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When I was growing up, my dad had a great sportscar, a Triumph TR-4. It was white and a convertible and sat two, though my brother and I would shoehorn ourselves into the space behind the seats. This was a cool car, and it was only later that I discovered it was British and that made it even cooler.
The car had a manual transmission and Dad would flip a switch and it would go into overdrive. (Don’t ask me to explain overdrive unless we’re talking about guitar sounds. I never understood it beyond “it’s extra gears”.) When I was old enough to learn how to drive, the family car was a Datsun B210 (a car I later killed by dozing off behind the wheel but that’s another story) which also had a manual transmission. It was the car I learned to drive on. My parents cringed as I learned how to shift gears.
And who hasn’t gone through that? If you aren’t a parent, you won’t know how it feels on both sides, but that’s okay. Trust those of us that have that it can be the stuff of nightmares.
That sound of grinding gears is something that’s instantly recognizable. In cartoons, films, and comedies we know that there will be stoppage, that some of the gears may crack or pop off their axles, that there may be smoke and heat. (more…)