Riksarkivet (National Archives of Norway) from Oslo, Norway, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons
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By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, indulges the keeper on another of his—the keeper’s, “good ol’ days” rants, this one comparing present day automatic remote car starters with such things as hand engine cranks and frozen boiled-out radiators and frozen oil pumps.
Just up a generation or two from harnessing horses to go to town, those who wrestled with winter cars back in the keeper’s time were a hardy lot.
A frozen oil pump was particularly troublesome, usually discovered after driving for some time and carrying the unmistakable message that to keep driving with the frozen oil pump meant a ruined engine.
The solution was to set a flaming can of kerosene under the engine in the proximity of the dirty, oil-coated oil pan. The challenge then was to time things so the oil pump thawed out before the car caught on fire and burned up. The keeper retains vivid images of a neighbor’s flailing legs sticking out from under his car in a snow-covered driveway as he used his mittened hands to frantically extinguish the flames creeping up the sides of his car’s engine.
As previously noted, there is keeper clan history of a predecessor throwing a hand crank through the windshield of a car that refused to start on a cold winter morning.
The keeper is just a blip away from getting emotional about the winter car-starting joys of underground parking.
