Learning to Drive with Dad

Back in the Stone Age, when I was a teenager, it was customary for dads to teach their children to drive.  After all, Dad was the official family driver and custodian of the family car.  Mom might or might not have a driver’s license, but she only used it for daytime domestic errands, like grocery shopping or hair appointments.

Such was the case in my family.  When I turned sixteen, Dad designated himself as my driving teacher . . . with non-optimal results.

Our family car when I was growing up: an ugly but ‘respectable’ clotted-cream-colored Ford Fairlane 500.  When I approached driver’s license eligibility, it had just become ‘Mom’s car,’ was seldom used, and was even more infrequently treated to routine maintenance.

In almost all respects, Dad was a wonderful guy and an excellent father.  He was not, however, a particularly patient man.  Nor was he a gifted explainer – he was more given to being a charming raconteur and an opinionated discussant.  These traits did not bode well for the role of driving instructor.

By the time I was of driving age, my family’s financial situation had improved to the point of our owning two cars: Mom’s creaky, neglected Ford Fairlane 500 and Dad’s newly purchased, middle-aged-male-fantasy Thunderbird.  Guess which one was the designated learn-to-drive vehicle?

It could have been worse. The Fairlane replaced our previous family car, a 1951 Nash Rambler convertible so rusty that it leaked up, through the floorboards, as well as down through the rotting canvas roof. The model looks cute in this picture; our actual car was not cute at all.

The Fairlane had a stick shift, a balky, hard-to-budge one at that.  Plus it was equipped with a clutch that required a jackhammer to engage properly.  As sixteen-year-old me kept trying to stomp on the clutch and dislodge the stick from its apparently petrified position, my dad’s small reservoirs of explanatory patience would run out.  “Just step on the clutch and shift,” he’d yell. “That’s what I’m doing,” I’d yell back. “For chrissake, you’re not even listening,” he’d elaborate helpfully.  “I would if you were telling me anything useful about how to drive this thing,” I’d reply respectfully.

The Ford Fairlane 500 would not move out of our driveway.

“Dad, couldn’t I practice on the Thunderbird?  It has automatic . . .” 

Dad’s T-bird was a (turquoise?  sky-blue?) 1966 convertible – a virtual twin to the snazzy getaway vehicle in Thelma & Louise. 

My father was not illogical, but he was caught between the reality of teaching his daughter to drive and the reality that she might damage his dream set of wheels. (A justified fear, as at one point I took his keys and tried to back the T-bird out of the garage, subsequently ripping off the driver’s side door).  Impasse.  He enrolled me in a driver’s ed class during my senior year in high school.

Driver’s Ed didn’t work either – not because I failed the class, but because ‘not getting your driver’s license’ became the punishment of choice for violating my unreasonable (yes, I still think they were unreasonable) curfews.  After I was grounded (the previous punishment of choice) for about three lifetimes, the driver’s license ban was the new sanction.  One that didn’t matter much, as I was off to college (where I couldn’t have a car anyway).

.  Why my parents insisted on purchasing convertibles when we lived in Northern Wisconsin escapes me.  Further, they couldn’t figure out how to retract the tops, so we didn’t even enjoy convertible cruising during the six weeks between melting snow and falling snow that pass as an Upper Midwest summer.

I did get a driver’s license at some point – I think after I was married.  I still can’t manipulate a stick shift, but I have a pristine driving record (knock on wood). Unfortunately, Dad (who was given to speeding on occasion) ultimately became unable to drive due to illness and had to put up with Mom or me at the wheel.  

Which he accepted with the good grace that characterized almost everything he did (except trying to teach me to operate a hard-to-operate car).

Happy Father’s Day, Dad.  I so wish you were still here, so I could take you and Mom on a pleasant drive before cocktail hour.

[Thanks to my sister Alison for correctively fact-checking make, model, and color of our family cars.  She has a great memory reservoir of things automotive.  Me, not so much – but I could tell you about the wallpaper or paint colors of almost every room in the houses we lived in.]