Learning To Drive

My Dad taught me to drive in 1950, when I was 14 years old.

The car was our family 1938 Studebaker Commander Six, like the one shown.

It had Overdrive and a Hill-Holder, which was the only car I recall that had this feature, and I owned 27 cars!

Hal

 

We lived on a farm so I learned to drive an old Dodge farm truck when I was 11 or 12. I didn't have a driver's license until I was 16, though.

 

I learned to drive in this beauty. Got my license the day I turned 16 in 1954. Ours was monotone dark blue. My first car which I bought with my brother was the 46 Pontiac Maroon colored convertible which we bought in 1955.

 

I learned to drive in this Russian "car" called Moskwitsch in 1983 being pronounced "fit to drive" after just 8 hours practice. Had never driven at night, nor on a highway, nor in a larger town with traffic lights. Would have been too expensive for the state which was running short of gas. They wanted to economize on gas and were not interested in more driving lessons.
While driving to a larger city for the first time with my own car, I almost knocked a lady or two down at a junction with traffic lights... I was not used to it and had never practised that. But I had "helped" to save gas.


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I remember my mother's friend got me behind the wheel of his Renault in the 70s. When he was explaining to me what to do with the gears and pedals I thought all cars were made that way and didn't want to learned to drive. I changed my mind when my mother came home in a Plymouth Duster which was automatic.

 

I learned to drive watching my dad drive an (old at the time) Model A Ford. Our first family car was a model T but shortly
before the war dad traded for a Model A. I think it was a 1932, black, four door Sedan. In 1947 my mother’s cousin
had a junkyard where he burned out wrecked cars and sold the metal. We lived across the street from his operation. I
was working on a small farm four miles outside Wichita Falls, TX and had to walk back and forth every day. My dad told
me our cousin had a car he might sell me pretty cheap. It was a 1929 buick four door sedan someone had cut off and
made a pickup out of it. I bought it for twenty-five bucks. You cranked it to start it. The next morning I got in it and drove
it to work. The farmer I worked for wanted me to use it to haul stuff around, (hay to feed his cows out in the field and
sacks of chicken feed to be spread around a large yard and lot). I got five dollars a week more money using my pickup.

 

That sounds like the old Dodge farm truck I learned to drive. It had belonged to my grandpa and was just about worn out, so no one cared who drove it or what kind of "adventure" was had except it had to remain on the farmland...no driving on the public roads. It had the old stomp starter button on the floor. The tractor was used to haul it out of many a muddy mess.

 

My father and I both had the venerable slant 6 Duster.

 

Rolling over in a truck and not getting hurt? How's that possible without (having fastened) seat belts, I guess?

 

Any reason why automatic has always been so popular in the US?

Meanwhile they have been on the increase here as well but about 20 years ago they were virtually unknown.
When my brother wanted to rent a car in Frisco the dealer took for granted that everybody is used to automatic. He gave instruction as to where the car was parked and how to drive it and then left my brother alone. My bother followed the instructions but couldn't move the car. So he had to go back to the dealer's office several times to ask him for more detailed instructions. It didn't work. After the third or fourth time the dealer accompanied my brother to the parked car and and said something like "Now show me." My brother did what he'd been told but the car didn't move. All of a sudden the dealer looked at my brother's feet and said: "You must press the brake before starting the engine." My brother replied that the dealer had never mentioned that. The dealer said that every child would know that you have to press the brake and that there was no need to mention that. My brother said that that would apply to cars with automatic only and that he'd never driven one. The dealer's last answer was like "Are there cars without automatic?"

 

It's actually difficult to buy a new American car with a standard (manual) transmission anymore unless it's a stripped bottom-of-the-line model or conversely a high HP muscle car. I suppose because Americans are increasingly lazy. I learned to drive in a manual so all my driving life I could get into any vehicle and drive it. Of our 5 children, only one son can drive a standard.

The last car we bought with a manual transmission was a new Mazda in 1988. When I was young I preferred a manual but nowadays on the crowded freeways around Houston I'd much rather have the automatic transmission because of heavy stop-and-go traffic. I'm sure the change to automatics is "customer-driven."

 

Thanks for your input, Beth.
If I ever had to buy another car, it would most likely be a hybrid with automatic or an electric car. I actually wish, though, I had an automatic right now for the reasons you mentioned.
It probably was a cultural difference that led to the poor image automatics had in Europe. Yet it has been changing as I wrote. Old automatic gearshifts looked so ugly like an asparagus spear rather than a thrust lever of an airplane what they should look like. And a car with automatic was between 2,000 and 4,000 bucks dearer than a car with manual transmission which the vast majority didn't want to pay.