Someone, I think it was Jean Shepherd, opined that we male type humans tend to remember important moments in our lives based not on where we were, who we were with, or what we were doing, but on the car we were driving at the time.

Now, as silly as this may sound, I for one, plead extremely guilty. In fact, as I try to remember various things, places, and people, I find myself running through my head things like 'when did I drive that yellow Celica'? or 'when did we have that crazy VW bug'? And I guess to a lot of people, that makes me sound very superficial or even worse, like I don't/didn't care enough about the event, and who was there, to take notice of it without putting it in the frame of reference of what car I had at the time.

Again, guilty. But with an explanation. You see, for most of us, except those city dwellers who get around via the different types of mass transit that are found in NYC, Boston, Chicago, etc., our cars are accessed on a daily basis, and sometimes, for many hours each day. Some folks spend almost as much time commuting each week as they do eating, or relaxing. Heck, when we lived in Selden and I was working in Garden City (40+ miles each way), I spent so much time in the car that I knew every little stitch in the upholstery, every slight imperfection in the vinyl dashboard, and each quirk in the radio dial in that little red Dodge Omni. And why wouldn't I? I probably did close to three hours in that car on most days, as I was driving in the great east/west rush hour. And, let's not forget, this was in an era well before we had cell phones, pda's, tablets, and all the rest of the gizmos and gadgetry we now take for granted. In fact, back then, you'd have paid a premium to have a cassette tape player in the car - am/fm radios were usually what was standard in most cars. You youngsters can ask Mom or Dad exactly what a 'cassette tape' was.

Another reason I think a lot of us of a certain age remember cars so well is because years ago, they weren’t as reliable or as ‘bullet proof’ as they generally are today. Having a car reach 100,000 miles on the odometer was a rare instance, as most typical run of the mill cars were pretty much done by 70 – 80 thousand miles. And we found ourselves stranded by the side of the road a lot more often back then, usually due to some incredibly dumb, or serious problem with the ride.

We may not remember what restaurant we had great baked Alaska in, or where we bought that nice little ice crusher, but odds are, you remember quite clearly all of the places you got stranded by your car.

 For instance, I remember one time when Maureen got stuck in her little Corolla coming home from work, it stalled as she exited the LIE, and wouldn’t stay running when she tried to re-start it. A nice Suffolk Police Officer gave her a ride home, we called her brother Bob, who’d owned the car previously, and he said that a rubber plug had probably fallen out of a vacuum port on the side of the carburetor. He said I should go back to the car, pull a rubber drain plug out of the bottom of one of the car doors, and stick in in the vacuum port. Apparently that was a pretty well known feature of the early Corollas. We drove back to the car, did as he said, and amazingly, the car fired right up and we never had that problem again. Now that’s a silly issue for sure!

So yes, I remember things in my life in part through the cars of my life. And if that sounds odd, well, I guess it is. But those memories, triggered by the cars, include all the events and people who were, and are, important to me. I know who pushed my little Fiat 850 to get it started when the engine just got too cold after a night working the skating pond in Garden City in 1973 (JC). I know who drove all the way to Greenport to pick me up when my ’96 Mustang blew the intake manifold in 2003 (Karen). I know that Steve Espey remembers who he was with, and who left him sitting alone in Jack in The Box in Mineola when he locked his keys in his car in 1977 – and who picked him up, took him home and then back with spare keys (me).

So if I refer to certain instances that we’ve shared with a line like ‘Oh yeah, I was driving my Dad’s Duster then’, don’t be surprised. It is, I suppose, just another in a long list of memory joggers that we humans need, and use, to keep those times alive in our minds.