February 17th, 2026
We own a 2017 Toyota Corolla iM. It’s a good car. We’ve had it nine years and logged 119K miles on it. The Corolla has taken us all over the United States: Dallas, Los Angeles, Seattle, Niagara Falls, you name it. Our insurance totaled the car after the Corolla got pummeled with hail last May, but we kept it anyway, because it runs great. Or at least it did.
The Corolla is not the only stick shift that I ever owned. Back in 1982, when I was stationed with the Army in West Germany, I bought a brand-new BMW 320i. That car was a silver two door with a four-speed transmission. It was truly a sweet ride. When I was dating my wife, I used to drive to her parents’ home in the Beemer along the autobahn. It handled well at 100 mph.
I got the BMW because at that time in history cars with automatic transmissions in Germany were about as common as unicorns. True, there was sometimes a rare American-made car on the roads, but that was because GIs could bring their POV over from the States. Once in a while, the troop sold his car and left his vehicle in Deutschland. So, it was perhaps possible to find a ’77 Chrysler Newport or some other gas-guzzler the size of a pocket battleship. However, if a soldier wanted a German car, especially a sportscar, he or she needed to know how drive stick, or quickly learn how to do so. I learned. It was ugly. Germans had no patience with a bumbling “Ami” who stalled out his vehicle in the middle of a busy intersection. German babies don’t play with rattles. They are all born with a stick shift in their hands.
I am convinced that it is impossible for a person to teach somebody how to drive a stick shift. It’s like learning to swim; you learn by doing. A person learning to drive a car with a standard transmission has to fully become one with the vehicle. The driver has to feel how the gears mesh when they work the pedal. They have to listen to the sound of the motor RPMs. They have look at the traffic around them. Sometimes, they have to smell the stench of burning clutch. It’s a total Zen experience. No thinking. Just doing.
I like driving a stick. This is not to say that it is always a fun experience. When I was stationed at Fort Ord, California, I took a trip to San Francisco. I had stop on a steep incline right at the top of a hill. When I looked out of the windshield, all I could see was the stop sign and blue sky. I had the parking brake yanked up into my right armpit. I was wondering if I could move my right foot fast enough from the brake to the accelerator to avoid rolling back into the Bay. I did. Barely.
I brought the BMW to America, and we drove it for eleven years. Finally, the transmission went to hell. Also, Karin and I had three little kids, and it’s hard to get three children in the back of a 320i. We needed a bigger ride. I sold the BMW to a guy for $400 cash. That stung. but the car was out of my life, or so I thought. Years later, each of my two sons cursed me out for selling the car. They told me,
“Dad, why did you sell the BMW!? I could have pimped it out! Do you know how much a car like that is worth?”
No, I don’t know, and I don’t care.
There is a movie called Boyhood, starring Ethan Hawke. The movie chronicles how a boy ages and matures. In the film Hawke plays the father of the boy. Hawke foolishly tells his small son early in the movie that he can have his daddy’s muscle car when he is older. Later in the show, the boy becomes a surly teenager and reminds his father of that rash promise. Hawke tells his son that he sold the cool car to buy a minivan. The adolescent son is not amused. I remember this part of the movie because the scene is spot on.
Oh well, I was going to tell a story about the Corolla. I got sidetracked.
Here we go…
Three days ago, I was driving the Corolla and discovered that it was really hard to shift gears. I had sudden flashbacks of the dying BMW. Fixing or replacing a transmission is expensive. I was irritated because the car is a Toyota. The engines and trannies in a Toyota are supposed to be bulletproof. They last forever. That’s why I bought the car in the first place.
I took it into the dealer for a maintenance inspection. I talked to service manager who was a good ol’ boy. He was baffled by the problem. He encouraged me to keep the car and fix it. That’s what I wanted to do anyway. He promised to call me back when he had an answer for me.
He called me while I was driving Asher home from school in our RAV4. He told,
“Francis, you’re going to be tickled when I tell you what the problem was.”
“Try me.”
“Well, the mechanics found a walnut wedged in the lineage between the shifter and the transmission.”
I thought to myself, “Those fucking squirrels.”
Actually, I was tickled by his answer to the problem. The mechanic removed the walnut, gave the car a test drive, and as the manager told me, “Now, it slides like butter.” It cost me $200. A bargain at twice the price.
So, I still have a working six speed.
As Neil Young said, “Long may you run.”
Frank is Emptiness 