(first posted in 2007. Yesterday we shared our first-car fantasies. Today it’s reality time.)
I was fifteen and had never driven a car on the street before. The parents were away for the day in my father’s Dart. And there I was, looking out over the long hood of the ’65 Dodge Coronet wagon towards the far end of the driveway and the street, the fast-idling 318 V8 taunting my quivering foot with its gentle tug against the brakes. I looked down at the shift quadrant: I was in R. But very nearby was D. That stands for Drive. So I did.
Can I get out of the back seat and into the driver’s seat now?
In 1965, my family moved to Baltimore. From my seventh grader perspective, it sucked. Iowa City, a University town, was friendly, open-minded, cosmopolitan and relaxed. Towson was cold, prejudiced, provincial, uptight and had unbearably humid summers with no nearby pool or tractors to drive. I quickly came to loathe everything about Maryland– except crab cakes, soul music, girls and Ocean City. I became a rebel with a cause: driving.
My official driving license then was still some time away. I mourned the loss of my hot-rodding neighbors, friendly dealerships and farm vehicles. I withdrew into an inner auto-life. I spent long afternoons at the drug store reading car magazines cover to cover, ignoring the pharmacist’s reproachful gaze. I left everything from Hot Rod to Sports Car Graphic shop-worn.
J.C. Whitney’s mail-order auto parts catalog also played an important part in the cultivation of my expanded fantasy life. I would select a certain year and model car, anything from a VW to a Corvair. Or combine the best of both. Then I’d carefully embellish, modify and rebuild it with every possible part the Chicago parts purveyor could provide. Pimp My Mind.
Memorable moments of auto-reality punctuated the ennui. My father bought a brand new 1965 Opel Kadett A. The salesman had to extricate the tiny thing from the clutches of a Buick Wildcat in the back corner of the showroom. GM’s “captive import” was bright green, weighed 1475 lbs. and sported a 903cc 40 hp mill. Having only driven automatics, my father struggled with the German sedan’s hair-trigger clutch.
When he released it too quickly (i.e. all the time), the Opel responded with a squeal and a hop. He’d quickly depress the clutch– and then release it again (too quickly). And again. The Opel was like a little green frog hopping down the street. My poor father; we’ll never let him forget the amusement provided by his on-off relationship with that clutch.
Meanwhile, my older brother used the Opel to bait VW’s into stop-light drag races. The Opel’s 300 pound weight advantage and willingness to over-rev left them in the dust. (I’m sure his hooning had something to do with the Kadett needing a valve job after two years’ service.) A boringly-sturdy slant-six Dart soon replaced the Kadett, joining our 1965 Coronet 440 wagon.
As we’d become a two Dodge household, I jumped on the Mopar bandwagon. The brand was hot in drag and stock-car racing. David Pearson, one of the greatest NASCAR drivers of all time, was my hero. His ’65 Coronet dominated the tracks in 1966.
I used to imagine that the chrome “440” numbers on its front fenders were a call out for what was under the hood, and not the trim level– especially when I got to back it out of the garage in exchange for washing it. It was a fair trade; the wagon was permanently spotless. But stopping at the end of the driveway became increasingly difficult.
My rebelliousness and early-adolescent funk led me into bad habits. In seventh grade, I started smoking. I began commissioning willing winos to buy me cheap rye whiskey (Their fee: two big swigs.) Hooking school, copying homework, cheating, falsifying report cards and forging signatures became my stock and trade. I even impersonated my father on the phone with the school principal.
Ironically, when I was AWOL from school, I was often “studying” at the downtown Baltimore public library where I immersed myself in the institution’s substantial automotive section. Exhausting that, I found hundreds of old Popular Mechanics magazines with exotic automotive inventions and car reviews going back to the forties (“Floyd Clymer wrings out the all new 1949 Ford”). It sure beat sitting through grammar class with “Chucky-Frank” (Sister Charles Francis).
But it wasn’t nearly enough to satisfy my automotive cravings. It had been three years since I’d last driven tractors and the chore scooter on Iowa farmland and gravel roads. My withdrawal symptoms had never abated. One crisp fall October day in 1968, it happened. I was fifteen. My parents were gone for the day in Pop’s Dart, and I succumbed to the need for speed.
I took the spare keys to the Coronet, got in, backed her out in the tight turn from the perpendicular basement-level garage, and face to the street, hesitated for a brief moment, dropped the chrome lever into Drive, and didn’t stop at the end of the driveway. I drove through the neighborhood and headed out Charles Street. When I hit the 695 Beltway intersection, I couldn’t resist and just went for it. The only problem was a nervous twitch in my right leg approaching 60mph. But it smoothed right out at around 70.
I had rehearsed this moment in my mind a thousand times. Finally, I was liberated. It was the perfect antithesis to the perpetually-bored inattention of adolescence. I was 100% alive and awake. I was in tune with every subtle nuance of feedback, motion and sound emanating from the hijacked Dodge. Not that there was all that much feedback, especially from the utterly numb Chrysler power steering.
Eventually– and reluctantly– I brought the Coronet back home to 305 Colonial Court, and drove down the long driveway, hoping the neighbors weren’t out raking leaves. My head was buzzing and my body glowed. I had discovered my drug of choice, and I was thoroughly addicted. And like most addicts, I couldn’t, and wouldn’t lay off the good stuff– regardless of the consequences.
Mine is a boring one: 2007 Toyota Yaris 1.4 D-4D. 90 HP Diesel, and a 5-speed.
1968 Datsun 1600 (this one: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/cc-kids-2-1968-datsun-1600-510). We lived in the country outside Vancouver, at the end of a gravel road. From age 10 or so, I was allowed to drive between the house and the main road when we were leaving or returning, and occasionally on other gravel roads.
’77 Dodge Maxi-Van(360/10 pass.) , not on the road but on a Washington beach.
Almost drove into the sea while looking for the floor-mounted dimmer switch, a bad design which is gratefully extinct
We lived in a old top-floor apartment on a main street in an inner suburb of our state’s capital. No nosy neighbours, but there was plenty of traffic. It was quieter outside of peak hour, but there was a long steep driveway with just enough space between the side of the building and the fence, so that kind of limited any ideas I might have had. I had years of practice with the clutch though, backing Dad’s Falcon out of the garage to wash it every weekend and putting it back. That would have started when I was about twelve. The garage space was about two inches longer than the car, due to an old cupboard full of junk up the front, so I got plenty of practice at judging the length of the car – either the doors wouldn’t shut or I’d see and hear the cupboard move if I hit it.
Once I’d had a few years of practice going back and forth, Dad got me to turn the car around in the yard so he could go up the driveway. It was a small yard, with stairs right in the centre. If you judged it right, it was a three-point turn, otherwise five or even seven. Eventually I was allowed to thread the beast up that steep driveway and stop at the street. From this I learnt to judge the car’s width. I blessed those chrome strips at the widest point of the body. Some of them got a little bit flattened….
We stayed with my grandparents several times a year. They lived on an unmade track on the edge of a country town. There I was able to change gears – well, as far as second – dodge potholes and to turn from the ‘street’ into their driveway without hitting the gateposts.
None of that really prepared me for getting up to traffic speed in town though – it felt so fast at first! Dad turned out to be a terrible teacher, having a fearsome temper, so after a few lessons with him I enrolled in a driving school which had a similar Falcon in their fleet. The ex-police instructor was impressed by my low-speed maneuvering (those years of experience paid off) but less so by some of the bad habits I’d picked up from Dad, which would have meant a fail on my test.
The test? I was so nervous I stuffed up the reverse parking! On my re-test I got the parking over with first – which did great things for my confidence – and passed.
My dad started teaching me to drive when I was about 13 or 14 in our ’73 Impala, and my first solo was in that same car at 15 on a side street in La Salle, Ontario when we were visiting some old neighbours. I used the excuse that I was going to “warm up” the car, and I drove it to the end of the street and back. I did a lot of driving before I got my license, usually when I was out somewhere with my dad. He’d ask me if I wanted to drive, and naturally I wouldn’t turn down the opportunity for a few illicit kicks. Oddly enough, the last time I drove anywhere with my dad before he passed was in another Impala – a rented 2009 that my wife and I drove up to our cottage. He quite liked the car, and he laughed when I commented that it would likely fit inside our ’73 with room to spare.
Growing up in the burbs of Houston, no illicit driving from Mom or Dad – Dad however would take the non registered 87 Brougham limo out and about once a month and bring me along. But my Pap had an entirely different take, living in small town Central PA. He used to borrow the Sealtest milk truck when his dad was working and ride around town…if the cops saw him, he would just wave and keep on going.
So from age 6 on, Pap would let me sit on his lap and drive around town whenever I would visit – the first car I can remember is the 83 Olds 98 Regency. He would yell out “wheelman” whenever he wanted to light a cigarette with both hands, and have me grab the wheel while lighting one up. At 10, we would go up into the mountains and he would let me sit in the drivers seat and we would ram around the snowmobile trails in his 86 Cherokee, with him pointing out where the WPA camps were and where my Dad and him would take the snowmobiles. My Mom would have been horrified had she known any of this – Dad just laughed and said don’t get caught. Keep in mind, he would also send me in to buy cigarettes and lotto scratch offs since he hated walking due to his one bum leg – small towns really are another world.
When I got my permit at 16, Pap had me driving him around all summer to learn how to drive his way – this included how to brake without jerking anyone around, always looking in the mirrors, and how to run a stick. Oh, and the finer points of profanity when dealing with other drivers.
Looking back, I’m amazed that he (or I) never got in trouble. But he knew all the cops in town, and the judges too, so he wasn’t too worried.
Love your stories (and writing style) Paul – at least Baltimore in the 60’s had some pretty great soul groups. The Royalettes – “It’s Gonna Take A Miracle” is one of my favorites.
This turned out to be a great question, didn’t it. I hope there will be even more replies.
I’m still intrigued by the “Gordon” four-wheel car in Paul’s initial post. I guess parallel parking in that thing might go well — but the space allocation is miserable. Maybe a transverse engine — a turbo-charged V4, to keep it small ? — directly between the driving wheels, would leave room for a seat behind (the guest suite, or kid’s romper room) which could fold to provide capacity for other loads. The weight distribution would then be nearly neutral.
But how would this car handle, anyway ? Would it have less stability, and more sway on turns, than a normal chassis ? Wonder what happened to the prototype . . .
My first time was at age 15, my grandfather’s 1971 (I think) Dodge Dart Swinger. Green with matching vinyl top, 225 slant six and Torqueflite. Drove it in rural Virginia, both dirt and pavement. Despite the non-existent traffic, it was good practice for piloting a full-size Galaxy in SF a few months later in Driver Training class.
I’d like to add the 2 door hardtop version of Paul’s Dad’s car to my driveway today.
Paul,
At 15 years old, I took my friend’s ’59 Biscayne stick six to make a beer run. With two cases of illicit brew in the trunk, I stopped at a light (Stevenson Lane at York Rd.). That’s a fairly steep hill and I’m a stick shift virgin. Murphy’s Law intruded and a Baltimore County cop car was right behind me. No license, beer in the trunk…do the math. I rode the clutch, keeping the car in gear, heel and toeing the gas-brake. The light changed, I got on the gas and slipped the clutch, sounding like a DynaFlow turning right as the police car went straight. Memorable first drive!
Nicely done! I know where that is, of course. Were you a bit moist afterwards? 🙂
I thought you might! Yes, not a little moist, but we ended the evening at a place in Timonium where the spoils of that narrow escape were consumed and enjoyed. Even moister!
1st drive. Dad took me out in his 75 fiat x19 when I was about 12 waaaaaaaay out in the dessert between yerington and Reno Nevada. Boy howdy that was fun! Small car. I fit in it just fine.