Tuesday, August 12, 2014

when I started out: driving lessons...

... in life, a gullible, inexperienced youth, I measured distance in miles. Then I went out into the world and discovered those who I thought had more knowledge, ever so 'worldly', just because they were not from a small rural south Georgia town. I was surprised to find that a trait they had (in addition to leading me astray) was the habit of measuring distance in time rather than miles. I found this to be rather odd, as all my life I had lived: a mile from the center of the small town I was raised in. And that little burg was about ten miles from the Florida state line. As well as twenty miles from the nearest town where people in the small burg would go for shopping more complicated than what was available in that little agriculture-based community.

Then I went out into the world, and found people who measured travel time by how long it took to get from one place to another. Like the big city mall being twenty minutes from their homes (which obviously included lots of traffic lights and congested roadways -none of which I experienced in that small traffic-light-and-snarl-free place I knew.) Or a place to eat would be thirty minutes away. Or going to the movies would require a fifteen minute drive - when I could bike there in my little hometown in ten minutes!

My experience with traffic was having my dad teach me how to drive on country dirt roads, out in the county, surrounded by farms and fields of cotton, peanuts and soybeans. The unpaved, county-maintained roads were slick red clay with deep narrow ditches, periodically graded/smoothed with a road scraper. Or loose sand, with a wash-board quality and practically no ditches at all, as the road often washed away during rains and could completely disappear. Making it necessary to drive pickup trucks, with the underbody high enough to ford creeks and streams to get where you wanted to be.

I learned how to drive in a huge, lime-green Ford Fairlane station wagon. The same one our family of four traveled in from our hometown to California and back over the course of a summer when I was about ten or eleven years old. A story for another day.

As soon as I had gained confidence with my driving skills, learning how to shift gears, operate clutch, brake, and accelerator, while steering and being hyper-alert - my dad traded cars. We obviously moved up in the world, to a Buick that had power steering and automatic transmission. I was devastated, horrified: thinking I would have to learn how all over again. He insisted this new/used Buick would be much easier to operate.  But I had put so much effort and concentration, time and energy into mastering the gear shifting apparatus and all those many (three) pedals on the floor, I was terrified of having to start over! Yeah- I know: big ha-ha-ha.

I don't think I ever admitted to being convinced, but over time did learn how to drive that automatic, and have been in motion ever since. He also taught (or tried) to teach me how to drive a little fork-lift he had in his business. He used to move bales of cotton around in the three warehouses he owned, where he stored cotton until sold. When I drove it down a ramp, going from one warehouse to another, and got it stuck in loose sand (think about how much they weigh?), that was the end of my fork-lift driving career.

I have a mental picture of my mom, driving this huge red flat bed truck all over south GA. He would need parts, or supplies for his business and she would agree to go and pick up whatever was needed. Driving to Macon or Columbus or where ever he found what he wanted. I remember a floor shift, and think it had five gears. She just got in that thing and went. Even though you practically needed a ladder to get into the cab.

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