Those are tense, but also funny, memories.
Often when I go to our chapel to practice the organ, I see a young person with a parent in the car with them "practice driving" in the ample--and empty--parking lot there. If I remember correctly, my kids had to have so many "practice hours" before they could get their driver's license. An empty parking lot is a good way to instill confidence before hitting neighborhood streets and busy traffic elsewhere.
My own preparation was kind of unique. Here's the story...
My mother didn’t drive when I was growing up. But from hearing stories in the family, I knew she had driven when she was younger. In fact, she used to drive my dad’s dual wheel truck when my sisters were small, and the family would go up to Idaho with the bags of salt my dad and mother prepared for the sheep ranchers.
It was the Great Depression. No jobs. No money. But my dad didn’t let that stop him. He was relentless in finding innovative ways to provide for his young family of little girls. One way he did that was to harvest salt from Great Salt Lake, put it into bags my mother sewed, and then haul the load up to the sheep ranchers in Idaho. Obviously, he knew a lot about that because he had been a sheep herder—for my mother’s uncles’ sheep outfit where they had met when my mother and her sister were cooking for the sheep herders one summer.
However, after they moved to Rawlins, my mother’s ability to drive atrophied following an incident that happened as she was pulling into the 100 foot driveway of our house.
The story goes that as she was moving toward the kitchen door, she turned briefly to the back seat to quell some kind of disturbance. In that brief second the car went out of control (it couldn’t have been going TOO fast) and mowed down the picket fence which lined the driveway. Apparently, my dad rushed out of the house to survey the damage, and instead of asking how my mother and the kids were, he raced to his newly planted seedling trees to make sure they were okay.
Now, my mother wasn’t a volatile sort. It took an awful lot to move her to an outburst, but when my dad was more concerned about his trees than his wife and family, she got out of the car vowing she would never drive again. And, as far as I knew, she never did.
Was my mother sorry about her ultimatum? I don’t know. Perhaps she changed her mind somewhere down the road, but for some reason that circumstance of her not driving never changed. So, by the time I came along my dad had been her chauffer—or my sister Lois who lived up the street—100% of the time.
I kind of think my dad was tired of being tied to my mother’s need for him to drive her here and there, so when I was eleven years old my dad decided to teach me how to drive. I was ecstatic! Boy was that a dream come true. I was quite surprised, however, that my dad had no compunction about teaching me to drive at such a young age. But, I don’t think I protested….Nah! I was ready and willing, though I wasn’t even tall enough to reach the pedals.
My dad’s truck was a dark blue 1953 Ford with gearshift on a rod that came straight out of the floorboard. Three gears and reverse which I well knew from having driven around town with him since I was in Kindergarten as he ran errands to the hardware store and the nursery, visited with friends, supervised the construction of our little chapel (which was built during a time when the members did the work), and made trips to the local dump.
So it was that my driving instruction began at the gravel pits north of town, not too far from the dumps. I had to sit on the edge of the seat in order to operate the brake and gas pedals while I was shifting gears.
I don’t remember how long the instruction was confined to that remote area where I could drive in circles, back up, move forward, and otherwise pretend like I was on a regular street. But one day my dad decided it was time for me to slowly drive into town and to our own neighborhood. It was scary for sure, but I did it.
And I also don’t remember if I really ever took my mom anywhere until I got a driver’s license a few years later. In Wyoming a kid could get a driver’s license at age 15. Obviously, by that time I had also learned the rules by studying the driver’s manual put out by the State of Wyoming, I would assume. If there was something like Driver’s Education (and I think there was in the high school) I certainly didn’t need it. I was practically a seasoned driver by that time.
I’m not sure why, but a person had to go to the Highway Department to take the written exam and have a driving test. But there was a way around that. According to the kids at school, word was if you went to the Police Department in town on Saturday morning, you could take the written test. And if it was close to noon when that office closed, then they didn’t make you take the driving part. My friend Anne Campbell and I decided to try it out. She was a month younger than I was, so it must have been the beginning of the year after my 15th birthday that we got bold enough to do it.
I went to my dad and asked him to take Anne and me to the police station to take the test and hopefully get the full requirement taken care of and be bona fide drivers. We were giddy! Though my dad scoffed and told me I knew how to drive so I didn’t need him to take me, I convinced him it wouldn’t look too good for us to show up ALREADY driving in order to take the test and make us legal. He acquiesced and took us to the Police Station.
Sure enough, we passed the written test, but by then it was too late to take us out driving, so the police officer just gave us our license and sent us on our way. YES!!!!
That was when I became my mother’s official driver—and ran the wheels off the car every chance I got. And, I got into a lot of trouble along the way, too, because my dad monitored the mileage and if I went more miles than he calculated I should have to gone to do errands or visit a friend, then I had to account for it. That was when guys at school told me about disconnecting the speedometer cable when I drove and screw it back on when it was time to take the car home. I also “borrowed” the car that was always in our garage except for outings and also “borrowed” my dad’s truck—much newer by that time—when I wanted to joy ride when he was out on his run for the railroad.
But those adventures are a story for another time.
My dad bought me a two-tone blue 1953 Ford for my first car when I was a Sophomore in High School and other Ford sedans over the years (1959 and 1961) so I could “do my job”. He was so proud of me and my expertise at driving. He trusted me to drive all over including taking my mother to Salt Lake City. I was pretty nervous, but I knew I was a good driver. Because my dad had taught me well, I had confidence in myself.
Suffice it to say, I loved learning to drive. I loved driving. And I loved being the driver—all the time.
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