Free Not That You Asked (9780307822215) by Andy Rooney

never dealt with a car saleswoman.) For one thing, I don’t feel the usual compulsion to be absolutely honest. There is an unwritten understanding between car buyers and car salesmen, who are otherwise perfectly decent people, that anything goes. It’s a poker game. Buyers don’t know what the dealer is holding. We know there’s a profit margin he can cut into to give us a better deal but we aren’t sure how much he has to play with or how deep he’s willing to cut into it to make a sale.
    Years ago I went to a Ford showroom looking for a station wagon. I saw one I liked and started dickering over the price. Finally, in a desperate attempt to push me over the brink, the salesman said, “It’s the last car like this on the whole East Coast. If you want it, you better grab it because it’ll be gone tomorrow.”
    This was a challenge to me. I don’t like to be browbeaten by a car salesman.
    â€œOh, gosh,” I said. “That’s really too bad. I have a good friend and we always buy identical cars. I was looking for two of these, one for him and one for me. If you only have one, it’s no deal.”
    â€œListen,” the car salesman said, “that’s what someone told me. Just let me go in the office and check to make sure.”
    Sure enough, of course, he found one at another Ford dealer in the next town. Just lucky, he said.
    I didn’t buy the two wagons.
    The big news I got from car dealers I spoke to last week was that the hot color is red. They can’t get enough red cars.
    Next to black, red is the last color I’d want. The pigment in red paintdoesn’t seem to hold up as well as other colors, and while a red car might look attractive and catchy when it’s new, there is nothing so old and tired-looking as a two-year-old red car.
    The car I drive most is white, and if I get a new one, it’ll be white too. A white car doesn’t seem to get as dirty as other colors and in the summer it reflects the heat of the sun’s rays. I hope everyone doesn’t decide to buy a white car some year, though. I enjoy the variety of colors of cars on the road. No color dominates, and that’s the way it should be.
    The best cars I’ve ever owned smelled good. We all know a new car smells good, but the best cars have a way of smelling good all their lives. My 1977 wagon still smells good.
    I fight cars with a lot of gadgets on them but it’s a losing battle. My other car has a panel with little buttons that are supposed to light up when there’s trouble. If the brake is left on or the engine oil is low, a red light goes on indicating “brake” or “oil,” for instance.
    Last week the little light indicating trouble in the “cooling system” came on. I brought the car in and there was nothing wrong with the cooling system but with the wiring in the indicator panel. In four years, the only time the trouble-indicating lights have gone on has been when there was some trouble in the indicator board itself. So much for gadgets.
    The one thing I’m happy you can still get in most cars as an option is manual shift. Automatic shift burns more gas and doesn’t give a driver the same control over a car as the driver has with stick shift. Shifting the gears of a car is one of life’s satisfying little jobs. I like to shift for myself.

NUISANCES
 
Getting Rid of Leftovers
    Has there been a study done at Harvard or Stanford on leftovers?
    Congress is working on the tax bill and the President is concerned over what to do about South Africa, but is anyone giving any attention to a major element in all our lives … what to do with what’s left that we can’t use but is too good to throw away?
    The storage shelves in our house are filled with all sorts of good leftovers that aren’t good for anything.
    I can spot useless junk everywhere in someone else’s house. It’s difficult to