THE BEST VIEW: Button, Button

by Norma Best-Boucher

Let me see now. Press the silver button on the little black key box, and the key pops out. Press the silver button again, and the key slides back in.

I smile…quite pleased with myself.

Every new rental car presents new challenges.

Checklist—Lights? Wipers? Defroster? Radio? Flashers? (Oh, my God, how do I shut off the flashers?) Horn? (Cohabitating with the airbag) Ignition?…Ignition?

Ah, there’s the rub–the ignition. I look everywhere. I feel everywhere. This is ridiculous. I learn how to release the key from the little black key box, and now there is no place to put the key.

Finally, I accept defeat. I am not wasting my entire vacation looking for the elusive keyhole.

“Excuse me, Sir,” I say to the rental car attendant. “This is kind of silly, but would you please help me find the ignition for the key to start the car?”

He walks over to my vehicle. “You don’t use a key,” he tells me.

I stare at the man. I stare at the car. Then I parrot disbelievingly what he has just told me, “I don’t use a key to start the car.”

“That’s right, Ma’am. You just put your foot on the brake and press that button there–the one that says ENGINE START/STOP.”

He’s kidding me, right? This is a joke. This has to be a joke. Okay, I’ll play along. I put my foot on the brake and press the newest button in my life. The car starts.

“Have a great day, Ma’am, the attendant tells me.

“Thank you, Sir,” I say aloud. To myself I whisper, “Easy for you to say.”

I am not totally unaware of the magic starter button. In the 1950s, my father had a silver starter button added to his 1948 Studebaker for my cousin to learn to drive. Other youths who had learned to drive on that car had been tall enough to reach and press hard on the pedal to start the car. My cousin Ann, however, was only 5′ 2″ inches tall and couldn’t press hard enough on the pedal, so my father came home one day with that miracle of wonders, the silver starter button.

I was duly impressed.

My father taught everyone in our family how to drive. I was always the only passenger. I sat quietly in the back seat while they drove me daily for the three-mile-long ride up the front way from Waterville to Fairfield and then home again the three-mile-long ride the back way from Fairfield to Waterville.

When I was older, I rode my bicycle in the summers the back way round trip to see my great aunt Hattie who lived in a small apartment on Main Street in Fairfield. The car rides were special, though. Sometimes we stopped at the Fairfield Creamery for a 10-cent ice cream cone in my still favorite flavor to this day, black raspberry.

As an adult I now realize that taking me for those driving rides was to prepare me for driving. Although I was still young, I was the next and last in line to learn to drive. Even with these rides, it would take a high school drivers education class, a private driving teacher for parallel parking, my cousin Ann’s practice driving with me, and my father’s 1958 automatic transmission Oldsmobile with tail fins to get that license on my first try. No silver starter button required.

My father sold that Oldsmobile to help pay for my first semester at college. He never owned another car.

During my college years I drove only sporadically, but then my husband and I bought our first and my all-time favorite car, a tan 1969 Volkswagen Beetle.

Skip ahead to the present. I have reached my destination—Waterville, two weeks’ vacation, and many drives along the front and back roads to Fairfield.

Checklist—Just me, a black raspberry ice cream cone, and my very own new ENGINE START/STOP button.

Once again, I am duly impressed.

I smile…quite pleased with myself.