Growing up, it seems I was always waiting for something. To be old enough to go to school. Old enough to walk to school. Old enough to ride a bike to school rain or shine. But my longest wait of all was for the day I would finally be 17 and old enough to drive our family car.
My best friend Bub and I talked about cars and driving since Jr. High. How cool it would be to pick up dates in a hot rod, with chrome pipes and a loud rumbling muffler. And a pair of fuzzy dice hanging from the mirror...ah the simple fantasies of youth are not much different from those now for us old guys dreaming about buying a red Corvette for our birthday.
Cars were a guy thing in high school. Bub and I were auto lovers but we were not auto shop guys. We were in the college prep track while the industrial arts students were learning skills that they actually could use after graduation. I still don’t know wha algebra is for. Today, with personal computers doing most of my thinking I believe knowing less about algebra and more about spark plugs would have been a much used of my time back then in the dark ages. Just as Bub and I had our acceptable madras outfits in our circle of friends, most shop boys too had standard but more practical outfits. Tight lack jeans, hard toe work shoes and white tee-shirts with a pack of Luckies rolled up in a sleeve. They hung by themselves in the basement inner sanctum of our school and rarely ventured out to participate in anything schoolish, They spent their days dreaming of owning a repair shop and getting under a never ending parade of hoods and tinkering.
Bub and I were the same age and played the same sports. We both turned 17 in early November and went together to get our “driver's permits”. But with football practice and weekend games we didn’t have the time to practice driving until after the season. The weekend after our Thanksgiving Day game ended sports for us for a while my dad picked up a State driver's manual , "Driving in New Jersey" 20 pages of rules, laws, regulations and the unwritten "rules of the road" that I had to study for the written part of the drivers test. Several weeks later I took the 50 question test. To pass one needed to get at least 40 right multiple choice answers to go on to the next step. I breezed through it because I had spent more time reading about always staying to the right unless passing than I did for a math test. I did get one question wrong. “Which is color light is on top of a standard traffic signal?” Now, I saw traffic lights everyday for years but I couldn’t remember that important factoid - I checked green but the answer was red! I still remember that mistake because the manual also called the yellow light amber which nobody called it - I still think amber is more orange than yellow, but that’s an art major for ya.
A few days after the test I had my one and only driving lesson offered by the school with 3 other students (that made me nervous) and a teacher who had the worst job in the school. We rode in a new car (which also made me more nervous) with two brakes and an automatic transmission. The vehicle was donated to the school by a local car dealer and had a big sign on the back bumper that embarrassingly announced “Caution Student Driver”. The teacher nervously smoked the whole time. I was first to drive and I made my way to a nearby “country” road rolling along at about 12 miles an hour in a 40 MPH zone. As a farm truck whipped by me, Mr. N. said, “Maybe you should go a bit faster.” After about five minutes I went back to the school and the next driver took the wheel. That was the only instruction I got from the school but I did get out of gym class for a whole morning.
That night I said that I needed to practice with our car a couple of times because it was a “stick”. So I took a spin with him that weekend. Our family car was a faded blue Chevy Custom ( not the Bel Air which meant it came with no trim and to my chagrin - no radio either. It did have air conditioning if you rolled down the windows. It was obviously a used car and every once in a while a souvenir from it's past would roll out from under the front seat. For the few years it lasted my mom never had to worry about me speeding because the Chevy’s wheezing six cylinders labored fiercely to do 50 on a highway. The upside, I did learn to drive a stick that day - which has literally come in handy from time to time.
Dad looked nervous too as I bucked out of our driveway. Using a clutch took time to master but I got the hang of it eventually after stalling the car twice.. My first drive down our main street in Millville was a thrill that I had waited so long to do. As I drove I imagined I was “cruising for chicks” on a Friday night. I was quickly shocked out of my reverie when dad yelled, “RED LIGHT...ya always got to pay attention.” And he was right. After driving around for an hour it was time to park which was the most feared maneuver for most new drivers. Dad suggested we go to the high school’s stadium parking lot. It was big and empty. Dad put two large peach baskets with yardstick markers in them about 15 feet apart. The first time I tried parking was shaky but to my surprise, the second time I parked like a pro. We repeated it several more times until dad said, “Let's go home, you know how to drive”.
The following weekday dad took the morning off and came with me as I to the driver test facility. I signed in, showed my permit and passing grade to an inspector in a uniform much like a State Trooper. He was very imposing and “official”. He got in the passenger's seat and described what was next. I was really wishing I had taken a few more practice drives - but the Christmas break was coming and I wanted to drive my current girlfriend to the Holly Ball Holiday Dance. So here I was with palms sweating so much that I wiped them on my pants because they made the steering wheel slippery. And off we went driving first around the improvised test track which had a stop light and a cross street with stop signs. I remember to look right then left and to the right again - just like it said in the manual. Next, I made a dramatic “K-turn” I went on to the end of the track to face the final test of this semi-ordeal (that my mother BTW did 3 times over the years, passed but never applied for a license and never drove our car).
The inspector directed me to a parallel park between two large cones with red flags waving. As my upper lip started to sweat, I parked gracfully without hitting any imaginary auto, thankful that we owned a small two door Chevy instead of the giant Buick tank that Bub would have to wedge between the markers. The inspector said, “Nice job son, pull over there and I will prepare a temporary license. Today you'll pay the fee at the office and your official licence will be mailed to you.” I was jubilant. So excited that I forgot where I was, gunned the Chevy and drove right over one of the markers. The inspector snapped, “Hey you just bashed into a car if this was really on a street. New Year’s Eve is coming soon, the most dangerous driving time of the year - after that accident I can’t give you a license today. Come back in a month and you can try again, you will only have to park and not take the whole test - so practice getting out of a space as well as getting in one!”
I was mortified. I blew my driver's test. I could not believe how stupid I was. My dad was surprised. Bub laughed (his you know what off) when we talked later And worst of all, he told everyone in school which caused me to be the subject of great amusement until our holiday vacation.
And the most unkindest cut of all - Bub passed and drove me to the big dance Moral: Never celebrate a win until you’ve left your space.
