In case you hadn’t noticed, when the latch to your car’s glove comparment breaks, the door won’t close. When that happens, the microscopic light inside the compartment drains the battery over night. I don’t see how that’s possible, but then I’m a writer and make stuff up and have no clue why cars think what they think.

Tape won’t hold the glove box door shut. Neither still twine. It takes high-quality wire out of the miscellaneous wire chaos box in the garage.

However, by now the battery has been jumped so many times it must be about shot because this morning the car wouldn’t start and the glove box door was closed tighter than the lid to a vampire’s casket. My trickle charge indicate the battery was too dead to accept a charge-another one of those things that kind of defeats the reason for having a trickle charge.

This all brings up a sad fact. I’m the only guy in the county who doesn’t know how to fix a car. Everyone else does, though they started having more trouble when all the computer stuff got added. But most of them know how to start a Buick even if they’re Ford people. It’s a good skill to have because you can’t run a farm if you can’t maintain your tractor, riding mower, bob cat, backhoe, air compressor, and anything else with a motor in it.

Growing up, I had a car with a stick shift and knew that as long as I parked it on a hill, I could get it running. Later, when I had a Jeep for a few years and then a Saturn for a few years, they could always get under way on a hill or with a brief push.

I like cars the way they were than the way they are now where it costs $1,000 to get somebody out to your house and start your car when the glove box latch breaks off and the light inside drains your battery. (By the way, that light is in such a small space, I can’t squeeze my fingers in there to get it out.)

Thinking back, I’ve had a negative reaction to most changes to cars: automatic transmission, power steering, power brakes, power windows, and a hundred dashboard ikons that are harder to decypher than hieroglyphics. I’d rather see the words up there than silly little pictures. (“Check engine”? Give me a break, check it for what?)

Okay, well just maybe I like the backup camera that shows you whether your rolling over your child’s favorite toy. Otherwise, all the new stuff costs a lot of money to buy and a lot to fix when it breaks. And it will break. Nobody will know that’s broken because all they’ll see on the dashboard display is something that looks like it came out of an old alien invaders game.

It may be time for a new car which will have to be an SUV because the sedans have gone away. At least an SUV has enough room in the back for a generator to start the thing when the light in the glove box drains the battery.

—Malcolm