My Driving Life
I learned to drive in 1965 on my father’s 1952 pristine Bentley along the winding, one-and-a-half-wide lanes in the Surrey hills. As if the size of the car and the lack of rack-and-pinion steering wasn’t hard enough to handle, the ankle-high gear shift tucked between the front seats was often the stick that broke the camel’s back for me.
My father, an erstwhile British army colonel, was not the most patient of teachers, and I was glad of his additional gift of six driving lessons at the local school, with a mild-mannered, retired schoolteacher in Leatherhead. Amazingly, I passed the test on my first try, much to my siblings’ amazement, who were convinced that at 21 I was not much use at anything except a good cry. (A slight exaggeration, but you get the picture of a slightly overwhelmed middle child.)
Invisible gear shift between seats
It was not the norm in England in the 1960s for every member of a household to own a car. So, I had to beg my mother to loan me her much more versatile Triumph Herald if I ever needed to drive the two miles to the village for something. Mostly working and sharing a flat in London, I really never took advantage of that drivers license until I arrived in US in 1968. My girlfriend and I took a two-week break from our temp work in NYC to earn more money as baby-sitters in Teaneck NJ to three kids (one was only two) from a Swiss-Belgian family. The parents were on an extended trip to Europe. Neither of us had ever babysat before! Those parents were very trusting, even going so far as giving me the keys to their large American car to drive one or other of the older kids to music lessons after school. Thank goodness for my Bentley experience, as their Pontiac station wagon looked like this:
And I got my first parking ticket ever in it, which showed me up for the furriner I was! Spotting a big enough space in downtown Teaneck for a quick visit to a post office, I swung across the road and into it, parallel parking beautifully (I am good at that, I must modestly claim). When I returned, a traffic cop was lurking and writing a ticket. "Excuse me, Constable," I said, having no idea what the American term for a policeman was (after all, I had only been in the US for a month or so), but used the correct British term. "What did I do wrong?" He rolled his eyes and continued writing. "Miss, you have parked illegally." I looked around for a sign that said No Parking (or had restricted hours) but there was none. "But, but, but, there are cars in front and behind me. I don't understand." He tore off the ticket from his book and stuck it on the windscreen. "You are facing the wrong way, miss. You had to illegally cross and drive on the wrong side of the road to park." Ah. So there was another lesson I learned about the differences between UK and US (we can talk about rubbers and fags another time). My maneuver was perfectly legal in space-strapped England, but here it cost me $18 of my precious $75 weekly pay check.
It wasn't until I went to Sacramento in 1970 that I actually owned a car. Before I did though, I became "chauffeur" in the suburb of Rancho Cordova to four of my family's old friend Ann Taylor's kids. Ann and Forest had taken me in until I found work and accommodation of my own, but my "rent" was driving another behemoth shuttling the kids to baseball, music and gymnastics. The luxurious Oldsmobile 98 was a dream to drive, and I couldn't wait to get back in it every day and feel like a film star!
But then it was time to get my own wheels. Ann and I scoured the classifieds every day and finally found the perfect car: this 1964 Plymouth Valiant--with push-button gears (see below). If memory serves me, Forest loaned me the money, and when I finally found a job working at the State Capitol as executive assistant to a State Senator, I eventually paid him back. Here are "my" kids (the Taylors) decorating the hood. They were just as excited as I was. How I loved that car!
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Those cars never died.