“A Professional Driving Instructor, is the BEST”

Oct 9th “A Professional Driving Instructor, is the BEST”

Another Memory!

Sometimes in LIFE we want things… that we do not know how to operate… such as a New Vehicle!

Not always is the BUYER an experience driver… and really back in that long past day… most women had no idea of how to operate a vehicle… nor the coordination, with which they are to be driven.

When you pay for new cars, you would think that the buyer would also be a knowledgeable “DRIVER”, but not so… in the case with my mother. She was paying for everything my father just had to have!

So, before we moved my father was going to teach my mother how to drive.

Living on Myron Avenue was at the foot of the hilliest terrain of a subdivision, and the absolute worst of all places to learn how to drive!

I do not believe there are any straight and level streets in that neighborhood. The only good thing, in those early 1940’s… there just was neither traffic jams, nor many cars like we have today constantly in and out and on all the roads… causing all kinds of congestion.

The area we lived in was mostly quiet, you might even say really country peaceful.

NOW…would you take your three small children and put them in the back seat of the car… that is to be used for a first day of “Driver Instruction” and also remember, in those days, there were no “safety seat-belts” and of course no individual child care seats?

But in our case… the kids were along for the ride and what a ride this was.

I am the oldest and I also… am supposing to be sure that not a “peep” comes out of the mouths of my brothers.

This was a “first of first and the very last” let me make this real clear, right now!

This was almost like one of those movies that they make today… to scare the “H” out of the audience, and we were truly scared!

My mother was told how and what to do and when to do, and she was trying to synchronize everything into getting the shifting of gears to synchronized in a way to get up that hill… and then everything came to a halt – right there.

Nothing moving and we are not going anywhere?

We were just slowly rolling backwards, just some… till the car leveled out. Again and again, more attempts were made, only now with lots of screaming, and every -bodies’ nerves, shot!

“Put your foot to the floor, all the way!”

“More gas and hurry UP!” and my mother is trying to obey those orders and trying to get that vehicle, to go up a steep hill and it just is not… going up any further.

We are rolling back down and at a pretty fast clip, and we, three kids are screaming as we are looking out the rear window… to see the car was now moving backwards.

If this situation took place today, we would have been in a major accident, and all out fault!

When the car stopped… we all got out, and my mother took us home.

Where my father went… no one knows, but my mother never… ever tried to learn how… to drive a car!