One of the pitfalls of skipping kindergarten was that I couldn’t get my driver’s license until several months to more than a year after all my high-school friends. I didn’t turn fifteen and a half (the age for getting a learner’s permit in Washington State at the time) until October 1971, when I was a junior in high school. Because I didn’t have a learner’s permit the summer before my junior year, I couldn’t take the school-sponsored driver’s education class when most of my friends did.
I think it was in November 1971 when my father at last drove me to the local license bureau to take the written test to get my learner’s permit. No problem with the written exam, and I walked out with a permit valid for the next six months.
And then I had to learn to drive.
My only prior experience behind an automobile steering wheel had been when I was about nine or ten. My friend’s father let all of us kids take turns sitting on his lap and steering the car while he operated the pedals. His kids had clearly been allowed this “practice” before, but it was brand new to my brother and me. So at age fifteen and a half, I was starting from scratch in learning to drive.
My dad took me out to a deserted Army camp near town, where the World-War-II-era streets had been reclaimed by weeds, to practice driving. We used my mother’s little Ford Falcon station wagon, an easy-to-drive automatic transmission car. After a couple of sessions, he decreed I was ready to drive on city streets.
My parents were pretty good about letting me drive when I was in the car with them, and I soon felt generally capable of driving. Still, they wanted me to take the driver’s education course at school before I got my license—this may have been a requirement for insurance or something similar. But I had a heavy course load my junior year and couldn’t fit the class in during the school year. So no driver’s ed for me until the summer after my junior year.
Meanwhile, my learner’s permit expired in May 1972. I had to take the written test all over again. The clerk behind the desk shook his head as my father and I filled out the paperwork—he’d never seen a teenager have to renew their learner’s permit. Every other kid in town was gung-ho to get their real driver’s license on their sixteenth birthday, so they didn’t need to renew their learner’s permit.
Learner’s permit successfully renewed, I registered for driver’s ed in the summer of 1972. I’ve written a bit about that class—faking the rudimentary car simulator of the times during the manual transmission class. I also remember that the class instructor was flabbergasted that I’d never pumped gasoline into a car before. He shook his head in disgust as he showed me how. I managed to pass the driver’s ed class, though the only thing the instructor gave me more than passing marks on was highway merging. I think I hit a low traffic period for that lesson.
But after passing driver’s education in late July that summer, I then took the driver’s exam in August. And so in August 1972, at age sixteen and four months, I became a licensed driver. Immediately, I wanted to drive everywhere. Again, my parents were pretty good about letting me, particularly when it relieved my mother from transporting my younger siblings around town.
Learning to drive is a right of passage for most young Americans. That was true for me, and true for my kids a generation later. I may have reached the milestone a little later than my friends, but I got there. And my parents were less stressed about it than I was when I had to teach my kids to drive.
What do you remember about learning to drive?
I failed my driver’s test, even having taken driver’s ed, a boon for parents because of the insurance discount. My mother took me to Honolulu PD for the test and it was a very brief driving test; basically a square block jaunt. Why was it so short? I failed the test in the first block because I turned right without stopping first…at a red light. “But I did it safely! No cars were coming!” I bawled my eyes out once my mother ushered me into our car to go home. “I told all my friends I was getting my license today!” Consequences, Irene, consequences. Then I had to wait several weeks before I could retest.
Irene, you’re not the only one! When a friend of mine moved to Missouri, his wife had to take the driver’s test. She failed. Afterward, she told her husband, “I didn’t know rolling stops were illegal in Missouri.” 🙂
We got quite the chuckle out of the gas pumping part of this blog. Living on NJ & MA it’s illegal to pump your own gas. Therefore it wasn’t until our relocation to Texas that Tim had to teach me how to pump gas at 32 years old I declared it disgusting and couldn’t understand why anyone who DIY gas pumping. Gas filling was always Tim’s job until the Honda (car #3) arrived. Now I have to do it and I still think it’s gross! 😂
Michelle,
Like New Jersey, Oregon prohibits self-service gas pumping. But as a teen, I didn’t spend much time in Oregon. I’ve never considered pumping gas gross, but I don’t like it when it’s too hot or too cold. Standing outside in freezing weather is not my idea of fun.
Thanks for the comment.
Theresa
Neither my husband, nor I have driving licenses. Have we failed a rite of passage? I don’t think so. Having a car in a city is more cumbersome than useful, lacking parking places and being a hassle to maintain. We prefer a yearly pass on metro, bus, trolleybus or tram in the city – yes, we have all of them – and going by train or by bus outside the city, when needed.
I don’t think it’s a “failure” to have a driver’s license if it isn’t necessary. But in small-town America, it is usually necessary for a teen to have a license to have any independence. Most small towns in the U.S. don’t have many mass-transit systems.
Theresa
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