Blind and Visually Impaired Community
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My experience as a totally blind person enjoying a car show (self.Blind)
submitted by SiriuslyGranger
I went to church and they hosted a breakfast and carshow on father’s day, I think partly to pull people in and partly to entice people to church.
I actually thought I was just going to enjoy breakfast, chit chat with people and maybe go in to service. I wanted to see cars but wasn’t sure if it was possible.
I wanted it but didn’t have very high hopes. Surely people didn’t want my hands on their old cars.
The pancakes did sound nice and I had already been to church last night. I thought I was going to mingle wasn’t sure how that was going to go.
The person who picks me up brought theres, so to begin with I got to ride in one which was pretty cool. I have already seen one old car. I went over to an ex’s place now for Christmas out east in New Jersey and he owns a 65 mustang completely restored, brand new and improved.
He had shown me around a bit. It was honestly a nice opportunity.
He showed me a few franklin mint models of cars.
Anyway, back on topic, I checked out the one I came in he was okay with me feeling his. It was an elcamino if anyone cares.
Someone had a old buick and let me feel theres I think it was from the 60s as well.
We weren’t really sure how many people would let me touch and check out stuff. And for the most part. Well. There was one unfriendly guy with a car but most of them were surprisingly open and willing to show me around.
For all the cars I touched around it, some of the older ones checked out the wheels. The model t has a handcrank to crank up their engines, and I saw that. Opened doors, saw the side mirrors explored the steering wheel, looked at windows, just most of them I did not get in to but a few of those. A few people let me or even said I should honk their horns. One I was able to reach far enough inside I saw the automatic stick you use to control the car. A few their glove boxes. A few their engines.
I was out there talking cars with the guys pretty good, actually they told me about their cars and the history and even described their cars.
The guy knew and was on this pretty good terms with this other guy who owned something really cool it was the really early model t cars from the teens and the 20s. He consented to let me feel it. His had the metal wheels but the one next to him had wooden ones.
We were just getting started it was half an hour or an hour in I had seen a few cars and then came the most exciting. I think or the two I thought was the coolist. And both of the guys were really nice.
This guy came up and we were talking, some of the guys wasn’t certain especially this one because it was so nice if he’d let me touch it. He actually invited me over.
It was one of the first fire engines actually, it was a model t fireengines. in the country the first in the county next to mine. Had a volunteer firefighting crew apparently made up of a butcher and a businessman. He’s a granson of a firefighter which served in one of the first fire departments down here, and owns the car now.
Funnily enough he let me play with the siren ring the bell and see all of the stuff on the car, the lanterns, the water tank, the hose, the ladder, etc…… etc….. it was actually pretty cool.
I got bold and started asking people and going around and looking after breakfast. Since I had so much luck. I saw a newer car next, it wasn’t the newest but someone did bring a pretty new race car. The one I am talking about was probably in the 80s.
I saw a british car which was pretty neat. I promise it almost looked and it wasn’t but it was almost like a dunebuggy. It was interesting. The sides of the car is pretty low. The nice woman who owned that car let me get in.
I saw other.
I won’t go on for much longer. But there was this cool one indeed, perhaps not as cool as the firetruck.
It was a old jeep thing with a trailler, and the guy was really nice about showing me about and let me and others go in his trailer.
Yes, I got my breakfast and got to mingle, and met one of the teachers actually taught at the school when the freedom writers thing was going on and apparently wasn’t too happy with the teacher that took credit for it haha! Little factoid I learnt but okay.
Yes, yes, Yes, I got my 4 pancakes. Actually 2. They let me have seconds, 4 or 5 sausages, unfortunately they ran out of bacon I went almost the last half hour of food, I was having too much fun with the cars, my two cups of orange juice.
by the time I got done it was 11:20 pretty much stood around and talked for a bit. I still long to get in a model t and see what it is like haha! My friend with the el camino disagrees with me and didn’t like his experience when his friend took him for a ride. Hahaha!
I guess the moral of the story is have fun even if you don’t expect it, if you never ask or try even if seemingly blind people don’t do car shows or whatever else it is, you can get involved too. I had a blast, it meant quite a bit, and I got really in to it, and maybe so can you.
I actually thought I was just going to enjoy breakfast, chit chat with people and maybe go in to service. I wanted to see cars but wasn’t sure if it was possible.
I wanted it but didn’t have very high hopes. Surely people didn’t want my hands on their old cars.
The pancakes did sound nice and I had already been to church last night. I thought I was going to mingle wasn’t sure how that was going to go.
The person who picks me up brought theres, so to begin with I got to ride in one which was pretty cool. I have already seen one old car. I went over to an ex’s place now for Christmas out east in New Jersey and he owns a 65 mustang completely restored, brand new and improved.
He had shown me around a bit. It was honestly a nice opportunity.
He showed me a few franklin mint models of cars.
Anyway, back on topic, I checked out the one I came in he was okay with me feeling his. It was an elcamino if anyone cares.
Someone had a old buick and let me feel theres I think it was from the 60s as well.
We weren’t really sure how many people would let me touch and check out stuff. And for the most part. Well. There was one unfriendly guy with a car but most of them were surprisingly open and willing to show me around.
For all the cars I touched around it, some of the older ones checked out the wheels. The model t has a handcrank to crank up their engines, and I saw that. Opened doors, saw the side mirrors explored the steering wheel, looked at windows, just most of them I did not get in to but a few of those. A few people let me or even said I should honk their horns. One I was able to reach far enough inside I saw the automatic stick you use to control the car. A few their glove boxes. A few their engines.
I was out there talking cars with the guys pretty good, actually they told me about their cars and the history and even described their cars.
The guy knew and was on this pretty good terms with this other guy who owned something really cool it was the really early model t cars from the teens and the 20s. He consented to let me feel it. His had the metal wheels but the one next to him had wooden ones.
We were just getting started it was half an hour or an hour in I had seen a few cars and then came the most exciting. I think or the two I thought was the coolist. And both of the guys were really nice.
This guy came up and we were talking, some of the guys wasn’t certain especially this one because it was so nice if he’d let me touch it. He actually invited me over.
It was one of the first fire engines actually, it was a model t fireengines. in the country the first in the county next to mine. Had a volunteer firefighting crew apparently made up of a butcher and a businessman. He’s a granson of a firefighter which served in one of the first fire departments down here, and owns the car now.
Funnily enough he let me play with the siren ring the bell and see all of the stuff on the car, the lanterns, the water tank, the hose, the ladder, etc…… etc….. it was actually pretty cool.
I got bold and started asking people and going around and looking after breakfast. Since I had so much luck. I saw a newer car next, it wasn’t the newest but someone did bring a pretty new race car. The one I am talking about was probably in the 80s.
I saw a british car which was pretty neat. I promise it almost looked and it wasn’t but it was almost like a dunebuggy. It was interesting. The sides of the car is pretty low. The nice woman who owned that car let me get in.
I saw other.
I won’t go on for much longer. But there was this cool one indeed, perhaps not as cool as the firetruck.
It was a old jeep thing with a trailler, and the guy was really nice about showing me about and let me and others go in his trailer.
Yes, I got my breakfast and got to mingle, and met one of the teachers actually taught at the school when the freedom writers thing was going on and apparently wasn’t too happy with the teacher that took credit for it haha! Little factoid I learnt but okay.
Yes, yes, Yes, I got my 4 pancakes. Actually 2. They let me have seconds, 4 or 5 sausages, unfortunately they ran out of bacon I went almost the last half hour of food, I was having too much fun with the cars, my two cups of orange juice.
by the time I got done it was 11:20 pretty much stood around and talked for a bit. I still long to get in a model t and see what it is like haha! My friend with the el camino disagrees with me and didn’t like his experience when his friend took him for a ride. Hahaha!
I guess the moral of the story is have fun even if you don’t expect it, if you never ask or try even if seemingly blind people don’t do car shows or whatever else it is, you can get involved too. I had a blast, it meant quite a bit, and I got really in to it, and maybe so can you.
yesIcould 9 points 1y ago
What a lovely day :) My partner is going blind, and I'm trying to imagine his life in the future. What will bring him joy to and in what ways.. Reading detailed descriptions of these kind of experiences helps a lot. So thank you so much for sharing.
SiriuslyGranger [OP] 5 points 1y ago
Sure not a problem. I am glad it gave you some hope.
Definitely going blind is not easy, but I stress and keep stressing on here, yes, this is just a new account i’ve been here for a long time that it’s not the end of the world. And he can still live a fulfilled life.
I’ll have to write more writing is easier than speaking for me. I’ll have to think of experiences or when they come up I’ll share. Them.
I am happy it made an impact on you. I am not sure what reactions this would get but glad it has been received well.
And it was a lovely day indeed. Probably turning in in a few minutes actually going to wipe the other account for my own reasons and sanity. It has to do with other communities, not this one, but yeah, now to wash off all the car stuff. I mean it was pretty clean but still. Haha!
Thanks for your comment.
Definitely going blind is not easy, but I stress and keep stressing on here, yes, this is just a new account i’ve been here for a long time that it’s not the end of the world. And he can still live a fulfilled life.
I’ll have to write more writing is easier than speaking for me. I’ll have to think of experiences or when they come up I’ll share. Them.
I am happy it made an impact on you. I am not sure what reactions this would get but glad it has been received well.
And it was a lovely day indeed. Probably turning in in a few minutes actually going to wipe the other account for my own reasons and sanity. It has to do with other communities, not this one, but yeah, now to wash off all the car stuff. I mean it was pretty clean but still. Haha!
Thanks for your comment.
Shoddy_Doughnut6174 5 points 1y ago
Hey that's awesome! Reminds me of when I was in 3rd grade in the late 70s in Glendale Arizona. My 3rd grade teacher took me camping in one of those pop-up campers with a group of antique car enthusiasts. She wasn't one herself, but hung out with them. They were having a rally that weekend. I think I saw a couple of the cars from the outside when I was there, I remember getting up on the running board of a 40s-era truck and checking out a 40s-era rumble seat of a car, but around Christmas time some showed up unexpectedly at my apartment while I was sitting on my swing listening to my transistor radio. Run Run Rudolph by Chuck Berry was playing when my step dad came out and told me I had company. they had a few cars from the 30s and 40s. I remember getting in one of them and he started and shut it off, and feeling the crank at the front of the car. I remember the guy telling me you had to be careful when you started a car that way as the crank would spin up and kept spinning while the car was running. Don't want to keep your hand there too long and lose it lol. When I was a teenager I went to an event where they had some really old cars, heard a 1910 Stanley Steamer puffing away (before the carpet cleaner stole that name it was a steam-powered car), and I got to climb onto the seat of a car from I think 1913 that had not a horn, not even the one that went aooga or the one with the squeeze bulb that sounds like a giant bicycle horn. This one had this wheel you spun that had gears in it that made this loud raspy sound. Wish I could remember what car it was, because when I Google gear-driven car horn and the like I find absolutely nothing. I guess it was pretty unique, but in the early days of cars everyone was doing their own thing. There were steamers, gasoline models and electrics 120 years ago.
SiriuslyGranger [OP] 3 points 1y ago
That’s actually pretty cool. Glad you did that. It’s interesting that someone else had had similar and interesting experiences.
Shoddy_Doughnut6174 3 points 1y ago
Thanks. I was pretty lucky with that kind of stuff when I was younger, a pilot let me sit in his seat in the cockpit of a 727 one time when I was 7 or 8 and flew alone to see my dad in San Diego, he even rolled down the window to talk to someone and that blew my mind! He freaking rolled down the window in a jumbo jet! I got to ride up 10 feet in a tethered hot air balloon on my grade school's baseball field. A couple weeks later my resource teacher took me to the balloon festival and I met Chuck Yeager first man to break the sound barrier, Joe Allan who flew on the space shuttle, and 2 others who unfortunately I've forgotten the names of, this was all at once, all 4 of them were together, mind you, and I choked up and couldn't think of any good questions to ask them. Thanks to being involved in boyscouts as part of Amateur Radio Explorer Post 599 in my teens and 20s, I also drove a D8 caterpillar at a landfill, sat in the cockpit of an F15 Eagle at Williams Air Force Base, shot several varieties of pistol and rifle and even a muzzle loader between learning to load clips for 2 gun sellers one on each side of me at a gun fair 2 years in a row, someone also taught me to throw knives there, I even literally ran into Bill Ruger owner of Ruger Firearms there, he was in his 80s, and I rappelled off a 90ft cliff on South Mountain where all of Phoenix's FM stations and TV towers were. I had to free climb up there, and I didn't know there would be free climbing involved, but I kept my cool even when a handhold I grabbed once came off in my hand, lol! That was after rappelling off the tower a few years in a row at the big Maricopa County camperee they had every year where we set up a ham station for Jambouree on the Air. Thanks to another Phoenix ham I got to fly a Sesna 172 over Lake Pleasant for 5 minutes. It was only after that that a college friend let me drive his pickup back to the road after he had taken me target shooting with a .38 and a shotgun one afternoon. I could have shot a bow once when I was hanging with some friends I played D&D-style games with, but I wasn't strong enough to pull the blasted thing. Somewhere around that time those same friends and I went to the Pima Air & Space Museum, and I could follow around all the planes touching the bottoms of the wings with my cane, they're really high off the ground. They also had an empty 100 pound bomb you can touch. Fat and round and stubby with tiny fins on the sides. Oh yeah, and I rode an elephant with my (sighted) dad and little brother in the early 90s at the San Diego zoo. My brother was scared to death because elephants really tilt side to side a lot when they walk. There's a strap on one side of the howdah, I just hung on to it with both hands, it was so fun! Dad and I kept telling my brother not to be scared, it was fun! You climb a short ladder to get up there and straddle it like a big horse.
SiriuslyGranger [OP] 4 points 1y ago
Yeah, sounds like you’ve had a lot of cool experiences here as well. But that’s really cool. That’s neat though
Msbunny-r 1 points 1y ago
That sounds like a lovely day! Thanks for sharing it.
SiriuslyGranger [OP] 1 points 1y ago
No problem it was quite a lovely day!
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