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(Does it count that I was driving a tractor at age eight? No?)
So my very first quarter as a Junior in High School included the
driver's education class. I made sure of that when selecting my
classes at the end of the previous year. And the class was pretty
much with a teacher whose job was focused on that topic so I thought
this would be a pretty easy ride. Sitting down in class the first
day he explained that the course was based on our parents teaching us
how to drive during off school hours and his job was to fill in the
gaps and check-point our progress. Have you heard me say 'I knew I
was screwed' before?
Still, I approached the subject with dad at the family dinner that
night. As I asked in front of his new wife, I guess that made the
difference as he couldn't say 'no' in front of her and reveal how he
normally would have handled the request. And so to my surprise, one
evening after dinner my father drove me in his car to the parking lot
of the grocery store and parked in a space near its center. The
store was closed at this time so we had the whole parking lot to
ourselves. We swapped seats, and he gave me some brief pointers. I
pushed down the clutch and started the car, immediately dad was
shouting at me that I had held the key in the start position too long
and I should have taken it out of gear and held down the brake just
to be extra safe. As this was a car which needed a foot touching the
gas petal in order to start, I wasn't sure how I was to be pressing
all three pedals when starting the car. Further more, in the
preceding five years of watching him drive the car, I had never seen
him place the car in neutral in order to start it before. It was all
I could do to not lose my concentration on holding down the clutch
while he was using his military bark just a few inches away from me.
Without a pause, he was already demanding to know why I was still
sitting there and not putting the car in gear as sitting still with
the car idling wasted gas. Gas wasn't free and he wasn't made of
money!
Putting the car into first gear with my feet on the clutch and brake,
it was still surprisingly firm as I had to push past some resistance
in the stick before I could feel it slip into place. Removing my
foot from the brake and adding some gas, I withdrew my foot from the
clutch. Again, like the stick shift itself, the car lurched forward
as the clutch had a point were it was soft and easy, then wanted to
push my foot out of the way as it engaged. Surprised by the lurch,
the car stalled and my father's torrents of shouting started up all
over again, this time including name calling. I tried my best not to
react to his tirade as I put my left foot down on the clutch, right
heel on the brake, and toes of my foot on the gas, put the car into
neutral and restarted it. Then I thrust it into first gear, this
time ready for the resistance of the stick, I pivoted my toes off the
gas to straighten my foot, then moved it over to the gas pedal
properly and pushed down a bit as I released the clutch this time
prepared for that moment when it went from easy to pushing back
against my left foot and the car was moving forward.
There had been a brief moment of silence, but then the shouting
returned as I hadn't taken my foot off of the clutch fast enough, I
wasn't following the lines of the parking lot: When driving I should
always be following the direction lines of the parking lot! I turned
the wheel to line up with the pattern of the empty parking lot but as
the shouting was incessant, I instead just continued the turn into a
semi-circle and pulled into the next parking space that was about
twenty feet next to the parking space we had started in. I engaged
the clutch, put my foot on the brake and stopped the car, turning it
off. This surprised my father and he demanded to know what I was
doing. I said I should probably watch him drive the car as the first
step of learning. He got quiet for a moment and then in a more
normal tone of voice said that was probably a good idea. We got out
of the car to exchange places and he again started growling at me
because the car wasn't perfectly within the parking space lines.
As I already had five years of watching him drive this car, the last
thing I needed was more time to watch him do it. Still, the idea
worked in that the shouting was gone and in his normal voice he
started trying to narrate his actions while driving. This seemed to
fluster him a bit as thinking of what to say while doing it made him
forget to do the minor things; like coming to a stop and then turning
left, he'd remember to tell me about using the brake during the stop,
but not the clutch, and turning the wheel for the turn, but not the
use of the blinker. While this kept him busy for the remaining
fifteen minutes of my 'driving session' I was desperately trying to
figure out how I was going to have time behind the wheel to practice
with him in the passenger seat. Could I ask his new wife?
No, then my father would know I didn't want him in the car
and take offense.
Two days later the solution came to me. During that dinner I asked
if I could drive the car around the driveway on my own, to practice.
As it didn't require any effort on his part, nor a legal need to have
an adult in the car with me, he agreed. With the house in the woods
away from the main road, our driveway was pretty long, about four
hundred feet straight from the road to the house, but it also had a
loop around the front yard with a large tree in the center of it,
I'll guess the loop was around fifty feet in diameter, with another
straight stretch from the loop to the garage providing yet another
fifty feet of driveway to the side. Add to this, two old tractor
paths through the woods branching off from the driveway and I felt
I'd have enough driving space to perform all the handling chores of
driving a car and getting up to third gear very briefly.
And so for about three nights a week for the next two months, this is
what I did. Going round the loop, pulling to and backing away from
the garage, driving up and down the driveway, taking one tractor path
through the woods until grass from the center hump started to brush
against the bottom of the car, then backing the car all along that
same stretch to get back to the proper driveway. Then I took that
last tractor track stretch about a hundred feet until it piddled out
into the side yard and doing three point, then two point turns to get
the car around so I could drive back down that bit of path to again
reach the driveway. And I did this over and over and
over. Never once did my father offer to take me out
on the main road or to a parking lot again, and I'd be caught dead
before I'd ask him.
All my on the road time was with the driving instructor in the
modified 'Driver's Ed' car. It had a second brake pedal built
into the front passenger seat in case he needed to intervene when a
student was driving. Given the size of the class and the time he had
to 'check point' our progress, he took us out in pairs when he could,
one would be behind the wheel for half the time, the other student
taking the other half. Of the three times of twenty minutes I got to
drive with him, the first time was getting use to the car in the
emptier portions of the school's parking lot. With the few weeks of
driving around my home's driveway and not hitting any of the cars
parked in it under my belt, I did pretty well with this task.
On the second time, we drove out of the school parking lot and onto
the road, then onto the nearest interstate on-ramp. While this might
seem like a huge jump, in rural New England, the High School was deep
in the woods and the nearby stretch of highway mostly empty during
the middle of a weekday. I got the second half of this drive so the
instructor had the other student pull off at an exit, we exchanged
seats on the shoulder of the off-ramp, then I got to turn left twice
to get onto the highway going back to school. As the instructor
talked to me, I would look at him as was polite, but doing this I
learned that looking one way or the other unconsciously made the
hands on the steering wheel lean that way as well. No big deal as I
had only drifted a little bit out of lane before he caught this and
explained it to me. I got to practice glancing at him again while,
this time, making sure I also paid attention to not letting my hands
lean on the wheel as I turned my head. So far, so good.
Then we noticed a log in my lane up ahead. Going at fifty-five miles
per hour I would have moved to the other lane, but upon seeing the
log himself the teacher asked me, ''What avoidance maneuver should
you use?'' Suddenly, like when my father tried to explain his
driving actions in words while driving at the same time, my mind
started to go blank. As we approached the log I scrambled to think
of any of the official avoidance maneuver terms he had taught
us in class a few weeks earlier, ''Straddle,'' was the first one that
came to mind and, as there wasn't time to think of another word, that
was what I did, centering the car to go over the log. It bounced
against the undercarriage and the driving instructor said, ''That
might not have been the best choice,'' and asked me to pull over on
the shoulder and bring the car to a stop. We took a look at the
underside of the car to make sure nothing was damaged, then got back
in to complete returning to the school.
On the final check-point with him, he had me drive first. It had
snowed during the night so he directed me to a stretch of empty
parking lot covered with snow and suddenly slammed on his passenger
side brake. The car abruptly stopped and stalled-out as I hadn't
known to step on the clutch. He sheepishly explained that he had
intended for the car to skid on the snow by his action and see if I
handled the skid appropriately. But as the snow wasn't deep enough
for that, this just turned into another drive away from the school,
along the local roads, though not the highway this time.
'Driver's Ed' class was done and all I had to do was bring in the
signed certificate from dad stating that he had spent twenty hours on
the road with me teaching me how to drive. Of course he signed it
without question as if he didn't he would have looked like a
neglectful father who hadn't helped his kid learn how to drive. I
was comfortable with this as well given that I knew I'd spent more
than twenty hours going up and down and around the driveway and
tractor paths. With this slip turned in to the teacher, I was given
my certificate of completion and got to choose a school day to
take off so I could go to the nearby small city where there was a
drivers license bureau. I chose a day dad would have off.
But when that day came, it turned out he did have to go to the
ski area that day to work as something had come up, even
though it was the off season. Still, as
the small city was closer to the ski area than home, he would take me
to get my license during his lunch break. When the time came, he
couldn't do it. Now it's not as if we had a certain appointment
time that we had to keep, but somehow whatever meant he had to go to
work on his day off meant he couldn't leave the park at any point in
the day. He asked the park's secretary to accompany me. This
surprised me, but at the same time it was a relief as well. I knew
'Joy' and she was nice to me and I had been friendly to her in the
previous decade or more that I'd seen her at the ski area. Whereas I
expected dad to drive me to the license bureau and then drive back,
as this wasn't Joy's car, I got to drive from the parking lot all the
way to the license bureau. The twenty mile drive there was the
longest drive I'd had on the road and I made sure I was gentle yet
concise with my use of the clutch, used the blinkers appropriately
and anticipated my stops so they'd be soft, not sudden.
At the license bureau they took my birth certificate and used it for
the information needed. Then they had me and Joy wait until their
guy was available to take me for a test drive. When he was, Joy had
to stay behind at the bureau, I guess for fear that she'd give me
hints while my driving was evaluated. Rather than drive on any
through roads for the test, he just had me drive through a small part
of the adjoining neighborhood. There was one turn I missed, but he
apologized for that as he hadn't pointed it out until we were already
going through the intersection, and then we returned to the bureau
and I was told to once again take a seat. Joy asked how it went and
I said I thought it went okay, though I had missed a turn. After
several minutes I was called to have my picture taken then wait
another few minutes for it to develop and be laminated to the license
card. It was handed to me. Yeah!
Unlike the largely silent drive to the bureau with Joy, on the way
back we chatted a bit. Once at the park, she returned to the office,
I let my dad know I was back and, as he'd have to be there until the
end of the work day, I bummed around the park for the rest of the
afternoon. When it was time to go home, my father waited in the
office until Joy left first: He wanted to have a word with me in
the empty office. He said that Joy had been very impressed by my
driving skills and he wanted to let me know that.
This was the closest dad had ever come to complimenting me during my
childhood and I've treasured that moment for the rest of my life.
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