CUNNINHAM’S CORNERFree Access

On the Restraints of Small Cars


 

 

A Story: Years ago, in the late 1970s, my father had an older Pontiac. With a V-8, naturally. White. Black interior. He believed that any car with, say, a 6-cylinder engine was intolerably small. Would barely have enough power to move down the highway, the way he thought about it. He loved old cars, invariably big old cars.

He let me drive it occasionally, to school or to various events. Now that I’m 60 and in the cold light of hindsight, I realize I had made intemperate remarks about it. I had said it accelerated very well. Responsively, even. That was, I now know, completely over the top. I should have said, “Boy, it sure rides nice when you baby it. Hardly need to use the accelerator.” But alas, I hadn’t.

At some point after that, he decided I needed a car. Our farm was four, four and a half miles from town, depending whether you went east and then north, or north and then east. They’re extremely fond of the grid system there, and it’s so relentlessly flat. In fact, in most places, the road only curves for natural obstacles or at the county line, where these curves were to correct for the curvature of the earth (we couldn’t really impose a rectangular grid on a spherical surface).

 

 

Anyway, we soon discovered that there was no suitable used car at the dealers in Pipestone, the town of 5,328 people that was home. And why, you might ask, despite our little community having three new and used car dealers? Because none of their cars were small enough, though I hadn’t tilted to that yet. So we headed to Sioux Falls S.D., a metropolis of 85,000 people, with more than enough car dealers. And there, we would find not a car with 8 cylinders. Nor a car with 6 cylinders, as my younger brother would have. No, we were searching, I would discover, for a special car: One with four cylinders. It would be my own little effort to fight climate change, before I knew what it was.

Of course, being a teenager and having a driver’s license, one doesn’t turn down a car. I was no fool, after all. So we settled on a used Datsun 510. Bright yellow, four doors, $1,600 cash. And, oh yes, four cylinders. Four-speed transmission, on the floor. It was fun to drive, and reliable. But speedy and powerful, it was not.

So we flash forward to Oct. 17, at the Bandstand in Cold Spring, hard by the Hudson River. The performance artist Cristian Chironi and his 50-year-old Fiat 127 pulled up. He stepped out. And behold: His Fiat was an even smaller version of my old Datsun 510.

The premise was simple: He would drive around Cold Spring and Philipstown – as well as, in earlier stops, Long Island and New York City – with a ‘co-pilot’ and two more passengers in the back. A conversation would ensue as part of “New York Drive”. What are people worried about? How do people interact with one another and their community and the Hudson River? How is our politics these days? And, outside the doors of this very small Fiat 127, the community would interact, marveling at this tiny, multi-colored, oddly painted car tooling around. It was all taped and recorded and photographed by Magazzino Italian Art, for a subsequent account of these three, nesting trips (see inside in our second section for more on that fascinating project).

I did not know it until well into the drive, but Chironi was missing one gear of his manual transmission. Still, he was doing awfully well considering that. I also realized at last, after looking over and seeing the speedometer at 50 or 60, that it was in kilometers. So, we weren’t really going that fast. The car is on its second engine, he said.

“We want to take this car, put it in the streets, stay in touch with the people. This car is like a landscape,” Chironi said. It sounds pretty off-beat, right, maybe even a little crazy. But, no more crazy than my father getting me a 4-cylinder Datsun 510. That worked out OK.

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The election is next Tuesday, Nov. 2; early voting has already started. I say again, be grateful for all the politicians of both parties. They are sacrificing a lot to run, subjecting themselves and their families to scrutiny. No one running in Putnam County is getting wealthy off one of these posts. They are taking part, in ways the rest of us are not. We should at least be grateful enough to vote. No excuses, no bitching, no “it won’t matter anyway.” It will matter, and your vote might be the difference.

My sense is that a number of races are close. Of course, the Legislature is not going to change hands; the Republicans have an incredible majority, and only three seats are up each year. The sheriff’s race, my view, is pretty tight. The value of incumbency for Robert Langley Jr. is up against the value of a sustained, years-long registration edge in favor of the Republicans for Kevin McConville. Unlike the last vote, McConville does not have Don Smith’s many flaws. So, I think it’s close.

Other races? Hard to tell. The liveliest legislative race is probably in Philipstown and Putnam Valley, with incumbent Legislator Nancy Montgomery up against former lawmaker Barbara Scuccimarra.

Anyway, vote! Until next week. I’m Doug Cunningham. This column is my opinion. The letters we print are opinions. The political advertising we print reflects opinions. Nothing more, nothing less. Opinions. If you’d like to offer yours, send me a note to editor@pcnr.com. 500 words or less in plain text or a Word document. Below, the performance artist Cristian Chironi with his quite small Fiat 127 earlier this month in Cold Spring as he pulls up to the Bandstand at the waterfront. The car often drew interested stares, as it did here. Photo by Douglas Cunningham.

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