A Clean Start

Some New Year's resolutions strike me as earnest attempts to change God's mind about what should happen next.

Such as the promise to be more patient with the very people who prove by Week Two that they don't deserve it. That kind of thing.

When it comes to ringing in the new year, that down-the-road stuff can't push me up the hill of good intentions. I need a jump-start to brave the vast unknown we euphemistically call the "new year," as if bad moods, running toilets and crumbling 401(k)s aren't going to follow us right across the finish line.

Give me something that all but shouts "I mean business about cleaning up my act."

Give me an oil change.

Yesiree. Talk about a clean start.

My dad taught me one thing about cars: No matter what, change the oil every 3,000 miles.

"It all flows from the oil," he always said. "If you don't change the oil, everything falls apart."

Over the years, I may have internalized that lesson in irrational ways. Car won't start? Oil. Wipers don't work? Gotta be the oil. Recently, we, meaning an unnamed he , ran into a sewer grate, and it punctured our tire. We were whooshing out air like a woman in hard labor, and all I could think was that we were 2,316 miles past due for an oil change. What did we think was going to happen?

So this New Year's Eve, we were driving through Mansfield, Ohio, and decided to pull into a Valvoline Instant Oil Change station. And what to our wondering eyes should appear but the sight of four females yelling, "Pull it in here!"

"Oh, my gosh," I said. "They're all women."

My husband rolled down his window, and I leaned across the steering wheel to yell, "Oh, my gosh, you're all women!"

This was not news to manager Jen Good.

"Yeah," she said, smiling. "We hear that a lot. We already know it."

Just like that, my mood lifted.

Thirty-three-year-old Good grew up in the Cleveland area and worked at dry cleaners on the west side for 13 years before switching jobs — and towns — to be closer to her fiance.

He's a mechanic for the Ohio Department of Transportation, but forget about thinking that's how she learned about cars.

That came from her truck-driving daddy.

"When he was home, he was always working on some car. I wanted his attention, so I'd go outside and get dirty with him. First, I learned about wrenches and sockets. He'd call 'em out, and when I did it right, he praised me."

She didn't know she was unique until she was 16 and saw that none of her girlfriends knew anything about cars.

"That's when I realized I wasn't normal," she said. "That was cool."

She's managed the Valvoline station for five years now, and only one of her current employees is a man.

"We try to hire men, but they usually don't work out," she said. "Too messy — too many fingerprints on the hoods, too much oil dripping on bumpers. Women just have an eye for that kind of thing, I guess."

Sort of like cleaning kitchen counters when you do the dishes, I offered. Good agreed, but I think she was just being nice in that New Year's resolution kind of way.

Now, not all people are thrilled to find Good and Megan Sherman, Tereasa Blanton and Kim Gangi itchin' to get their hands under their hoods. Occasionally, a guy will feel the need to challenge their engine acuity.

"They're always pop quizzing," Good said. "They ask me questions about the breaks, the suspension and the depth on the treads. Nine times out of 10, I know the answer."

Some manly men take one look at the female crew and pull out in a huff.

"Sometimes that bothers my crew," Good said. "But I just tell them, 'Let 'em go.'"

Then she reminds them of an essential truth.

"Think about why they were here in the first place. They can't even change their own oil."

See? It always comes down to oil.

And this year, my engine feels especially ready to roar.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "… and His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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