"How old were you when you learned to drive,
and what was your first car?"
Drove my Chevy to the Levy
The first car I ever drove solo.. Was a big boat called a "DeSoto Suburban" It was huge, just ask any old timer! My father paid cash for it in 1947 saying it was his last car. It was. He died in1957 and his precious "Golden Comet" sat in the drive. I was 13. A month later I turned 14 and drove the ‘comet' to the store so I had food to eat. The "Comet" had fluid overdrive. You had to use the clutch to get it going then the over drive took over. I have to say that it was a most unpleasant experience. I then acquired a powder blue ‘57 Chevy hardtop. Oh she was sweet! This was the car I took to Canada when I was 15. No I didn't have a driver's license. I didn't get one until I was almost 20. In those days there was really no need for a license or insurance.
When I was 16 the ‘guys' I hung around with, (I have to add that I was one of the guys, The guy with the boobs) decided I needed to learn the ‘right' way to drive a ‘stick'. We all chipped in on a old mobster type car with suicide doors. It cost $35. The back seat was huge and we could fit numerous amounts of teens in that car. We destitute to paint it black, with brooms and Denny put a big white eight on the roof. The pedals kept falling off and the steering wheel was held on the a nail. The guys took me to a dry wash and there, with Denny on the floor holding the pedals on and Tommy, quite close to me, holding the steering wheel on, I was taught by the best how to do wheelies in a dry wash. And so, for the rest of my driving life, I have never been able to drive a manual shift but boy ca I 4 wheel!!
~Gin
Drivin'
My mother and stepfather didn't have the time nor the patience to teach me to drive. My stepfather easily got angered, (he didn't like kids - and I was one). They said they couldn't afford the increased insurance cost for me to learn. When I was still 17, while visiting Tucson, my aunt Margie let me drive on the highway from Tucson to Phoenix. It was a long stretch of flat desert road, but I appreciate that she tried.
I entered the military when I was 17 and relied on friends to get a ride to and from the mall, (to see movies, shop, or check out girls), in Rapid City which was 23 miles away from the base. My friend's wife, Candice Kraft, actually took me out to the Sears empty parking lot in their big truck, with a 5 speed stick-shift, and taught me how to drive it. I was 20. She said she had learned on a stick and if you can drive that - then most everything else is easy. I agree, but my wife got her way in teaching our kids on an automatic.
My first car was an army green 74' Chevy Nova. I really liked that car, but I had very little experience driving and none on ice, so one cold morning I slid off the road at 15 miles an hour and slowly went into a ditch and hit the only telephone pole nearby. I saved the radio but I think the frame was bent (expensive to fix).
My second car lasted 6 weeks. It just sputtered and died in front of a used car lot. The salesman helped check it out, then asked me when the last time I had put transmission fluid in it. I replied, "What's transmission fluid?" I only knew gas, oil, where the battery was, and how to put it in gear. Most of the things I know about cars are by what has gone wrong with one of my own. The hard way! Well, live and learn. I often wish I had a father figure who could teach me things and be my friend.
~ Dondi Jon
Memories of the Travel-all and Lurch
Many years before I had turned 15, I wanted to learn to drive. We lived 10 miles from town with only a few neighbors and going to the grocery store was excitement. When we did go to the grocery I would often stay in the car, sit behind the wheel and pretend to be driving cross-country. I would be entertained for at least 40 minutes to an hour! <grins>
When I got my permit there were a few people who took me out for driving lessons. Dad wasn't home much with both his work and college classes, and Mom didn't have a driving license, but Dad did take me out in the Travel-all (a large suburban type vehicle) for a few times. I remember one family trip he took me driving from Rainier to Gnat Creek and back.
My uncle Steve took me out 3 or 4 times in both the Rainier and Salem areas. He drove charter buses for a living and had plenty of advice for me. One time we went driving on the Rainier back roads and I went in the ditch. I don't remember him being very appreciative of my driving skills during that drive.
I did attend a class after school for a few weeks and the health teacher took three of my fellow classmates and I out driving in the surrounding Rainier area. We practiced parking on the town hills, driving through our one-light town, and for our final we even drove up Highway-30 to the Hudson Park Cemetery and then back to West Rainier.
My favorite driving teacher was my Grandma Fifi. She took Kathy and I out to the Apiary Cemetery, Fern Hill / Apiary Market loop, and other roads in the back hills of Rainier, Oregon. Kathy would get to drive down the long access road of the cemetery while I would get to back-up the long access road. To this day I can back up for a long distances in a fairly straight line. Several people have commented on how straight I can back-up. (Now going forward isn't always so great, <haha>) Boy, was Kathy lucky as driving forward is the most sought after skill. Driving in the back hills was exciting and scarey, the roads were narrow, there were no shoulders, lots of deep ditches, and a log trucks every three miles or so. Whew!
My first car was Dad's olive green Travell-all with a stick shift which was very hard to use. Several times when I started up, the clutch would pop out and I would chug through an intersection. One time I did that after I had just waved to the high school principal and his family,(how embarassing). My brothers and sisters hit the floor to remain anonymous. Really, in a town of 2,000 people how anonymous can you be?
My other mode of transportation was an Electra Buick that Dad bought from cousin Jennifer for $50. She had named it "Lurch," - it was a foggy-silvery green with gold and olive green tassels in the back window. The electric windows didn't work, and neither did the heater, and there was many a time we had to scrap the inside windows driving to school or to the store. Oh those were the days, but I was driving......
~ Kal
Learning to Drive
Dad tried to teach me to drive his Model A Ford truck when I was 11 but I wasn't up to it. You had to double clutch when you shifted and that required eye-foot coordination from a kid that was always a little short on eye-hand coordination. I think that was probably the last time he was in a vehicle when I was behind the wheel. I think I learned to drive at school in the driver training class and my mother took me driving. My first car was a 1951 Dodge station wagon. I was stationed in San Diego and we came home on the train, bought the car and drove to Long Beach, Washington to dig clams. That drive was about 100 miles and was the longest that I had ever made. We then headed back to San Diego and we blew out three tires before we got out of Oregon. It was a long, hot trip through some pretty big cities but was otherwise uneventful.
I used to walk to the hospital through Balboa Park. It was probably about a mile and I walked right by the zoo entrance. Once in a while I would drive to work but I had a tendency to forget that I had driven the car and would walk home. I would then see the car was gone and have to turn around and walk back to work to pick it up. I was a little bit forgetful when I was younger but I seem to have outgrown that.
~ Marvin
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