Confessions of a Vega Owner

"I got a sixty-nine Chevy with a 396,
Fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor" - Bruce Springsteen
Wow. That sure sounds cool. I wonder what it means. Okay - I get the Chevy part (slang for "Chevrolet"). I know that his car was made in 1969, and that the "Hurst" is a kind of stick shift, mostly because I went and looked it up after I had been singing along with "Racing in the Street" for six or seven years. Loudly.
This would be part two of that whole shop class confession, by what is even more shocking (potentially) is the fact that I don't have any real shame about my lack of motor vehicle acumen. When it comes to woodworking and power tools, I have developed a certain amount of latent lust. Owning a cordless reciprocating saw is a real thrill for me as I meander through middle age. Cars? Not so much.
I live around people who can discuss the acceleration of this or that model and what year Mustang was the real thing. I suspect that fuel injection is probably a good thing, since it always gets a "cool" or "yeah" from the motorheads. I can tell you roughly how a carburetor works partly because I have encountered one in my lawnmower and partly because I have an amusing anecdote about my father's experience with his malfunctioning convertible VW bug and a broken accelerator cable.
Truth be told, most of my automotive expertise swirls about in the anecdotal realm. I learned that my own VW bug was oil cooled, not air cooled, when I drove it from Colorado to Oklahoma without checking the oil. That turned out to be important knowledge, but not before I threw a rod (sounds pretty cool, but I'm only certain that the mechanic told me that he could not fix it in Tulsa).
I've never owned a particularly cool car. I have attempted to add character to the vehicles that I have used in my life. I have installed stereos and speakers. I have found dipsticks and periodically checked other fluid levels, periodically remembering to add more or have them drained by highly trained professionals. When the highly trained professional invariably corners me and tells me that my Fuelie head needs to be replaced so that the timing rod won't dissipate the differential, I nod and smile knowingly. Then my mind goes wandering again to the lyrics of Bruce Springsteen:
"She's a hot stepping hemi with a four on the floor
She's a roadrunner engine in a '32 Ford
Late at night when I'm dead on the line
I swear I think of your pretty face when I let her unwind
Well look over yonder see them city lights
Come on little dolly 'n' go ramroddin' tonight"
I'm not sure what "ramroddin" is - but it sure sounds like one massive good time - slap on some of that hemi while you're at it.