WOMEN GETTING TECHNICAL
by Tonya Judy

Traci pulled on a sweater and stepped into the jeans she'd left on the bathroom floor last night. She tucked her yellow knee-highs into a pair of work boots and tromped off into the kitchen to the smell of morning coffee. As ever, the coffee — the brewing brown fluid was a something she'd come to appreciate less for its hypnotic aroma than its calming effect on her parents. Kathy was busily turning wasp-nest thin grey pages of the newspaper and didn't look up at her only daughter. Carl was already outside. There, in his place — not unlike the paper strewn dining table — a warehouse made of brown corrugated metal and insulated with gigantic plastic sheets bordered by pine planks. Carl's place was of his own making and Kathy's while not often seen in the same light, was nonetheless her own. Where did Traci fit into this equation? She often wondered that very thing as she snuggled into Octobery blankets and listened to the wind speak to her through the uncurtained windows.

She whispered a cool 'Good morning' to the silence and cracked open a cupboard door for a coffee mug while her mother never looked up. Kathy continued to read in her own world in her own space, the paper her only acknowledged company. Traci silently cursed her silent family and clomped over to the refrigerator for some 2%. She carefully considered her father's milk preference and the cup he'd most like to have for the day. She filled the cup some with the white and some with the black until a comforting brown blossomed up from the bottom of his favorite cup.

Just as Traci pushed her hair out of her eyes and was about to escape to the warehouse, no less silent, her mother perked up long enough to start in on her about boyfriends. Since Traci'd already turned the knob for her exit, she slowly considered some excusable answer to the infernal question "Why don't you call that nice boy ______?" and came up with, "I just haven't had time to talk with him. He's really nice, yeah mom, but he's kind of a geek" as she pushed the door into the cool, morning air. Breathing very deeply for the effect on her sleep-filled lungs as much for the release of pent up tension, Traci picked her way down the cement steps in all of their ruination and headed for the warehouse.

Carl was hunched over another of the cars in his warehouse sanctuary. An endless line of trucks and cars and antiques and parts and oily gaskets and worn tools was always congregated here, like a church in a car or a warehouse cathedral. He was the preacher and the cars his devoted flock, silent and eager to bend to his will. Traci wasn't sure how she fit into this ritual — until she'd discovered that at least one thing she could do was make her father a perfect cup of coffee. She yearned most secretly (and sometimes unsecretly) to learn all about cars. She wanted to one day rise up from Preacher's Daughter to the PRIEST OF THE CAR MOST HOLY. Knowing the ins and the outs of every car would surely make this possible and she burned with lust for the knowledge that her father could give her. Her eyes begged this talented man to give her his wisdom. She hung around in his silence for hour upon hour. She fetched coffee subserviently with silent curses at his unfeeling and sexist heart as he ignored her and seemed to forget she was even there, breathing the same air around him, listening to his muzak, feeling the spare heat he'd created in his chilly church.

Traci watched as her brothers were given talented advice and keys to the church while she was excluded. Choir boys. She'd always hated that phrase. She retreated time and again with raging hurt feelings to her bedroom sanctuary to study Hemmings Motor News and Motor Sport and newspaper advertisements. She tended the NASCAR viewings for race events. She went to the Idaho motor sportsway near her home as a teen and tomboyed her way through everything she was certain that Carl would want from her — a trial by grease through the rites of passage to his sacred knowledge about cars. Begging and hanging about did nothing for her ego and eventually she gave up. Days of eagerly fetching coffee faded like days at home often will.

Traci grew into her own woman. Graduating on the Dean's List, she was eventually an accomplished technical editor in a prestigious magazine by day and she taught her daughter, Jenny, all about cars after her school let out. Traci had vowed that her child would never be excluded from anything she wanted to do or know. Her husband, Craig, no match at all for his wife when it came to cars, had eagerly retreated from her warehouse sanctuary to let her pass on her amazing talent and automotive gifts to their daughter.

"Today, Jenny, we'll tackle the other aspects of the manual transmission. What do you think? Shall we take a peak under mommy's car?"

Jenny shifted comfortably in her tennis shoes and rolled up her work-sleeves, "Sure ma. But this time, can we spend a little more time on the drive train — I get confused between the transmission and the differential?"

Traci tucked her arm around her seven-year-old daughter and they sipped hot cocoa, "That's easy to understand but you should remember that the two are combined sweetie. Remember, the transaxle powers the axle for the wheels? Anyway, I'd be happy to go over this as many times as you'd like." She glowed inwardly and sucked the chocolate off of her lips, smiling as Jenny mimicked her gestures, all the time chomping at the bit to get under that car.

© Tonya Judy 2002

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