Loose Wires

A good theft protection system on your car can cost a couple hundred bucks easily. Well, back in the day we had a cheap and easy theft protection system. We took off the wire which went from the coil to the distributor on our old cars. Forty years ago no engine was going to start, no way no how, without the coil connected to the distributor. It was foolproof.

I don't know if it's that simple anymore, as ol' Marty is way behind on car technology. I'm not sure who came up with the idea but I think it was either me Pops or me Grandpa Joe. Smart guys, them Cosgriffs.

Sure, it was a bit of nuisance to pop the hood and remove the coil wire, especially late at night or in the winter or even just after a long day. But that last person who drove a given car on a given day (we traded cars back and forth a lot in 1979) had to remember to get the coil wire.

It wasn't so bad. Things were helped by the fact that most coil wires attached the same way, meaning you didn't have to keep them sorted. You just grabbed one in the morning and put it on whatever vehicle you meant to drive. It was weird to sometimes see a small pile of seemingly random short black wires on the old man's desk though. 

Sure, you'd have the occasional aggravation of absent mindedly getting out to a car and have the engine turn over for several seconds without even trying to start before it dawned on you there was no coil wire. You'd have to march back into the house to get one. It was not unlike the I forgot my mask feeling I'm sure most of us have felt a couple years ago.

But, hey, you still had the car rather than some miscreant.