Driving Along in our Automobile

When I was growing up, my parents would consistently keep a car for seven years before replacing it. I first took notice of the family car when I was about six. It was two-tone white and green and had three rows of seats. We were a family of nine, and that car could carry us all in comfort. Following the white & green wagon there was a black station wagon with red interior, often referred to by non-family members as "the hearse", but my father was proud of his purchase. He had singled out the one car on the lot that no one else (with any sense of style) would want and then put his bargaining skills to the test.

Fast forward to my teen years when it was time to get my license. Not in any hurry to drive, I was forced to get the dreaded license when I was 18 and my parents (and ride to work) were going away for two weeks in yet another station wagon (yellow) with most of my siblings. Learning to drive with my father went pretty well. I was afraid of the power of the mile-long banana boat, and especially of the brakes, which I used only as a last resort. Cornering was a nightmare, and thinking about one turn in particular still makes me shudder. I attempted a right turn into a parking lot, and where I wanted the car to be and where it actually was (on a cement curb) were two very different locations. "STOP! STOP!" my father was shouting, but braking suddenly was too scary, and we bounced along on the curb for a bit. Eventually I got the car stopped, and my father very calmly explained that I needed to check the gauges to see if I had ripped off the bottom of the car which would be indicated by the little red oil light. No light, no problem; but I still had to keep driving.

One more memorable episode was on our way to work one fine morning. Again, it was my father and I, with me at the wheel. There was road construction, with the added attractions of traffic delays and a bunch of men standing around in the road. There wasn't much room to drive, and for someone with only a learner's permit, it was scary. I just wanted to get through it as fast as I could. Not even my father's shouts of "You're going to hit him!", referring to a man in a hard hat standing in the road with his back to our lane, were enough to slow me down. The hard hat wouldn't have been much help if he had backed up even an inch.

I got my license, my parents and siblings went off to their vacation, and I stayed home with the Plymouth Duster (in a lovely shade of dirt brown), which was now in its last stages of life. Coming to a stop would stall it. Slowing down would make it start thinking about stalling. My sisters and I, who were all learning to drive in a short span of years, all learned the tricks necessary to keep the car breathing and moving. Stopping the car meant a quick shift into Neutral while we gunned the engine and hit the E brake if we were on a hill. We took for granted that this was what driving was going to be like, perhaps for ever and always.

My spouse has only one memorable learning-to-drive experience, and it was with his father. Their family car was always a Pontiac, always in good running order. He was driving along and his father suddenly shouted, "Look out for the horse!" several times. Spouse looked all around for Mr. Ed in the roadway, couldn't see him, and his father pointed out the roadwork saw-horse hundreds of feet ahead in the road.

It seems that in each set of parents, one will help to teach the kids to drive, and the other will not. I don't remember how it became my responsibility when my own kids were ready, but there we were in the Nissan minivan, my daughter and I. We started in the A & P parking lot, then took the back roads, then eventually the highway. Both of my daughters were fearless on the roadways, not afraid of the other cars or the family car they were driving. I didn't want to hear myself repeating "slow down", so I used a hairbrush to poke the leg of the speed demon instead. It was effective, and still humane. My older daughter bought a car a week before she went for her license, so she was able to avoid using the family car from the start. My younger daughter learned on my Maxima, and experienced the hairbrush quite a bit. Once she got her license, there were no driving tricks to remember, no jamming into Neutral to give it gas, no E brake usage.

My parents traded every seven years, and we trade every two.

We have one daughter who trades every two years, and the other has kept hers for eight years.

What goes around comes around?