Dan Learns to Drive

My first experience driving a car was when I was about five years old. At that time the family had a Studebaker sedan. One evening after he got home from work, dad let me sit on his lap while he put the car in garage. He said I could help him push down the pedals. I helped him with the gas pedal by pushing on my dad’s gas pedal foot so hard that the car ran into the back of the garage. After that I didn’t help drive the car for a long time. 

 I don’t remember that anyone taught me how to operate the car, but somehow when I was sixteen (in 1967) I knew how to drive  the cars around in the driveway. When mom got home from errands, she would let me turn the VW bus around. This got me very comfortable shifting gears with a manual clutch and using the mirrors to back up. Of course, my speed never got over a walking pace,

Mendham was a fairly rural place in 1964. Our house was one of the first ones in a development which had recently been farmland. In fact, the farmer was still growing and baling hay in the lot across the street for the first few years we lived there. Lowery Lane was not paved in front of our house. It was  flat grade gravel for several hundred yards from our house to the pond at the end of the street. There were hardly any cars moving except ours.

So, I told mom that I wanted to practice driving on the road in front of the house and she, amazingly, was fine with that. I decided I needed to practice shifting gears quickly. I would take the green VW bus to end of the street and turn around. Then I would rev the motor, pop the clutch, and see if I could get to 40mph and 3d gear before I got to the mailbox in front of the house. This was a lot of fun. About this time mom and dad replaced our Chevy Corvair with a peppy Opel station wagon. This was even more fun.

Also about this time, I began helping my Delbarton friend Alex Waugh  learn to drive manual shift cars. First we practiced in front of the house and then I made him stop in the middle of the steep hill to Talmadge road and try to resume without rolling back too far.

Driving age in New Jersey was 17, so I got my license in the spring of 1968. Mom was SO happy to have me take over local chauffeuring duties and this was good practice for me.  I was good enough that in the  summer, mom and dad let me drive Bob and Paul to Chicago to visit Budie and Grandpa.  I really can’t believe that they let me do this. I was the only driver in the green VW bus. We got as far as Indiana the first day and slept in a state park. The next day, as I was driving back to the Indiana turnpike, one of the suspension parts on the left front wheel broke and bus clunked to a stop. I had to make a bunch of pay-phone collect calls to get help. Eventually we got it fixed and continued to Chicago for a nice visit.