My stick-shift journey started on the mower
It started with mowing the lawn. When I was 10, I decided to use the family Snapper to make some pocket money. But there was a problem: The Snapper had a clutch and a two-speed transmission. Anybody who has ever confronted the mysteries of a manual for the first time remembers how daunting they can be. But, eventually, through trial and error, I figured out the necessary brain/foot/hand coordination, and the rest is lawn care history.
I started with the neighbors’ lawns. Before long, I was also mowing the neighborhood common areas. And it wasn’t long afterward that I decided I needed a bigger machine to scale up the business. I was soon paying $183 a month for the brand-new three-speed Sears mower you see in the old family photo above. An empire was in the making. And what did this empire get me in the end? A $500 rusted-out 1967 Porsche 911 S that Dad and I found in pieces behind an old barn. It took years, but we put it back together. It’s the first car out of my garage each spring and the last put away in fall.
So, you could say that manual transmissions and I go way back, something I’ve been contemplating after recently reading a Wall Street Journal article headlined: “The 20-Somethings Fueling a Stick-Shift Renaissance.” The article noted that “Following a decades-long decline, three-pedaled vehicles are experiencing a modest but real resurgence. Manuals accounted for 1.7% of total new vehicle sales in 2023 … up from 1.2% last year and a low of 0.9% in 2021.”
That sounds like progress to me. As a lifelong car guy, I love the sense that I am more in control of a car with a manual gearbox. There is immediacy, agency, and presence involved that you just don’t get with automatics, no matter how slickly efficient they now are. And the moments I spend behind the wheel of my 911 S on a winding country road are among my happiest.
I have never subscribed to the belief, long held by some, that manual transmissions will ultimately go the way of the dinosaur. To the contrary—and I’ll take The Wall Street Journal article as evidence—I think the manual will be with us always. People crave authenticity in life. They long to be distracted from the din within their minds. Some people eschew manuals because they take more effort, but that effort is precisely the point. It’s the effort that sets us free.
Whether they realize it or not, people who drive a manual often do so because they love the act of driving more than the result, which is the opposite of how most Americans view life these days. Our goal now, in the great age of commuting and over-busy lives, is to get from Point A to Point B as quickly as possible.
That’s not driving. That’s getting somewhere. I drive a manual for the same reason I have a collection of vinyl records. And for the same reason that others garden when there are perfectly good vegetables at the grocery. It takes a bit of work. And that work puts you in the moment. I live for moments when I’m in the moment. It’s a long way from mowing lawns, but it makes for a good life!
Perhaps that describes you, as well. If so, I have a favor to ask: Carry on the tradition. Teach your kids. I did so with my oldest daughters, Olivia and Sophia. They took to it right away, and their skill impresses the heck out of their stickless friends. My youngest daughter, Ava, is too young to drive, but she’s learning, too. She sits in the passenger seat and puts her hand over the shifter and I put my hand atop hers. And together we drive.
In our household, at least, the tradition will not become a lost art. How about yours?
I hope to see you out on a great road somewhere. Happy spring.
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My first experience driving a manual… My uncle is an auto mechanic who owns an operates his own shop.
In the mid-70s he found and bought two 1963 FIAT 1100D sedans in a salvage yard. He restored both and sold one to my dad.
That FIAT had a 4 speed on the column. My father was an old-world Italian immigrant. A tough, but devoted father. One day after coming home from a day at the factory, he decided to give me, his 14 year-old son, his first driving lesson. We piled my two brothers and very young sister in the back seat (probably not belted) into the back seat and headed to this sort of metro park that had these winding roads through the woods.
Speed limits were low and virtually no traffic. A perfect place for a first lesson.
We switch seats, I engage the clutch, put it in gear and as happens with most, the car starts bucking and shaking. My old-school dad, in his broken English promptly smacks me in the back of the head and says “no make-a da car shake!”. I was rattled and even more nervous now. I try again with the same result. Again he smacks me upside the head and says, “I say, no make-a da car shake! You have-a you bruddas and a sista in da car!”
This went on while my siblings observed from the back seat. At one point I told my dad, I didn’t want to drive anymore. He responded with, “NO!! You keepa going!”.
Eventually I started getting the hang of it. At the end of the lesson, with full-on PTSD from the experience, we switch seats and we head home. In a quiet moment as we were waiting for a light, he turns to me and says, “You no do too bad”.
I can only imagine how it would have went if I DID do bad!
We may have only done another lesson as I was still traumatized. During those years I worked after school and weekends in my uncle’s shop located in Chicago. I would sweep floors, do oil changes and other light duty work along with shagging parts at the local supply stores on my bike. One day when I was 16 he asked me, “You have your license now?” I answered that I did. He then tosses me the keys to this old Datsun pickup parts runner he had with a 4-speed manual and instructed me to go pick up some parts across town.
I look at the keys in my hand, then looked at the truck across the street, shrugged my shoulders and went out. I calmly let off the clutch and that’s how I eventually mastered driving a manual. Shagging parts all over the Chicago metro area in my uncle’s old Datsun.
Needless to say that when my brothers came of driving age, it was me who taught them and not my dad. Nevertheless they were great memories that we laughed about many times before my dad passed away25 years ago.
My first car was a 1976 FIAT 128 with a 4-speed. It did grow tiresome driving that car in Chicago traffic and as such never really owned a manual after that and didn’t drive one for most of my adult life, until I retired from my career. Now in my semi-retirement I work for a gentleman taking care of his rather extensive collection and regularly get to drive some of the cars with manuals. Like riding a bike, it all comes back to you and I have since rediscovered the satisfaction and joy of rowing your own.
Thanks for the memories!
Great story and I too first learned on a garden tractor when I was a kid, on the farm, a John Deere 110 model I think. I long thought farm kids have a bit of a leg up learning to drive. Not much to run into. I moved on the larger tractors, the beloved JD 4020 finally and larger later. Darn near everything on the farm had a standard transmission but a ‘66 Chevy C10, 327 with a 3 on-the-tree was the first vehicle I cut my teeth on. Everyone in my family can drive them up and down the ages. Both daughters and son had them in their first cars. Our oldest grandchild is working on getting her drivers license, though she doesn’t seem keen on driving at all. We’re working on that. There are 3 sticks in the family so she has a nice choice.
My 1st experience with a manual transmission was solo, believe it or not.
I was 16 in ’74, and to commute to a summer job, bought a rusted ’68 (relatively-uncommon) auto-stick Beetle for $600 or $800 (my older brother had a stick-shift Bug, that I never drove).
One sunny Sunday morning, between church services, an older, outdoorsy friend, apparently thinking I had a full-manual, offered me to take his brand new, 2-tone 454 Suburban stick-shift 4×4 around the block for a spin to see how I’d like it! I think it was his effort to ‘convert’ me to buy domestic, and a truck to boot.
Well, I jumped at the chance to drive an elevated, antithetical monster compared to the Bug! So, a bit nervous, but determined, I pulled it out of the parking lot without a hitch, took it around the block, no problems, enjoying the view looking out the windows, as if driving a mobile greenhouse!
Came back, parked it, gave him back the keys, and to this day never told him it was the 1st time I drove a stick! I don’t even know if he’s still alive, anymore, since I moved 500 miles away 30 years ago.