Where did you say the battery is located?

"It's under the seat of the car, and I have to have AAA come and jump start me".... those were the exact words my friend spoke to me in one of our recent catching up calls. The "It," referred to in this title sentence, was their car battery. My mind flashed a simple question immediately: Why in the world would anyone ever want to put a car battery, under the seat?

My friend works for an airline, and is out of town for days at a time. In the winter, her car battery often looses its charge. Her situation is further complicated due to the batteries ridiculous location, which prevents her from having someone in the neighborhood, helping with the simple act, that in years past we referred to as "jump starting!"

This inconvenient experience for my acquaintance, got us to talking about all the complicated things that exist in our world today, and the simple and wonderful apparatuses that were more common in our younger days.

A low battery seemed so much easier to deal with when we were young. You had several choices. If you had a pair of jumper cables, you simply asked another car owner to pull up beside your vehicle and connect their battery to yours via the cables. Most times this was all that was needed to get your vehicle started.

Several vehicles in that era could be simply "pushed started." I won't even bother to write the steps to that process. Those of you old enough will know what I'm describing, you youngsters would probably never understand anyway.

Our tires were a lot easier to deal with back then. Every vehicle had a full size spare tire, not one of these little toy things that you find in today's cars. More importantly, every car and truck had a "REAL JACK!"

You remember, those jacks that had a solid pedestal that supported a jack stand. This stand was connected to a heavy metal boot that fit under the solid metal bumpers on our cars. There was also a tire iron, that doubled as the jack stand lever, to remove and replace the lug nuts on the wheels.

That was back in the years, when we still considered drivers education a priority for teenagers. Sophomores in high school were required to take a full semester of drivers education. Besides the driving instruction and classwork, everyone was taught how to do a lot of simple chores, including how to change a tire.

How many of you right now have any idea how to get out your spare tire, jack up your car, and change a flat tire on your current vehicle? Just as I thought, most of you would first have to get in the console, retrieve the owner's manual, and hope it is written in English.

There are so many things that have changed in our cars and trucks. Some of my favorite items that every vehicle offered back then, were wing windows. Again, you youngsters should not look at us as is we are talking about some fabled thing.

Wing windows were small independently operated windows located in front of the driver and passenger windows. Some cars even had back wing windows.

These wing windows were very convenient. In winter or summer, you could open these windows just a tiny bit, or all the way. They let in fresh air without causing the ladies to experience a "bad hair day," as they would with the big windows opened.

Those wing windows did have one use that was popular in those times, as a smoking vent. The number of smokers back then was probably double the percentage it is today. A smoker could use the wing window to let out the smoke from the interior of the vehicle, and in many cases as the release point to "flick" their ashes and finished "butts."

The cars of my youth were much larger than our economy types of today. Most families possessed a 4-door sedan. It was fully capable of carrying six adults, and an even larger number of kids.

Those old dinosaurs were quite romantic. Kids in my era were legendary "Parkers!" Even if you had a double-date, there was plenty of room for some serious "making out," in both the front and back seats. Don't act like you don't remember!

Those vehicles required more attention on a regular basis. You had to change the points, plugs, oil, and get a lube job about every 3,000 miles, or they simply would not run very well.

They may have required more regular mechanical tune-ups, but it was ever so much easier to obtain. Practically every gas station in town back then had a full service shop. You could get tires, batteries, tune-ups, and just about any checkup required.

When you went in for service, the mechanic didn't have to hook up your car to a computer to see what was wrong. Most young men had a rudimentary knowledge of engines, so many of them could diagnose their own car issues.

Don't get me wrong, I do like many of the improvements that we have in our modern day cars. In those years, a car that had 100,000 miles on it was considered a rarity. Today, with a minimum of maintenance, vehicles regularly accumulate many more miles than that.

Yes, we have some great cars today. They get better gas mileage, and they last longer. Having said that, wouldn't it be nice, if they put some of the ood old ideas back in our cars?

I think a car battery should be located where it is easy to reach and hook up to cables. When it comes to a flat tire, give me a jack and something simple to use to change the lugs. Different doesn't necessarily make it better!