ACtion Magazine - September/October 2012 - (Page 14)

Leonard’s Law Keith N. Leonard Esquire t this time of the year many persons (among those still employed) go on vacations. Due to the high cost of airfare, many families may choose to drive to their intended vacation destination instead of flying there. When a person or family packs their vehicle for that trip, they have to make the unenviable and inevitable decision of what to pack for the trip. If certain members your family are anything like certain (unnamed) members of mine, it appears to be a quite difficult decision and one resulting in that situation known as overpacking. That circumstance reminds me of the late comedian A matter of size George Carlin’s sketch on “Stuff.” “Sometimes you leave your house to go on vacation. And you gotta’ take some of your stuff with you. Gotta’ take about two big suitcases full of stuff, when you go on vacation. You gotta’ take a smaller version of your house. It’s the second version of your stuff. … You get down to the hotel room in Honolulu and you open up your suitcase and you put away all your stuff. ‘Here’s a place here, put a little bit of stuff there, put some stuff here, put some stuff – you put your stuff there, I’ll put some stuff--here’s another place for stuff, look at this, I’ll put some stuff here ...” Again without naming names, I have found that some people treat their vehicle as a place to store stuff in addition to its intended purpose of transportation. Maybe that explains why some people feel the need to buy a much bigger vehicle than they need to simply get around in their lives; of course, it could not be anything like ego or showing off. Certainly some jobs require a person to have a larger vehicle to haul equipment or other things in for work purposes. However, that does not by itself explain the large variety of models of SUVs, crossovers, and minivans that car manufacturers have produced over the last few decades; and station wagons, if you want to go back even a little further in time. Those persons of a bulkier proportion may maintain that they need a bigger vehicle in order to feel comfortable while they drive. Of course, the average commute by car to work in the United States is about twenty-five minutes; so there must be a lot of recreational driving involved in the lives of those persons. Persons with larger families will quickly point out the need for a larger vehicle to fit all of their family in the vehicle when the need arises, or to take some members of their family with friends to some non-working event. Ah, the advent of minivans or “mom mobiles” whose female drivers are commonly called “soccer moms.” I am not quite sure why such drivers are identified as soccer moms (as opposed to football or baseball moms) when, according to a Harris Poll taken earlier this year, men’s soccer is the fourteenth most popular sport among fans in the United States and women’s soccer is the eighteenth most popular sport. The first minivan was actually introduced in 1935; it was the Stout Scarab, but only about one hundred of them were manufactured. Volkswagen produced the vehicle that is the forerunner of today’s minivan when it manufactured the Transporter (microbus), starting in 1950. The Transporter was powered by an air-cooled, rear-mounted four-cylinder engine. My experience with the heating capabilities of an air-cooled engine will be disclosed to the readers of this fine magazine in a future column. In the mid 1970s, the VW bus was the only minivan being produced for the North American market. Families could of course also turn to the station wagon if they needed a larger vehicle for them or their stuff, or both. Those of us living through the 1970s also remember that decade as an era when other perceptible changes were occurring in our lives (and I am not talking about disco music). I mean the first big increases in gas prices. So consumers started looking for vehicles that were both A Reader Reply No.16 14 ACTION • September/October 2012 http://www.justthebestmarketing.com/action/ http://www.macsw.org/MACS/Publications/ACtion_Reader_Reply/MACS/Publications/ACTION/ACtion_Reader_Reply.aspx?hkey=ac24bddb-c045-442a-813c-cbf05f88ac4d

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of ACtion Magazine - September/October 2012

ACtion Magazine - September/October 2012
Table of Contents
Outlook
In Bin
Expansion Valve
Leonard’s Law
Under The Southern Cross
Cooling Corner
Virtual View
News & Updates
Got Diesel?
Shutter Up!
Association News
Quick Check
New Products & Services
Last Watch
2013 Training Event Program

ACtion Magazine - September/October 2012