The Old Coot misses the bumper Published in NY (07/22/26)

The Old Coot Misses the Bumper!

by Merlin Lessler

 I first aired this gripe, in print, 24 years ago. It’s time to recycle it in modified form.

 The car bumper is history. That shiny, chrome, steel bar that once graced the front and rear of our Detroit dinosaurs has disappeared; it has been replaced with a plastic, bumper-like object that shatters when it “bumps” into something. Some pick-up trucks and a few SUVs still sport a metallic bumper, but not cars. It’s another change I didn’t notice taking place. Now it’s too late.

 It’s too bad. It’s not just the shine that’s gone; so is the pride that we took in slathering chrome polish on our bumpers to finish off a ritualistic Saturday afternoon car wash. We lost functionality too. Where are you going to tie the baby shoes and tin cans when the bride and groom drive away from the church? And, where are businesses going to wrap the thin pieces of wire that held their cardboard bumper ads saying, “We had a blast at Hershey Amusement Park,” or “I visited Howe Caverns?” There’s no place to wrap the wire. Where will you stand to pick apples from a farmer’s tree when he isn’t looking and where can you attach a piece of rope to pull a friend out of a ditch? It’s more than the shine that’s gone. It’s a way of life that slipped away. And nobody said a word.

 When I tell my grandchildren about my favorite childhood Halloween prank, tying a stuffed dummy to somebody’s car bumper when they stopped for a red light in downtown Binghamton, they won’t know what I’m talking about. “What’s a bumper,” they’ll ask? They won’t be able to understand how we got even with the “meanest” woman on the south side of Binghamton on a blustery fall day in 1956. - The stealth we employed to fasten a length of clothesline to her bumper while she was in her backyard hanging out clothes to dry. -The care we took to cover the rope with leaves so we could connect it to her garbage can without it being visible. - The patience we exhibited as we waited for more than an hour in the shrubbery before she finally came out of her house and drove off. She turned left on Pennsylvania Ave, hell bent to get to a sale at Fowlers Department Store, oblivious to the racket she was making, oblivious to the now empty garbage can bouncing, rattling and leaping in the air behind her. My side still hurts from that laughing fit so many years ago.

 The kid who also blew a gasket laughing while hiding in the shrubs with the rest of us, the kid who had tied the rope to his mother’s bumper, turned to me and said, “Now let’s do it to your mother’s car!” It can’t be done anymore. There is no bumper to attach to. We’ve lost a lot more than a shinny piece of chrome. We’ve lost a way of life. Let’s take a moment of silence for another passing, “The car bumper is dead!”