It’s amazing what you can remember when you take the time to sit still and think. My first car wasn’t “My First Car”, but more of a hand-me-down from my mother. The first time I laid eyes on this two-toned interior buggy a sunny afternoon in 1984. I was getting picked up at Greenvale Nursery school in Roanoke, VA. My classroom faced the main parking lot and between 4:30 and 5pm we kids would crowd by the window to see whose parents would pull up. Sometimes we would make funny comments about the vehicles pulling up if they didn’t look cool or exciting. When the Tercel pulled up at the window, I thought to myself this is a weird looking car and before I could say anything, out pops my parents and they saw me at the window and waved. As you can imagine, some of my class mates had some comments to say, but for the most part, they were pretty cool with so I played it off and agreed with them too. I got in the back seat where my parents had a little booster chair with armrests and they gave me my little toy steering wheel to play with. The interior had somewhat of a plaid cloth with browns, tans and light cream colors. I peered up front and saw this long, tall gear shift and a smaller brown gear shift that had the initials 4WD. I asked my mom what that meant, and she told me, “This is a Four-Wheel Drive vehicle. We use this shifter to help us drive in the snow.” Now one thing I was very attentive to was the speedometer. I saw that the car would only go up to 65 mph. I remember asking, “Where’s the rest of the numbers?” My dad’s truck went up to 100 mph on his speedometer but I couldn’t understand why Toyota didn’t finish writing on the speedometer.
It wasn’t until years later when I started driving the Tercel did I understand that this was not a fast-moving car. The first time I took the Tercel out on the highway, I thought it was gonna blow up because I couldn’t do much beyond 55 mph without the tachometer reaching above 5,000 rpms. Then there was the time in my senior year, I almost didn’t make it up a steep street incline going to school one morning. Talk about embarrassing… but there was one moment where I truly enjoyed and respected this vehicle. I ran over a nail three blocks from my house and my tire blew. My mom came through and helped me change my very first flat tire. I thought that was pretty cool because I didn’t even know my mom knew very much about cars. But the coolest thing about it was that we had a bonding moment in making sure I knew how to take care of my car and what to do in the event of a setback. Cars are not just cars, they’re also instruments that connect us and surprise us in many different ways.
Car Guy’s Car Tip
Below is a step-by-step process on how to change out a flat tire:
- Check trunk area, review the spare, and make sure you have the jack and applicable tools
- Check to make sure you have sufficient air in the spare tire
- Remove jack, wrench and other tools and set Jack under frame of the side where you are changing the tire
- Make sure you are on level ground before and Jack is level before initiating the jack then begin to raise vehicle
- Use wrench and turn lug-nuts counterclockwise to loosen and remove tire.
- Replace blown tire with spare tire, then tighten lugs clockwise. (Make sure you tighten each lug separately and evenly)
- Lower car with Jack and make sure all lugs are as tight as they can be and evenly secured
- Be sure to replace the tire as soon as possible