but I kept that to myself. “We’ll see,” I said. “But I can’t promise anything.”
“You should keep your eyes on the road when you drive,” Benjy said, eager to demonstrate his driving knowledge. “You’re missing our turn.”
Too late. I’d passed the entry ramp onto the Interstate. I made an awkward U-turn, which Benjy critiqued as illegal. He was right, but we were in the middle of nowhere and there wasn’t another car to be seen. Suddenly, he was becoming the World’s Worst Back Seat Driver.
We traveled in silence on the Interstate. Until Benjy said, “You’re driving too fast.”
“I’m below the speed limit,” I insisted. “The other traffic is passing us.”
“It’s too fast,” Benjy insisted right back. “I can tell.”
“Now that you want your license, you’re going to give me driving lessons? I happen to be a good driver. I have never gotten a speeding ticket.”
“In Rain Man, Raymond Babbitt was an ‘excellent driver.’ He said that all the time! And he was autistic. I’m only an Aspie. So I can be an excellent driver, too!”
“Benjy, you are not Raymond Babbitt. And even in the movie, Raymond did not drive out on the public highway next to other speeding drivers, he only drove up and down his driveway.” A memory suddenly washed over me: standing in the children’s section of the local bookstore as Benjy, age four, recited children’s stories, without the book, to an audience of captivated preschoolers—and my father. One amazed parent leaned over and jokingly murmured “Rain Man” to me, not knowing I was Benjy’s father. I smiled politely and said nothing. Later, I told Annie I wished I had said something. She asked me what I would have said. I didn’t know, and I still don’t. Just—I felt I hadn’t stood up for my son. I felt like a coward.
I punched the accelerator at the memory, and the Corvair surged forward.
“You’re driving too fast,” Benjy declared. “The speedometer says you’re speeding.”
“The speedometer is not accurate,” I explained. “In old cars, speedometers are often wrong.” I sounded like an impatient and pedantic scold even to myself.
“You’re speeding. You’ll get a speeding ticket.”
“Trucks are passing me!”
“They’re speeding too! Two wrongs do not make a right!”
Suddenly a THUMP came from the engine in the rear and the Corvair wobbled.
“What was that?” Benjy demanded, worry in his voice.
I scanned the gauges for a clue. Nothing. Then the GEN-FAN warning light on the instrument panel meekly reared its ugly head, a faint orange glow that grew in intensity, brighter and brighter, as if slowly summoning up the courage to deliver the bad news. The TEMP-PRESS light had no such reticence—it suddenly blazed red.
I smelled trouble—intense fumes from behind me. The Corvair’s air-cooled engine was quickly overheating and cooking the motor oil. I lifted my foot off the accelerator and coasted to a stop on the shoulder of the Interstate.
“I think we broke the fan belt,” I sheepishly opined.
“Not ‘we’�
��you,” corrected Benjy. “I wasn’t driving too fast. I wouldn’t drive too fast. I would be a better driver than you. I would be an excellent driver!”
CHAPTER 11
On the shoulder of the Interstate, I hoisted the Corvair’s engine lid and immediately saw the fan belt was ripped to shreds. It was a common Corvair malady, so common in fact that, when Wally had sold me the car, he had generously included a spare belt that I discovered sitting serenely in the trunk, just begging to be installed. He’d even included a wrench so that I could install it. Alas, my Corvair repair manuals were home in my garage, so I was flying blind. With wrench and belt in hand, I stared at the engine and tried to imagine how, if I were a fan belt, I would wish to be installed.
“Dad?” Benjy asked. “Do you know what you’re doing?”
“Nope.” Today, I would enjoy no Zen moment successfully repairing the car and resuming our trip home. Instead, I ground my teeth in frustration.
“We should call Kenny. He’ll come to fix it.”
Sure, Kenny was close by and could undoubtedly replace the belt in 30 seconds with his eyes closed while eating a ham sandwich. But I couldn’t bear to call him. I could hear his voice ringing in my ears like tinnitus. “Man, you cain’t put on a fan belt? I’ll bet Benjy wouldn’t be breakin’ no fan belt. You oughta be lettin’ him drive.” Right now, I’d rather eat the fan belt than call Kenny.
“I’ll call the auto club for a tow,” I said. “I’ll fix it at home.”
“We should call a professional mechanic,” Benjy said. “Kenny is a professional mechanic.”
“No,” I insisted, too loudly. “I’ll fix it. I’ll enjoy a Zen moment. Just not right now.”
Naturally, the auto club sent the very same tow truck operator who came when the wheel nearly broke off. He pulled up in front of our marooned Corvair, its trunk lid raised forlornly and heat waves still rising off its engine, and hopped out sporting a grin that was miles too wide. “Told ya you’d be callin’,” he grinned.
I had not grinned back. As we once again rode home in the cab of the wrecker, I wondered what made my dad such a Corvair fan. What inspired such a sober and judicious man to not merely drive such an unconventional car, but to sing hosannas, wax rhapsodic, proselytize other sober and judicious men about the virtues of joining him in the Corvair Brotherhood? Why would he good-naturedly suffer the slings and arrows launched his way from my friends, and likely his friends too, because of his stubborn devotion to this car that was taking over my life?
Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy driving my Corvair. I loved that its big booty made it so sure-footed around curves and turns. I delighted in hearing perfect strangers’ Corvair stories. I appreciated that the car was a hugely risky attempt by a risk-averse giant American corporation to rethink the automobile—to start over again with a clean sheet of paper and build the smartest, most efficient mass-market compact car that it possibly could imagine. Even as the wrecker again lowered it ignominiously onto my driveway, I marveled at its beautiful slipstream shape, still fresh and sexy, coiled to lunge forward like a jungle cat, even as it sat broken. And that was the point; it was broken. Again. Instead of giving me a Zen-like satisfaction as I solved its mechanical issues and kept it humming along the road, it was starting to drive me nuts.
To my father, I knew the Corvair had been more than a mere car. It was a symbol of something, a declaration about himself; he was a Company Man, yes, but that would not define him. He had intellectual curiosity and wasn’t afraid of quirkiness and nonconformity. He was a free thinker. He wasn’t afraid to take a chance on something different. But why wasn’t I feeling all that right now? What wasn’t I getting about this car? Why wasn’t I feeling the love?
Perhaps my father, usually such a cautious and sober man, bit hook, line, and sinker on GM’s hugely successful campaign to introduce the Corvair in the fall of 1959 as an American car that broke the mold, eschewing the rocket fins, bosom bumpers, gas-guzzling over-powered engines, and cartoonish bloat that characterized so many of Detroit’s designs of that era. Instead, this radical departure from conventional American auto making filled a niche that American car makers had forgotten about. By offering economical and comfortable performance—no more, no less—it was a new kind of car: basic transportation for the Thinking Man.
And that was my father; a Thinking Man. On the October 5, 1959, cover of Time, a magazine my father read devoutly from cover to cover the instant he picked it up from our mailbox, was not GM’s CEO, as might be expected, but Edward N. Cole, the several-rungs-down-the-corporate-ladder general manager of the Chevrolet Division, known as the “Father of the Corvair.” A Steven Jobs of his time who also played a starring role in the development of the Corvette, the catalytic converter, airbags, the famed Chevy small block V-8, and numerous other auto industry innovations, the legendary Cole had taken note of the increasing popularity of the imported Volkswagen Beetle and realized there was a huge, untapped demand for an American-style “people’s car.” Said the “folksy, brilliant” Cole then, “If I felt any better about our Chevy Corvair, I think I’d blow up.” But of course he said that! He was the Corvair’s Father! Selling Corvairs was his job! How could a sober and judicious guy like my father fall for such obvious puffery?
It turned out that Dad wasn’t the only one bowled over by the new Corvair. Gushed that over-the-moon issue of Time: “No sooner had Chevrolet announced the Corvair than it began to write orders. Hertz Rent-a-Car signed up for 3,000. Chicago Dealer Zollie Frank wanted 10,000, but Chevy turned him down to spread the supply.” In St. Louis, Chevy Dealer Gene Jantzen, located directly across from a GM factory, claimed, “People toured that plant and peeked through the knotholes at the Corvair. Some even climbed atop their cars outside the plant to get a look. Then they came over to our place and ordered a Corvair.” Today, think the shivering mob queued up at the Apple Store to buy that company’s latest electronic must-have wonder device.
Dad placed one of GM’s first orders for a Corvair back in 1959. I was too young to have any memory of him bringing that car home. But I did cherish its cozy shelf behind the back seat, just above the warmth, hum, and vibration of the engine immediately beneath it. What a perfect crib for me to sleep in on long trips, back in the days before child safety seats.
But, five years later, I was certainly old enough to remember The Day the First Corvair Died. On our way home from church, straining to go up our steep hill, that beloved 1960 Early Model suddenly screeched to a halt, scaring the bejesus out of me far more effectively than the fire-and-brimstone sermon I’d just heard. Cautiously getting out of the car in our Sunday best, we found the car’s engine had dropped out of the car and was sitting on our street. As our neighbors gathered to console us, Dad kneeled down to the air-cooled power plant, stunned. The motor mounts had broken, a Year One design flaw that was fixed in subsequent years.
Such a calamity might have caused some men to reconsider their love affair with a car. My father was not one of those men. The very next day, he brought home a brand spanking new 1965 Late Model, with the hot international look and a new and improved non-Deathmobile rear suspension. What he couldn’t know was that this new Corvair, which he cherished even more than the first one, was doomed to extinction. Just a few months earlier, Ford had released the iconic, sporty, super-selling Mustang. Just a few months later, Ralph Nader published Unsafe at Any Speed. This one-two punch sealed the Corvair’s fate. Sales dropped precipitously, then practically stopped. To battle the Mustang in the marketplace, Chevrolet introduced the front-engine, rear-drive, water-cooled Camaro. Still, General Motors, then the world’s largest corporation, proud and stubborn, refused to totally abandon the Corvair. Despite losing money on each one it built, it kept the car in production three years longer than originally planned, even going so far as to build the car by hand in 1969, its final year, at a huge loss per car, just to emphatically underscore that it gave no credence to Nader’s charges of corporate irresponsibility and would not
bow to intense public pressure to stop selling the car.
Nor did my father abandon his Corvair. He kept ours running longer than any other car he owned. He wanted me to drive it; I even got a few driving lessons in it. But then, one night while it was parked at the curb in front of our house, a drunken neighbor smashed into it. On hearing the crash, my father raced out of the house. I wasn’t far behind. Fortunately, the neighbor was not seriously injured. But the Corvair was. It had one innovation that worked against it that night: It was one of the first American cars built utilizing “unibody” construction; like nearly all cars today, it had no rigid frame, an innovation that reduced weight and increased gas mileage. Even though the damage appeared repairable, it was not. Our beautiful blue Late Model was no more. And not even for a Corvair would my father violate his first rule of car ownership—never buy used, you were just buying someone else’s problem. For our family, the Age of the Corvair was over.
That is, until I bought the Corvair that now rested in my driveway, broken, a piece of non-functional yard sculpture. As the car sat un-drivable, I gave it a wide berth, as though it were a grizzly bear that hadn’t eaten in a month. Installing a new fan belt was one of the simplest Corvair repairs. Heck, it was almost as simple as rotating the tires. Which, of course, I’d botched. That failure haunted me; I could still hear Lydia crying “Deathmobile.” All that psychic satisfaction I’d expected to feel working with my own two hands to repair the Vair? All I was feeling now was buyer’s remorse. I could barely take a step toward the thing. It depressed me. I stayed inside just to avoid it.
“Dad?” Benjy asked. I was staring at the car through the kitchen window.
“Uh huh.” Nearly a week had passed since the fan belt broke.
“When are we going to fix the car?”
“I have a lot of work. Got to get a technical manual out to a client. Tight deadline.”
“Can’t I call Kenny?”
“No. I’ll fix the car.”
“When?”
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