I learned how to drive on vehicles with standard transmissions. First it was on an old-fashioned tractor that had seen better days, and then on flat bed and rack-trucks. My father believed if you learned standard and switched to automatic transmission, unlike those who learned on automatic only, you could drive both types of cars.

You had more options.

With a standard transmission there are options you don’t have with an automatic when it comes to a dead battery. A good push or a short downhill ride is all it takes to get things up and running again.

And, as I found on more than on occasion, as fewer people know how to use a clutch, it becomes more unlikely you will have your car stolen as more often than not you can walk up to the bucking car and pull the would be car thief out, accompanied by your friends, of course.

And so I am, again, the owner of a standard car with the advantage of living in a building at the top of a hill.

The weather had been variable when I last took the car out, and I forgot to turn off the headlights when I arrived home at a rainy dusk. ‘Twas brillign and the slithey toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe, so I had rushed into my apartment under the protection of my umbrella. The next afternoon, intending a simple day with few challenges and much to do that was optional, I went for a quick trip in the car only to find the battery dead and the light switch in the on position.

Not to worry.

After rocking the car out of the little groove that the front wheel was in, it would be a short trip down the length of my building’s parking lot which in the past had been all it took to jump the engine and then drive out the far entrance/exit.

Because of the position of a car close to the exit, I had to apply a little of the break to make the swing and in the process lost the speed I needed.

I calmly rolled out onto the street facing down hill with a good block to make an attempt to start the car, with, if the traffic cooperated on the major cross street, an additional block to make a second, but usually unnecessary, try.

I had done this before.

Opposite my building parking lot’s downhill entrance/exit there is an old historic house had been converted into a church many years ago, and, its being Saturday, there were people entering and exiting the church for their Saturday gathering, and that meant some people would have to cross the street coming or going. Instead of the smooth ride to pick up speed, I had to constantly apply the brake as people assumed I would simply stop when they attempted or implied a near future intention to cross the street, so I arrived close to the major intersection with no hope of a jump.

Because the block ends with a district court on one side and a modest federal building on the other, there were empty parking spaces along both curbs from just beyond the church to the intersection and I hugged one curb gauging my potential speed so that by the time I got to the corner, and, If the traffic pattern continued as it seemed to be, I could ascertain my window for passing through the intersection to get the speed needed for the second, now necessary, try.

The Saturday light traffic was cooperative, and I had plenty of time to get through the intersection, which I did only to have to stop on the other side as a person waving a preemptory and cheerful thank you wave and mouthing those words as she dashed in front of my car to run across to the post office.

I rolled to the curb with an empty parking space in front of me before the stop sign so there would be a place in case the assistance truck needed to pull in front of me and called AAA and waited, hoping my membership was up to date.

With my wait for roadside assistance being up to forty-five minutes, I took my jumper cables out of my trunk, placing them on the back of my car as a sign that I needed help, and sat with my curbside door open so it was obvious I was not going anywhere.

Although my jumper cables were a very visible sign and were, indeed, noticed, they were nonproductive as a signal as many cars slowed to gesture toward the back of my car, some slowed rolled down their windows and yelled that my cables were on the back of the car, or simply drove slowly passed looking carefully at the cables, the car, and me as if they were expected a scene greater than the one that was there.

A black SUV stopped at the stop sign then proceeded across the intersection to the drive-thru ATM Katty-Corner to me. Finishing his business, the SUV left the bank parking lot and then crossed the street and pulled in front of my car head on.

Here’s a brief guidance on the latest camera and what are http://deeprootsmag.org/2017/01/15/the-zito-doctrine/ cheap viagra the reviews given by the experts for the treatment of ED. At this time, the sale volume of sildenafil citrate, better known by the name “purchasing here cialis 40 mg” is bringing its manufacturer in the region of 1,9 billion every year. Non specific sildenafil 50mg price is a bland medication that has a place is likewise Pde5 inhibitors. There are tremendous erectile dysfunction pills that will prove find for more info now cialis prescription its impact few minutes after they are ingested.

Many cars had passed by, and many offered what help they thought to offer. This one car took that next step.

Out jumped a short Guatemalan man. We have a large Guatemalan community in my city, and, having taught all manner of ethnic groups in the schools at which I had worked around the country I am familiar with various ethnic characteristics of various groups, so this knowledge added to the placard on his dashboard that said “Guatemala”, I was somewhat sure of my assessment.

He was young and had never had to jump start a car before, and I am a mechanical peasant. Although I know about the black and red wire thing, I have no idea who hooks up first or if that even matters, so we both winced as we hooked up our vehicles.

In our short conversation I told this man about my attempts to jump start my car by rolling down the hill. Our difference became instantly obvious, and I am not talking about any racial, ethnic, immigrant with a heavy accent thing. He might have been to his age group a full-grown adult with two cute kids judging from the picture also on the dashboard, but he was just a baby to me and had never dealt with a standard transmission making it necessary to inform him how to jump start one only using speed and gravity or brawny neighbors. It was a wide generational gap mechanical in nature.

In exchange for the jump, he learned about standard transmissions and received advice on learning how to drive with a clutch so he will always have options.

In the end, he drove off a wiser man, and I sat allowing my car to charge up a little, but as I did so, I absent-mindedly took my foot off the brake with the car still in neutral, and had to slam on my brakes, stalling out the car, as the woman who had run in front of me on the way across the intersection on her way to the post office, was making her return crossing and had chosen to do it right in front of my car again and a full parking space between me and the corner with cross walk she could have used.

30 minutes later AAA showed up.

Whenever my local county sheriff , that would be Thomas Hodgson of Bristol County on the South Coast of Massachusetts whose ICE detention center was closed because of his repeated violations of detainees’ civil rights and endangering them physically by his use of excessive force, speaks of immigrants he uses certain catch phrases that perpetuate misinformation, relying on and further promoting negative stereotypes and tropes for the purpose of instilling fear of one group of people so that however ill they may be treated it will be accepted as what they deserve making everyone complicit in the abuse by tacitly permitting it.

He is more politics than law enforcement, and he needs to cultivate his base on the fear of the “Other”, and having created his fictitious societal threat, he is the only one who can save the uninformed from it as he, being the creator of the bogey-man, controls it.

The county’s three major cities, one-time industrial powerhouses, are heavily populated by immigrants who made the county prosper at least back to one or two generations, the rest having been here for generations and have kept their cultures alive and celebrate their contributions to American society proudly.  Never speaking of immigrants in normal conversations and in terms that are closer to reality than what this man spews in the name of law and order and just plain Americana, he speaks often about “Criminal Illegal aliens” careful always to link those first two words together for their subliminal effect and ensures that people connect those three words whenever any one of them is heard.

Now as a Caucasian, I can pretty much recognize my own. That is why it had been obvious to me as the various cars passed that my people may have been concerned that I might drive off and my jumper cables would fall from the car and be lost to me, but their concern was for the object, not a concern that would have them ask if I needed help.

The immigrant guy crossed an intersection, took care of his ATM business on the opposite corner, and not continuing in the direction he had been heading, made a U-Turn, and crossed an intersection to see if I needed help.

Just thought I would throw this story out there are a good story about another good person too often maligned for political gain.

.

.

.

.