You're out in the bush, staying on your uncles farm, many kilometres from anybody else, kilometres from help. Your uncle and aunt have driven to Queensland for holidays. They have taken their Mercedes 450 SEL 6.9, your aunt's Citroen DS is being used by another relative in Melbourne and the farm ute isn't working, the clutch has gone. The only car in the shed is a 1948 manual column shift Buick Super 8, your uncle's pride and joy.
The grass fire is rapidly approaching. You have been given the order to leave, by text. How many of you could drive a manual column shift car to safety?
I could. Could you?
I guess it is a skill I have, not one I have any real need to use, but I can. Like the blacksmith, or using a manual type writer.
In fact, it is how I leaned to drive, kind of. I was always fascinated with cars, and I was smart and observant. I was on my uncle's farm and we were herding sheep. The flock all started to go the wrong way and we had to turn them around. My uncle was heading off to head them off and I was following. He turned to me and said,
"Hey Chriso go move the ute so we can push them through the bottom paddock."
It was a stressful moment, we were about to lose the entire flock. I was a 14 year old city boy.
"But, but, but... I don't know how to drive."
My leather-faced uncle's eyes flashed as he turned to me and said, "Go and move the fucken ute when I fucken tell you to!"
I moved the ute. It wasn't any thing as exotic as a 1948 Buick Super 8, it was a beige Holden HK ute.
Ah the farm, the open spaces. What was it, 4000 aches up Warracknabeal way. My uncle was a good bloke, but my aunt Olive Joan was a poisonous, psychologically damaged, cruel, egocentric bitch.
Lottie said that we should all feel sorry for her as she'd had great tragedies in her life. She was attacked by a farm hand once. I told Lottie that she'd probably acted all bitch around him and he was just getting his own back. Lottie told me to hush with such talk. And her youngest son was killed in a farming accident. Some say he threw himself under the tray of that wheat truck to get away from her. My father, who never had a bad word to say about anyone, said, Olive Joan didn't need any tragedies in her life to turn her into a fucking bitch. The old cunt is dead now, she's dancing with Satan, so what do I care. My sister and I sang a round of Ding Dong The Witch is Dead, when we heard.
When I was into collecting old cars, before I realised the insanity of it, I had a 1954 Hillman, which was column shift. That is the last column shift I drove, my two tone green Hillman coupe. Ah the feel of being behind the wheel of an old car, I miss that. But not the bills associated with them, I don't miss those.
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