I'm old enough that my first car (a Peugeot that had literally been on the way to a junkyard) had a manual choke in addition to the transmission, though even then that was unusual.
My dad insisted that both my sister and I learn stick, and I have to say, I do kinda miss it. All auto-everything barely feels like driving.
You definitely feel more closely connected to the car than you do on an automatic. For me, at least, it was more of a youth thing - I don’t enjoy driving nearly as much as I did in my 20’s.
I am not terribly old, but my dad insisted I drive stick (he grew up with a manual crank-start car in India), and all of my cars were manual until I went EV. I think I was far more attentive driving a manual, and that’s carried over but slowly fading. Just the awareness you need of your driving situation —- eg do I need to pass and does that require me to downshift? —- made me far more vigilant than I otherwise would have been.
My first 14 years of driving was always with a manual car, after that I've driven an auto most of the time and 99% of the time I do miss the manual. After a while, it became, almost, automatic and wasn't much of a hassle in traffic or anything.
My dad insisted that both my sister and I learn stick, and I have to say, I do kinda miss it. All auto-everything barely feels like driving.