Driving with a license.

Sometimes when you see people driving you wonder how in the world they ever managed to get their driving license. I remember when I got old enough to get my license. My brother had a 1956 Plymouth Savoy and he really taught me how to drive in it first. It had push button gears on the dashboard and it didn't have a park. You just put the emergency brake on and that was it! I have no clue as to what color it was now, but the car pictured above is a 1956 Plymouth Savoy. He used to let me drive down the lane and he had the door open on the driver's side and he stood up on the side and gave me instructions.










I used to drive a truck (similar to the one above) out to the road to catch the bus and leave it parked in the pasture and then drive it home at night. (This was when I was a little older and we had moved from that other place where we had to walk so far!) My Dad had that truck for a little while and it came in real handy for that. Lots of times in the morning during the winter it was dark when you went out to catch the bus. So I got in practice with it and did lots of sliding in the snow with no worries of hitting anything, plus it taught me how to use the standard shift. I already knew how to drive the tractor but I didn't get to do much of that.

My Dad and my brother set me up some barrels so I could practice my parallel parking in between them. Then I did some driving on the road too when a licensed driver was with me.

When the time came to get my test I was so nervous. The written test was a breeze and no worries there. But having someone ride along with me gave me the jitters. I started off doing all the things I knew were right. I turned on my signal to get out of the spot I was parked in. He told me to turn right at the next light and so I put on my signal and turned. I could see him out of the corner of my eye writing things in the notebook he had with him. That got me worried. I thought he was marking things against me so I figured I had already failed the test, so I relaxed and didn’t worry about it anymore. He had me to parallel park in a spot that gave me lots of space between cars and I did pretty well at it. When we got back to where we had started he said, “Well, you passed.” I was shocked to hear I had passed but happy too! I told him why I thought I had failed. He said that he had to mark down things whether I did them right or wrong.

My best friend, who is 3 months older than me, had gone to get hers and she failed. I asked her what happened. She said that when he asked her to parallel park that she hit a street light pole and knocked him down into the floorboard of the car! (Back then seatbelts were not an item like they are today). I always laugh when I think about her doing that.