Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 22, 1993 TAG: 9304210261
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHRIS GLADDEN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Wolfe is a pioneer of the new journalism and a refreshingly impertinent chronicler of American pop culture. He is also a former student of Marshall Fishwick, who taught Wolfe at Washington and Lee University and now teaches humanities and communication studies at Virginia Tech.
Fishwick has taken a cue from his former student and turned his attention to the automobile.
In an unprecedented alliance at Tech, Fishwick has joined forces with Robert Comparin, head of the mechanical engineering department, to combine technology and humanities in the classroom.
"He's literally oil, and I'm water," Fishwick says.
The course is called car culture, and it comes at the automobile from two distinct angles. Comparin hopes to demystify the workings of the car for humanities students. And Fishwick hopes to give engineering students a background on the astounding impact the car has had on American culture.
"When I'm lecturing, engineering students are smiling and Marshall's students are frantically taking notes," Comparin says. "When Marshall's lecturing, it's the other way around."
"Education needs two poles," Fishwick says. "It's easier to talk about philosophy when you know something about mechanics. I teach Plato. He teaches Henry Ford. Plato says, `What is thegood life?' For the good life in America, you have to have an automobile."
Like Wolfe, Fishwick regards the automobile as art and calls it a thin-steel sculpture. It is an art object that not only permeates our culture but shapes many facets of it including other art forms.
Bob Dylan sang about a Buick 6. Chuck Berry's Maybelline drove a Coupe DeVille. Bruce Springsteen was born to run. Steppenwolf urged listeners to get their motors running and get out on the highway. Car crashes and high-speed chases have become obligatory scenes in movies.
William Faulkner said that a generation of Americans was conceived in a rumble seat. Fishwick claims the automobile, not Tom Joad, is the hero in "The Grapes of Wrath." Automobile parts have become slang for human body parts. We bring to the car the same attitude involving individual mobility and freedom that cowboys brought to their horses - though grand theft auto is not punished by a rope as was horse rustling.
We say "what are you riding?" and when we're in the front passenger seat, we use the old stagecoach term "riding shotgun." The car, like the horse, is a symbol of our independence.
Since its birth in 1885, the car has changed our landscape, our architecture and our lifestyle.
And not always for the good. Pollution, dependence on foreign oil and traffic jams are some of the negative aspects the class addresses.
Charles Dudley, a guest speaker for the course, is one of those drivers on the road of life. A sociology professor, Dudley heads the honors program at Tech. He also spends a lot of time at the Pulaski Speedway watching stock car races. Dudley grew up in Georgia, where his interest in cars accelerated when he helped backyard engineers build engines. "They had an incredible understanding of physics without knowing how to pronounce it," Dudley says.
Dudley likes the social dynamics of a small race track and the competition. He's not alone.
"There are secret stock car aficionados all over the Tech campus," he says. "The last time I went to Pulaski speedway, I went with an actor, a theater director and a cellist."
He says there are 25 million racing fans in America, testimony to our fascination with the automobile. When you put competition and cars together, you strike deep into the American soul.
On this particular day, Robert Comparin is taking the car culture class to his domain. He calls it his car factory, and he says he's quite proud of it.
In these brightly illuminated workshops, Tech students build cars. Not just any cars. These are weird-looking contraptions that are entered in national competitions and teach Tech students such things as cost analysis and engineering design. One is a low-slung solar car that looks like a giant surfboard. It has made the trip from Texas to Minneapolis in one competition. Another is a mini-Baja vehicle, all tubes and wheels that can travel on land and water. The third is a formula racer, a wicked-looking, squat machine that uses a Foster beer can for one of its parts. It can reach 100 miles per hour in no time.
Russ Bohart and Mark Jones, two engineering students in the car culture class who work on these machines, explain how they operate to the car class.
Jones says he has been interested in cars since he was a kid playing with Match Box toys.
"Cars are my life, they're a disease," he explains.
Other classmates aren't quite as obsessed but are nevertheless interested in the car as both art object and engineering feat.
"My father was a mechanical engineering student at Tech, and I wanted to surprise him," says Monica Dodson, liberal arts major. "He's amazed that I know what's under the hood."
"This has a practical application," says Jennifer Powers, a senior in biochemistry. "I'm pretty ignorant of cars, and I hope to be independent in the real world."
"I'm interested in cars as artifacts," says Sharon Williams, a history major who wrote a paper on restoring antique cars.
If such interest can be sustained, Fishwick hopes to make it a continuing part of the developing American studies program.
"This course will only survive if we can get people to realize that it's important to understanding America. This course is like the Chevy. It's the heartbeat of American culture. It's not some freaky course like rock music in Brazil."
by CNB