shadows of echoes of memories of songs

My family used to have a car that behaved very like this; what was happening was a starter motor problem, but not a blockage. The starter motor was for some unfathomable reason tending to come to rest with the little rotating magnetic bit perpendicular to the poles where current comes when one turns the ignition [ ooh, technical terms ] and any kind of jiggling the starter motor to get that off alignment would then let it start fine. My father got in the habit of carrying a Very Long Skewer with which to poke the starter motor directly, mostly so that he could make people boggle by fixing his problems with a dramatic stabbing motion under the bonnet.