Pluggers by Rick McKee for February 15, 2024

If your rig requires the use of two keys, yup! You’re a plugger!

Eh me not knows how steering wheel is get worn as per time of day?

Pluggers predate airbags.

More to the point, I’d be surprised if many Pluggers don’t drive one handed.

Or at 10 and 4, if your truck has a top-loader.

Yes that could be true ;-)

I think this is a top 10er for 2024.

Really old pluggers attached suicide knobs to their steering wheels.

Ever since I began driving cars with airbags, I’ve kept my hands at 7 and 5. That way, my hands are more likely to continue to grip the wheel if the bag somehow deploys. 10 and 2 guarantees your hands will be removed from the wheel and any chance of aiming the car will be removed, too.

Mine is definitely worn at 10 & 2 and you can tell where my wedding ring also wears on the steering wheel.

9:30 and 2:30

My Camry even has protuberances at those positions for my thumbs. How cute is that?

Sometimes Plugger has to act quickly, to “dodge a ram.”

My car has a worn spot just under the driver’s window from where my elbow rests.

Any plugger worth his salt drives with one hand, the other alternates between the ladies knees and the gear shift.

My dad (RIP) drove with his right hand at 12:00 & his left elbow out the window unless he was shifting gears. Then it was left hand at 12:00 & right hand on the shift lever (which was “3 on the tree,” of course!).

In my day, you could tell the pluggers by their sun tanned left arms.

We don’t do that anymore because the air bag will break your thumbs when it deploys. Just a word to the wise.

I know this is Pluggers, so may not apply, but now they recommend 9 and 3 because of the airbags!

if you hold the wheel one handed at 12 o’clock and rest other arm on the door, you’re a plugger who is a bad driver,

And a started button on the floor – and no blinkers – just had to know and use the hand signals. No government requirement for a seat belt because there were no seatbelts. no air bags other than the live one sitting next to you on the bench seat. Wipers that would slow down as you accelerate along with 2 little triangle corner windows. no radio – just had to talk to and with the kids – play the alphabet game with billboards along the highway… oh, and we certainly can’t forget the Burma Shave signs for us in the upper midwest. The ding on the gas station rubber hose… and more…?

I just want to drive. When husband quit his job about 15/20 years ago we had an agreement I would go my own way during the day. I was very busy – would drive to work in NYC -including up to the Bronx, Suffolk county, Nassau County, sometimes New Jersey. I belong to an embroidery guild and drive to my meetings. Would do food shopping on my own and run other errands.

Then my clients started dying and retiring so I am down to a handful and only was driving to go to one of them. Then Covid hit and we were going everywhere together – had client mail me her info to work on at home (no, can’t be by computer as she does not use one). So he was doing all the driving (he suffers from motion sickness so he has to drive – we can’t go anywhere together or him alone by plane, train, bus…).

Since 2020 I had basically not driven * and then I got called for jury duty last year. In the past he has come with me when I was called as he does not like to be home alone, but they moved same to a different court and we did not know if under new rules if he would be able to stay with me. Scary part is that I have always been the better driver. So I went out the day before and drove around the neighborhood to practice – of course it snowed overnight and I had to drive in same. Since then I started back to my embroidery chapter meetings so I get to drive once a month.

*Before this recent trip to the court, since Covid started I drove 3 time one way or the other to/from our mechanic 3 blocks away when weather too bad to walk home or there when a vehicle there and twice I drove our RV out to the next county and back for maintenance – he drove the car so we could leave the RV for the work. I really need to drive more.