Sparking Automotive Onomatopoeia
A trailblazing educator, a quirky extra credit quiz question and an underappreciated tool for successful communication.
My wife frequently reminds me my middle and high school experiences differ from hers, as well as those of most everyone else. Chalk it up to my attending the so-called “elite” Lakeside School in Seattle from fifth grade through senior year. This same private prep school produced Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Adam West of television series Batman fame, and more recently Major League Baseball’s 2023 National League Rookie of The Year award winner, Corbin Carroll.
During my era Lakeside was ripe with more traditions and quirks than a strange hat-wearing 1950’s fraternal service organization. All freshmen had to recite the first eighteen lines of The Canterbury Tales in Old English. Middle School kids went spelunking in Mt. Saint Helens lava flow caves and had an eccentric young science teacher who annually unveiled at all-school assemblies his elaborate Halloween costumes, including a backpack that turned into a car or his waiter outfit connected to a walking dining table with operational power outlet in his shirt. Graduates of the Upper School survived a week-long outdoor group adventure with a 24-hour solo, not to mention more hours of math, science, foreign language, Shakespeare, arts and athletics than eight years of a typical modern public high school curriculum. Maybe the quirkiest aspect of Lakeside, especially when contrasted with the prevailing period American high school culture that made John Hughes movies seem like documentaries, was that it was deemed cool to be smart and know important things.
Teachers used their own traditions and quirks to train us for the future. Whether asked in the moment or at any time in the future, I had a clear answer for which specific teacher primed me best for success. Given my long association with collector cars, one might think it was Paul Stocklin, Lakeside’s Volkswagen Type 3 Squareback-driving auto mechanics elective teacher. The same could be thought about my career as a professional writer and the influence of Bob Fulghum, who authored his New York Times #1 Best-selling book All I Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten while teaching art and serving as our Class of 1989’s faculty advisor at Lakeside. Instead, it was my fifth grade literature and sixth grade English instructor, Doug Thiel, who best prepared me for my career clearly communicating the wonderful world of automobiles.
Among the valuable lessons from “Mr. T”, the most professionally impactful for me was simply his quirky traditional extra credit quiz question: spell onomatopoeia. Truth be told, I didn’t learn to spell onomatopoeia directly from Mr. Theil, rather it was prompted by my older brother relating the lesson at dinner. I immediately memorized the spelling while in third grade in anticipation of eventually gaining entry to the private school and needing to know it when my first fifth grade literature quiz hit my desk. Consequently, I never missed an extra credit point.
Onomatopoeia is a word whose name imitates its sound. For example, Mr. Theil would puff (an onomatopoeia) a pipe in his classroom between periods and even signed his name on every returned assignment as Mr. T in the form of a cartoon face smoking a pipe. Mr. T allowed his students, who he affectionately called “turkeys”, to put his pipe in their mouths and pretend-smoke it during class -- another quaint reminder Gen Xers experienced formative life during a very different time of germ-sharing and increased lung cancer risk. For the record… yes, I can still remember the pipe’s taste and smell.
In this current age of vaping, pipe tobacco is a relic of the past. So too are K-12 students who can define or describe onomatopoeia. In several years of teaching at middle and high school levels, I found only two students could spell it. Alas, I also discovered there are not nearly enough career teachers capable of making the topic germane to students even if the situation presented itself.
As fate would have it, this word I learned at a young age proved not just applicable, but absolutely instrumental to effectively communicating the subtleties and complexities of automobiles. Given Mr. T’s seemingly prophetic ability to read pre-teen minds and individually tailor lessons each would need for life-long success, maybe he already understood the relevance of onomatopoeia to the future writers in his class, especially those destined for transportation machinery-related content. When he wasn’t driving his hitman-approved black late-sixties Thunderbird Landau Coupe (complete with curb feelers), he was zooming around on his BMW motorcycle, on which he’d give students midday rides when he perceived they needed a one-on-one bonding pick-me-up moment to rebound from the crushing stresses of high expectations.
For automotive writers, onomatopoeia is the literary Babel fish for communicating important differentiators to all audiences. A Mercedes V12 will purr at idle, Chevy big blocks rumble, and Hemi-powered dragsters roar under wide-open throttle. There’s the whine from a pre-war Auburn’s supercharger, the wail of a Ferrari Dino at high rpms, and the whoosh of Buick Grand National turbochargers. Vintage fire engine bells ring or clang. To my ears American cars from the 1940s have the perfect honk.
Some automotive onomatopoeias make a stomach drop and throat gulp exactly like when one sees their grade on an unexpectedly bombed test. An engine knock is one of the nastiest, as it means spending all too much time and money on an imminent rebuild… although a bang followed by a complete loss of engine power might be worse. I suppose it’s a matter of opinion, like preferring the grief of knowing you’re going to die soon versus the shock of dropping dead unexpectedly.
Just as Mr. Theil tried to guide students to think critically and take positive action, onomatopoeias can assist us to diagnose and be proactive. That nasty squeak from a belt usually takes but a rotation or two of the tensioner bolt to save it from slipping and breaking. A hiss from the radiator might just be a failing cap, for which a replacement costs the same and takes less time than buying a Starbucks latte. A tick from the engine is probably just a sticking lifter or valve indicating it's time for an oil change. And since age takes its toll without prejudice, a clunk from well-used deteriorating suspension bushings is as inevitable as geriatric arthritis and joint replacement.
Onomatopoeia can result from some destructive behavior, but not all. Rushing a shift with a worn transmission synchro ring delivers a buzz through the gearshift. Older classics and racers have straight cut gears which will grind without double clutching. Touching a poorly insulated spark plug wire might send a resounding zap that lingers long enough to train one to not attempt the same action twice. For countless Lakeside Middle School students, however, the only way to become aware and change their own harmful behavior was through Mr. T’s uncanny knowledge of every student as an individual, along with his voice, calm demeanor, empathy, and dedication to pioneering what decades later the educational establishment would embrace as the new programs for social and emotional health.
The struggles of youth make the resulting good times even sweeter, like a beautiful sunny day after weeks of rain. Maybe this is why convertibles are among the most onomatopoetic modes of transportation. 1960’s cruisers creak, wood-framed pre-WWII phaetons groan, and plastic-laden Reagan-era drop-tops like the 1986 Dodge 600ES Turbo in which I took my drivers license test are prone to rattle. Even modern convertibles are bound to make noises and drip around the time warranties expire.
Speaking of drip, that is exactly what British cars do to drain every possible fluid. American V8s burble as they warm-up. German-made Bosch electric fuel pumps click loudly from the rear of air-cooled Porsches. Horns on Italian trucks and exotic supercars alike produce a high-pitched ear-splitting shriek...not unlike a startled fifth-grade girl. No matter where a car was made, old bias ply tires hum on smooth pavement and thump over potholes, while radial tires squeal at their limits of adhesion.
Twenty years ago when I first wrote about the importance of onomatopoeia and Doug Theil in my syndicated Sound Classics newspaper column, I had not seen or spoken with him since 1985. Not long after I found myself on an extended phone call with Mr. T telling him about my memories of his Thunderbird, the thrill of riding on the back of his motorcycle… and how with his teaching and simple customary extra credit spelling question, onomatopoeia became the secret sauce in my ability to communicate with readers about the relationship between cars and our senses.
Sadly, Mr. Theil died in 2022 at the age of 83, leaving behind a generation of appreciative adult turkeys whose passions for writing, critical thought and being kind to others were ignited with a little help from his unique and perfectly quirky spark.