How did you learn to drive?

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Patchouli

Patchouli

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I first started driving my aunt and uncle's lawn tractor to mow the yard, wasn't real big.
One time I spent a couple hours driving an old Nova station wagon around in a field (it was set up for friends' kids to learn how to drive--LOL). Next thing was a manual transmission Opel Manta. I didn't do too well with that, but I can drive manual tranny now just fine. Maybe too fine. :)
My first car was a Nova, forget the year.
When it comes to teaching the kids how to drive, NOPE, NOPE, and **** NO.
I'll teach them how to read, you teach them how to drive.
 
Teaching kids… simple, turn them loose in a field with a tractor. Some where is my mom’s old photo albums there is a photo of me at age 5. I was driving an Allis-Chalmers tractor in a hay field. I was towing a trailer while older folks stacked square bales on it. I was too little to lift hay bales but I was old enough to contribute.

In the photo one can see the blocks of wood my dad bolted to the brake pedals and clutch, my legs were too short to reach the pedals. At age 5 I learned to drive a straight shift. By the time I was 12 I was driving army surplus “deuce and a half’s” converted into log trucks on the highway and farm equipment in the 100hp range.

I’ll never forget the state trooper who gave me my driving test at age 16, he’d issued me several warning tickets for driving without a license in the past. I took my test in a one-ton truck, a dually. I remember the parallel parking requirement. At a 4-way stop my instructor told me to turn left and park in the middle of 3 parallel parking spaces. The first two spaces were empty. I drove through the first one and stopped in the second one. The trooper looked at me and said “That’s what I would have done”. :D

Driving is simple… Mass X speed X distance. Once you have those 3 factors down… driving is a breeze.
 
I grew up in the big city, silicon valley. Driving was nonstop traffic and freeway. We had a semester of drivers training in school for 10th grade. Then you took a written test and got a permit. Then you practiced. Then you took a driving test and got a license. Mom was a single mom and hated to take me to practice. She always drove using her right foot for gas, left for brake. I never learned to drive stick. So all this was going on when I decided high school was a waste of time and I tested out after 10th grade with a proficiency for senior certificate. I got a day job at the phone company sorting paper bills and signed up for night school at the junior college to become a social worker. I was to start the job early Monday morning, and had an appointment to test for my license the Friday before. I panicked. I didn't come to a complete stop at a stop sign. I failed. I cried. Mom dumped me off at work that Monday morning at 530 a.m. on the way to her factory job. She brought me after work to retest. I knew I better pass it or I'd not have a way to work. First car was already in the driveway paid for in cash. It was a Plymouth Belvedere, army green, older than I was. I bought it with babysitting/housecleaning money I'd saved for a very long while. So glad I passed that test.
So I was recently explaining this to almost 13 year old grandson who asked how to get a car and a license. He didn't believe me when I told him how I did it. He was waiting for me to tell him that I'd hire and pay for the private lessons and buy him a car at 16. I guess times two, because he has a twin sister. Not happening.
 
I leaned on a push button early 60s Plymouth station wagon. Later learned the stick shift. I passed my test first time but missed the parallel parking. I’m still not good at it. I can drive just about anything. That would be because of learning the stick shift so young I guess.
 
Oh yeah, in high school everyone took drivers ed class during school time sitting at car simulators. After completion of that, after school a couple times a week, I'd go out with a couple other kids and the phys. ed. teacher and drive all over the county. The teacher had same controls on his side. He'd tell me I was going too fast. He'd apply the brakes.
Funny, I don't remember getting my license.
 
Fir st thing to drive was my uncle's dump truck on his farm. I would drive the wheat from the fields to the silos :). But for street driving, it was mainly my mom. She was handicapped and couldn't wait for both her girls to get their drivers license. After that she quit driving . Dad was the one who taught me to drive a stick. We may have gone out a couple times, but I already had my license by then so he just turned me loose. Guess he figured he showed me the basis and I would get it eventually and I did. All my vehicles since I was 19 have all been standards.
 
Learned to drive on our property. Mama would let me steer the car then control gas and brakes. She started sending me down to lake to get something from cabin.
And when we moved to town I would sneak the car at night and cruise around with friends,till cop put me and my friend in juvenile at 12 and 13.
 
Lawnmower, then tractor, then pops sent me and the old truck out into the hay field to pick up the loose hay that didn't get picked up by the baler. Just me, the dog, a 1971 Chevy and a pitchfork. I hadn't mastered the brakes yet and that poor dog smacked his nose on the rear window a couple times when my foot was heavy on the pedal...
 
I paid for drive training, would not wait for Driving Ed in school (seniors only). fFrst vehicle was a Honda 350, which I promptly totaled 6 weeks later. Bought second Honda 350 and proceeded to lay it down about once a month (ran all the Honda shops out of clutch levers). All in all, totaled 1 motorcycle, 2 cars and had a lot of fun driving. Owned a Mark Donohue Javelin and raced everything I could, including my Dad's pride and joy new Ranchero, kicked his butt. I spent so much time in traffic school, I knew all the instructors by first name, those were fun days. Not safe but certainly fun. :D
 
We had a big open field behind us.got to drive mini bikes,motor cycles and the family car there.untill we got good enough. Thats when we got to drive the back roads.no shoulder's and a ditch on each side,for getting stuck.if we left the road.and with my dads temper.we managed to stay out of the ditches. :D
 
First time I drove I was 3 on a John Deere A model. stepdad was mowing hay and he'd let me steer. Thought I was big stuff. Started driving one for real at 8 First thing I was taught was how to plow a garden, then discing, hooking up to equipment and how to grease the equipment before you ever started working. I was mowing and raking hay by 10. Drove the old 66 chevy pickup around the field to haul hay about then as well. I was a 3 on the tree so everything was manual. State decided the new highway needed to go by my grandpas place and I started driving the truck on the road they were putting in, dirt, gravel, finally pavement. I was 11 &12 at this point. I think learning to drive a tractor in a barnlot and learning how to maneuver equipment thru gates and stuff is very good training. I too drivers ed at 15 in school and had the high score for the entire class. Instructors both questioned me where I learned to drive at. On a farm was what they expected to hear.
 
We went to see a relative of mine years ago and he told us to "get in the truck and take it up." Well we piled three little boys in that thing, (I think it was an International Scout 1960 something) and bumpity bumped along the dirt roads and puddles. Times like that...priceless. He had a LOT of land in the mountains where he lived for many years and had all these little dirt roads, giant puddles. So much fun for visitors.

Yeah, I miss the simpler times too, @backlash.
 
My teen years were spent on an island in Alaska. Most families would share a car that was left behind by others who lived on the island before us. The cars left at the small private airport were free for any takers. There wasn't very many people or cars, but enough for those who didn't want to walk in the snow to school/work.

I started working on the island at 15 yrs old, and would drive to work, without any speed limits, drivers licence, or insurance. It wasn't until moving back to the lower 48, that I bought my first car, a VW Bug, and got a drivers license, insurance, obeyed traffic laws, and used a highway, which was something unheard of on the island, lol.
 
Walk behind self propelled lawn mower, Dad was very insistent I mow in straight lines. Then I graduated me to the riding lawn mower. Dad would sit me on his lap and let me steer his truck. While I took Driver's Ed I practiced driving around the back yard in a 1965? Corvair, four on the floor.
 
I first learnt to drive with I think 2 lessons from a private driving instructor when my sister was sick and couldn't take the lessons (you paid for them whether you attended or not) in a manual but got my licence in an auto in Qld so I could travel to the other side of the city for work.

Did that for a few years and bought an auto car and drove for years until I moved to NSW travelling and automatically got a manual/ auto licence when I moved interstate as they didn't put you through a driving test if you had a licence in another state. Being bullet proof and in my early 20's I applied for a job towing brand new mobile homes interstate with a small truck and told them I was good at driving a manual and got the job as I needed the money having just moved away from home. The truck was a synchromesh double clutch to change the gears and I had a 36 x 9" caravan attached to the back of it and learnt to drive on country roads delivering mobile homes to outback country mining towns where they paid for the vans in black opals and cash which I would bring back to my employers in a calico bank bag on my return.

Yes I bunny hopped for a while until I got the hang of the gears and double clutching and kept my distance from other vehicles and through driving the long country roads taught myself to drive a manual double clutch truck over a couple of weeks. I always got the caravan/mobile home to it's destination in one piece even though they were the old tri axles that always scrubbed multiple tyres out along the way I would have to change. Come to think of it I thought nothing of driving alone with thousands of dollars in opals and cash with me either :LOL:.

I became known by nickname as "little one" as I was one of the very few female truck drivers on the road at that time and I weighed 50kg and installed a handle on or near the windscreen pillar and carried a long pipe to put on the tyre levers to change the tyres on the mobile homes and trucks during transit that I would jump on to loosen the wheel nuts :D. Each truckie would all help each other out should one of us be broken down on the side of the road and we became rather a family over the years.
 
@Patchouli and it is all true too.

I will carry on with the story too on one particular delivery trip as you may want to hear how I created a complete social faux par in a small mining town whilst delivering a mobile home as well. It was hot and in summer so I found a public hot natural spring and went in in my bikinis and next thing I noticed dusty middle aged opal mining men appear from nowhere and start bidding on me, yes true story as there were few women out there in the small country outback town. Incidentally I told them I was not for sale and they asked me where my husband was I told them he was asleep in the cab of the truck and promptly put my clothes back on and climbed in the truck cab. They looked at me in amazement and said "you are a truck driver" and I said "yes delivering the van to so and so" and they said oh we know him does he know it is being delivered by a female driver to which I said "no". They said they would ring ahead of me and make sure he had a cold drink waiting and a tablecloth on the table :) . Breathed a sigh of relief on my way out of the mineral spring that I survived that one only because I was delivering the mobile home to a well known local.

If my day couldn't get any worse on this same trip I then still being rather hot and sticky stopped at the local pub and walked in to get a soft drink from the bar the female populous walking down the footpath stopped gobsmacked as they saw me walk in, I thought to myself what are they staring at ?. Unbeknown to me being the early 80's that women were not allowed in any pub in this particular mining town. As I approached the bar the barman said to me " you can't come in we only serve truck drivers" to which I replied waving my finger to follow me and I showed him the truck I was driving and the mobile home I was delivering saying "I am a truck driver". I sat down amongst more dusty and sweaty mining men on a bar stool and ordered a large glass of coca cola which he promptly served me with ice. I drank it and went on my way.

By the time I got to the local I was delivering the mobile home to he had heard I had dared to go to the hot mineral springs in of all things in a bikini and enter the local pub, news certainly travels fast in small country towns. He had a cold drink with ice ready of course with a lovely tablecloth on an outside table under a tree waiting for me :D . He also tested me to see how good I was at reversing with a mobile home on the back in between two trees not far apart which I managed to do first time without a problem. I think I passed the test :LOL:.
 
tiffanysgallery said:
My teen years were spent on an island in Alaska. Most families would share a car that was left behind by others who lived on the island before us. The cars left at the small private airport were free for any takers. There wasn't very many people or cars, but enough for those who didn't want to walk in the snow to school/work.

I started working on the island at 15 yrs old, and would drive to work, without any speed limits, drivers licence, or insurance. It wasn't until moving back to the lower 48, that I bought my first car, a VW Bug, and got a drivers license, insurance, obeyed traffic laws, and used a highway, which was something unheard of on the island, lol.
Click to expand...

Tiff, thats an interesting story. Cool.
 
At 6 years old ..a Farmall H , thru the peach orchards and around the farm,

At 10 , driving the old 47 Chevy PU truck around the farm,

At 12-13 , driving our 54 Chevy , AUTOMATIC trans... to town and back(2-3 miles, gravel backroads) , for bread and bolognie........YeeHaw,

When I got my license , I was a pro... at least thought I was , till I found out crashes/wrecks were taking all my money.



Jim
 
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