Whenever I head into town from the ferry, I like to go by each of the different routes in turn.

The South Water street option is always the most interesting. Yesterday, I came upon Steve Gentle and his baby blue Willys Jeep. That vehicle may be as old as I am. The hood was up. (No springs or gas cylinders to hold it open. Just the force of gravity keeping it resting against the windshield.)

Most folks in this situation would be crestfallen. Steve was his usual cheerful, inquisitive self. I asked him what he needed. He said that the starter spun but wasn’t engaging. I got a big wrench out of my toolbox for whacking the starter. But first Steve wanted to know how things were with me. After all, his predicament was, most importantly, an opportunity to socialize and catch up on personal news.

He then hopped behind the wheel and turned the key while I gave the starter a few hard knocks in strategic spots. The mechanics of this automobile are so simplified that the entire engine is accessible from above. You don’t have to slide under it to get to the starter. You have a clear view of the pavement through the engine compartment.

Since the big wrench wasn’t solving the issue, we moved to the next approach. Steve said, “Jump start?” The term “jump start” has been extended to include the rechargeable battery packs that any reasonable person now carries in every vehicle that they drive. But the term actually describes what happens when you start a vehicle by getting it rolling fast enough that when you let the clutch out quickly, the inertia of the vehicle spins the engine sufficiently that combustion occurs and the engine jumps to life.

We did that and off went Steve with a backhand wave. I crossed my fingers as he stopped to cross Cooke street. But he proceeded to get smaller and I marveled that, once started, those old basic engines would want to keep running.

I learned to drive in a Willys at the age of 14. Stuart Avery would send Judy Correllus and me out on store deliveries in his Jeep. When we went out to Katama, she would put me in the driver’s seat. Judy taught me how to shift without the clutch and how to jump start. Stuart approved of her teaching methods and added that you should always park on a slope whenever possible to facilitate the roll for jump starting.

My sister Martha gave me the opportunity to learn how to drive our family Jeep on the sand at South Beach. We discovered every way to get stuck and every way to get unstuck.

That Jeep was so rusty that the rear corners of the body had begun to sag. My mother took it to Old Colony to see about getting it repaired. She feared that it might be too costly and that perhaps the old Jeep was done for. Al West took one look at the situation and told her that he would be right back. He reappeared moments later with a pair of bolts. He hefted up the corner of the Jeep and instructed my mother to take out the tailgate latch hooks and put the bolts in their place. Al snugged up the nuts, said that should hold it for a while and no charge.

That fix got the old Jeep through another half-decade of daily summertime trips to Cape Pogue.