I had forgotten the first days of driving.
Two of my friends from scouting days and Delphians, Bill Hockensmith and Dick Knight, both in the class of 1958 had convertibles and we would drive around with the top down. They gave me lessons out in the Zoo parking lot. The day I turned 16, we cut class and I went downtown to take the test. I got 100 on the written but flunked the driving because of the parallel parking and the downtown hills. We immediately went out to Independence and I got 100 on the written test and passed the driving test. The next semester, I took drivers education. It helped a lot. Since high school, I've gotten 3 tickets and had just one fender bender in 50 years. Of course the fender bender made the front page when I took my eyes off the road to kiss my date (future bride) and smashed into a parked car. The headline was “Twist to kiss, remiss”. I've been a lot more careful since then. I always wanted a convertible since those days, but the closest I got was when I owned several Jeeps. A convertible in the mountains or in the redwoods is well worth it, but a Jeep will get you back up in the wilderness, and you need the clearance in the ROCKY mountains.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
My God, this topic should be good for a number of posts.
I flunked my first two tests (parallel parking each time) and was so intimidated that I waited a while before trying again. I had another test scheduled.........
Then Dick Kenworthy and I were out driving. He went by Dusense's and he got into a big argument with her. He was so damn mad, that a few blocks away at an uncontrolled intersection, he broadsided a couple in a Buick and totalled out his dad's '58 Bel Air.
Unhurt but shaken, that traumatic event prompted me to put off my drivers test for another year.
But when I finally passed, I parallel parked the damn thing with one hand!
And how many times since then have you had to parallel park? Not many, I bet. It seems that the days of parking on the street have just about ended - now it's in parking lots with stripes and pull throughs. It's a lost art to parallel park.
Post a Comment