Recently my family had to take a little drive out of town. We were on 4-lane highway for most of the drive. At one point though, I found myself blinded by the bright lights of an oncoming car. Even though the car was on the other side of a divided highway and he was a good deal down the road, the "brights" were distracting to say the least.
As only I can do, that moment flashed me back to being a kid and riding with my parents at night. Back in those days we often traveled on roads that weren't so busy at night. My grandparents lived out in the country as did a good number of my aunts and uncles. Traveling at night meant that in my dozy hazy sleep I would hear "click click" followed by a good long pause and then "click click."
Readers of a certain age surely know where this is going. But for my younger readers, I'll connect the dots.
While the controls now for "brights" versus regular headlights are usually on a "stick" on the steering wheel now, when I was a little girl the control was a button on the floor. You stepped on in (click) and released it (click) to turn brights on; then when you came upon another car you would step on it again (click) and release it (click) so that the brights would shut off and you would have your regular headlights only.
OK, for my non-drivers, when you turn on the headlights, 2 would light up. They are bright enough as general driving lights but if you are the only car on an unfamiliar road, brights are nice to give you a better view. On the older cars hitting the clicker for brights meant a second set of headlights would come on as well. The problem with brights though is that the way they are positioned to hit the road, they also hit the passenger compartment of oncoming cars and you just might blind a driver coming toward you. Obviously a bad thing.
Thus, a familiar sound along the drive home was "click click. . . . . . . . . . . .click click."
No comments:
Post a Comment