Driving Lesson

Driving Lesson

After I had earned my drivers’ license at the age of 16, I decided to buy a pickup truck. Because I had a horse, a truck made much more sense than a passenger car that could only hold one or two bales of hay in the trunk.

I purchased a 1966 Chevy half ton with “three on the tree” (for those of you who don’t know, that’s a standard transmission with a stick shift on the steering column). The only problem with the truck was that I did not know how to drive a “stick”. My best friend’s dad had a 1950 Dodge pickup with four-on-the-floor and told me he would teach me how to drive it. I could hardly wait!

He was also a mechanic and owned a very busy shop. My driving lesson kept getting postponed because he just didn’t have the time. I kept asking him when, and he kept saying “soon”. About three months later I drove into town in a borrowed car and stopped by my friend’s house for a visit. She was on her way out to feed her horse, which was boarded 14 miles from her house in the opposite direction from which I had come. Did I want to go with her? Of course I did!

While she was feeding and grooming her horse I occupied part of my time visiting several others horses boarded there. She honked the horn on her car when it was time to leave, and I walked around from behind the barn. I spotted her dad’s old truck parked in the yard, and her dad standing next to her car. I thought it very odd, since he really had no interest in her horse; had never gone out there before; and that we’d just seen him at their house before we left.

As I headed toward them, he climbed into the front passenger seat of my friend’s car, reached out the window and tossed me the keys to his old Dodge. As they drove away in her car he hollered, “See ya back at the house!” I stood there, somewhat dumbfounded. Wait! I don’t know how to drive this thing!

I quickly realizing that the only way I was going to get back to their house, and my car, was either to drive this old beast - or walk. Since it would quite possibly take me until noon the next day to make it back on foot, I climbed in the truck, put the key in the ignition and cranked her over - nothing happened. After numerous attempts I was getting a little bit concerned about being stuck out here with a truck that wouldn’t start. How dare they abandon me like that!

It took me a full ten minutes just to get the engine to kick over. In the old car I borrowed, there was a button on the far left of the floor board on the driver’s side - the dimmer switch for the high and low beams on the headlights. This truck had a button in the same place, but it was quite by accident, stepping on it while trying to get the clutch to cooperate that I realized it was the starter. A loud growl and a grind and the old Dodge was finally revved up and ready to run… if only I could actually get it to move.

Ok, the engine was running, now I had to get it into gear. If you’ve ever driven a vehicle built in 1950, you might notice that some things look a little different than on a modern one. For instance, the knob on the gear shift does NOT have the diagram on top to tell you where each of the gears are. I sat there staring at it for a few minutes, wishing I had paid more attention at those times I’d been a passenger in this old truck.

I wrestled it into what I hoped was first gear, and now it was time to start heading down the road. Push down slowly on the accelerator, ease up on the clutch... it lurched forward and chunk, chunk, chunk, bang! It died. And this was how I moved down the road, four or five yards at a time, although gradually increasing the distance each time before I had to restart it… very gradually. It was a hot and sultry summer day, and it took me two and a half hours to drive the 14 miles back to her house; most of it on a dusty and pitted dirt road.

By the time I arrived back at their house her entire family was sitting on the front porch, cheering and clapping that I had finally arrived! I was hot and sticky and tired, not to mention just a little bit peeved at them for leaving me stranded out in the middle of “nowhere”, and I was well prepared to give them both a piece of my mind about their obviously pre-planned conspiracy. But a tall glass of ice cold lemonade, and the satisfying feeling that I had pretty much mastered this manual transmission thing quickly diffused any ill feelings, and I ended the day with a feeling of great accomplishment.

And I have never owned an automatic…


© 2003 Sun Bear