Driving Lessons

My father taught me how to drive.  Rick says I am one of the best drivers he has ever ridden with, well that is barring the time we were on our way to Arkansas.....he was sleeping, I was driving, it was two lane roads, I had followed a car for MILES.  Going up a long hill there was a passing lane,
I gunned it, and Rick awoke to see another car in my passing lane flying down the hill.......he questioned my driving abilities at that point.

There is a road near us, called Little Vine.....when I was growing up, my brothers and their friends used it as a drag strip on Saturday nights.  It is the only straight road for miles.  Little Vine Road is where my dad decided he would teach me to drive.  I was fifteen, it was 1968 and we had an old 1959 Oldsmobile 98.  That car was HUGE, you could live in that car it was so big.  Red and white, with these big old fin things on the rear. The steering wheel seemed as big as a bicycle tire.  I had to sit on pillows to see the road, and even then.....I couldn't see over the steering wheel, I looked through the
holes of it.  I was only five feet three, and weighed about 75 pounds.

My  first day out on Little Vine Road was scary.....for me and my dad.  I drove really really slow, and was so terrified that I might hit someone head on,  my dad finally told me, it was not my job to clean out the ditches, the county had someone who did that.  It took a lot of trips on Little Vine Road, a lot of trips on the street where we lived, and I probably put most of the grey hairs that was on my dad's head with those driving lessons.

He also taught me to change the oil, and change a flat.....to keep the car clean and to NEVER run out of gas, to keep a jacket in the back seat(you never knew when it might get chilly) and to NEVER drive if the temperature needle went to the red zone.  There were some tears, some swearing, and some laughter on those driving lessons, but the memories are some of my best.
Missing my dad tonight.