Curiosity ~ Lucidity ~ Humanity
Volvo has an impressive history of safety innovations going back decades. Examples include the padded dashboard, the three-point seat belt, and pertinent to this story, it was among the first automakers to install a collapsible steering column. This thoughtful feature has no doubt saved many drivers from being skewered to death by the metal rod connecting the steering wheel with the front end during head-on collisions.
I know this stuff because, like many Woods Holers of a certain age, I had a long-running love affair with ‘60’s-era Volvos. My first was a rusty brown sedan (it was factory-painted brown and quite rusty) that I drove to Miami for college in ‘72. The next year I dropped out, drove back home, sold it for $125, and bought a pair of brand-new hockey skates and a bag of shitty grass.
From then until my early 30’s I never owned any other kind of car, maybe a dozen in all. My favorite was a ‘68 cream-colored wagon, dubbed the Creampuff, of course. Purchased in Santa Cruz, it traveled back and forth between the coasts a few times before fetching up here for good in the mid-80’s. The Creampuff was California-car shiny, with a peppy (for a Volvo) souped-up engine, a snazzy crystal doorknob on its stick shift, and my trusty brass buddha glued to the dashboard for good luck and safe travels.
Her only flaw was chronic front-end misalignment from a fender bender somewhere in her pre-Toby past. By necessity most of us old Volvo owners were semi-sophisticated tinkerers, but some things required a different level of professional help. For this many of us turned to Eric Little, a legendary local whose swami-like Volvo knowledge almost matched the vivid color of his personality and unpredictable business practices.
On this occasion I had taken Creampuff to Eric for some important work on the front end, the automotive equivalent of a hip replacement, if you will. After a week of anxious separation, Eric called me to come pick her up. A friend dropped me off at the garage and impatient to be reunited with my baby, I paid the generously padded bill without protest and sped off in a cloud of blue exhaust.
A few days later my girlfriend and I jumped into Creampuff and headed for Falmouth on some errand or another. I was working the pedals and gearbox like Parnelli Jones, the throaty roar of those Dual SU carburetors sucking in the air music to my ears as we shot out of Water Street and up Woods Hole Road when... when ... the steering wheel fell off the dashboard into my lap!
What happened next lasted 10 seconds, but it felt like a terrifying lifetime: I picked up the wheel and, now attached to nothing, held it in front of me in disbelief. Thinking this was a joke, my girlfriend burst out laughing. It was no joke, and we were starting to drift into the oncoming lane, still going about 45 or 50 mph! Looking down, I saw that the end of the steering column that the wheel should be attached to was sinking from view into the dashboard. Without the steering wheel bolted on its end to hold it in place, the column was ... collapsing!
Without thinking, I slammed the wheel against the dashboard and by the grace of God caught the merest hair of the column’s threaded end just before it disappeared completely from view. I wrenched the wheel to the right and the car careened off the road onto the shoulder where we screeched to a stop, inches from hitting a tree.
I sat a moment panting, grateful to be alive, then popped the hood, and with my girlfriend’s help reattached the wheel well enough to make it to Eric’s garage 5 minutes more down the road. When we arrived I flew out of the car straight at Eric in a rage, screaming, “Bro, the steering wheel FELL OFF ONTO MY LAP, we could have fuckin’ died, what the HELL!!”
Eric looked up from whatever he was doing, gave a little sigh as if to say, “These customers,” wiped his hands off on a rag, and without a word disappeared into the garage. After some noisy rummaging (while I hyperventilated in fury), he re-emerged with a large torque wrench. With a couple clicks Eric set the wrench to whatever force the Volvo manual called for (and that his mechanic had forgotten to do the first time), climbed into the Creampuff, adjusted the wheel, cranked the bolt tight, and snapped its plastic cover back on.
Eric then heaved himself out of the car, gestured toward the car with his free hand and said, “Look, I don’t know what you are so mad about, I just fixed it and I’m not even going to charge you.”
Bio-Fragment: Toby Lineaweaver grew up in Quissett and Woods Hole with his parents and younger brother, Tim. Their father, Tom, was a science writer (back when there were none) and their mother opened and ran the town's first woman-owned business, The Job Shop. As might be expected, Toby grew up on the water and was steeped in marine science, but somehow managed to end up with a career in human services and non profit leadership instead (don't ask him how). Perhaps his greatest adventure and honor was leading the Penikese Island School for a number of years before changing course to work with addictions