Posted on by Phil Strawn

Driving Lessons from Grandpa: A Childhood Memory


The dirt road was not much to speak of, so most folks didn’t. It was rutted, the kind of nasty ruts that could swallow a small child whole, never to be seen again.

No signs marked its path until my uncle Jay painted a small board with an arrow and the family name and attached it to a fence post with baling wire. People simply referred to it as the road to the Manley farm, the first right turn after crossing the bridge. It was a quiet, dirt path that meandered past Mrs. Ellis’s house and abruptly ended at a gargantuan cactus patch about a block past the railroad bridge.  

  My visits to the farm were during the summer, and I usually stayed for three weeks. I vividly remember the chickens, a noisy five hundred or so troupe circling the farmhouse, scratching the dirt, and being ever-busy. I also remember that almost everything on that farm wanted to kill me. The Mountain Boomers, Coyotes, and Rattlesnakes were my first worry, so I carried my completely ineffective Red Ryder BB Gun as protection.

     My grandfather Jasper decided it was time for me to drive a car, as most farm kids did out of necessity. At ten years old, I had mastered the tractor well enough to tear down parts of his barbed-wire fence without a second thought. He believed I was ready for his old stick shift V8 Ford. My grandmother fretted about his failing eyesight and knew better than to step into the driver’s seat herself: driving cars and deep water haunted her dreams, and she wouldn’t face either. My grandfather needed a chauffeur, skilled or not, for his trips to the domino parlor in the town’s only cafe, The Biscuit Ranch. I was his first and only choice.

     My first excursion behind the wheel was chilling, at least to me. What sort of adult would let a ten-year-old kid drive a car? If Grandfather was apprehensive, he hid it well.

  Turning out of the farm gate, hitting a hard left, clutching and shifting to second gear, working the accelerator, and attempting to steer the metal beast without running us into a ditch was all I could handle. By the grace of God, we made it to the railroad bridge where the hobos gathered, so we stopped so Grandfather could visit a spell. He enjoyed chawing with the hobos, swapping stories, chewing and sharing his Red Man tobacco, and telling dirty jokes: things that weren’t allowed at home. One of the hobo’s remarked that I drove exceptionally well for a little kid, and he and his buddy could hitch a ride into town. My grandfather was out of chewing tobacco, so he invited the hobos into the back seat for our first trip to the feed store in town.

  I was feeling optimistic and a bit cocky about my driving skills by the time we pulled up to the highway intersection. Grandfather checked for traffic and, finding none, told me to hit it, which I did: skidding out onto the pavement in front of the large truck he didn’t see coming; my small PF Flyer-covered foot floored the beast and hit second into third gear, squealing the tires like a stock car driver. The hobos in the back seat laughed and said I was the best kid driver they had ever known. The Ford made it to the feed store; then, we stopped at the Domino parlor, where I was introduced as the main chauffeur for the Manley family. When my mother came to collect me toward the end of July, I was car-driving Jessie. My grandmother marched me to the barn while my mother threw the grandest hissy fit ever after her father bragged about my good driving.

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17 Replies to “Driving Lessons from Grandpa: A Childhood Memory”

  1. Delightful. Mr Green, our neighbor taught me to drie when I 9. Old Chevy. Great truck. WheI drove back from his ranch, he sat in the passenger side sipping whiskey from a brown paper sack and munching fireball hot peppers like peanuts,

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  2. That was like throwing you into a lake to swim… hey you did what no 20 year old can do now…drive a manual shift.
    I started to drive when I was 13…I was a latch key kid and the sheriff ok’d it if anything went wrong and I had to drive. We lived on a dirt road as well…different era as you know.

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      1. I had an International Scout on our property of 30 acres and had horses. A little truck. I knew how to drive a stick around to dump manure since I was about 12. Driver’s ed was a breeze. I still haven’t read your main post. In a bit…

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      2. Same with me on drivers ed, sailed right through. My cousins were a year and two years older and they drove around town and ran my aunts errands. Different world, then.

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  3. This is a great story. It reminds me of my early driving days. My first experience on the road was taking the family to church sans Grandpa Jim. He didn’t believe in God until many years later when he watched a tornado miss the house and rip out a huge willow tree that covered the yard next to the house, just 15 feet away from where he stood. Luckily for him, the tree missed the house too.

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    1. I forgot to mention hitting the tractor with the car as I was attempting to put the beast in the barn. Those old steel bodied cars didn’t dent easily. To the domino parlor and back to the farm was about the extent of my country driving. I did get a license at 14, and no way I should have been driving in Dallas traffic.

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      3. Tractors are indestructible. My grandfather and uncle sold Case equipment. Dont know if they had it down your way. They also owned Massey Ferguson, John Deer, , Harvester and a few others Im forgetting

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      4. I’m familiar with Case tractors. When I had my ranch in Paris Texas, back in the 70s, I had a John Deer and Ford tractors. Great machines that we could actually repair in the pasture of needed. My grandfathers old tractor, I can’t remember the make, but it had extra-large wheels on the rear and solid rubber front tires. It didn’t run most of the time, but it sure stopped that Ford V8 in an abrupt manner. I rather enjoyed being a country kid for a month every summer, where my cousins were country kids year-round.

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      5. I have been trying to close a deal on buying out our partner, so I haven’t read this one! I better read it. My dad sold heavy equipment and he was good at it. International Harvester mostly and I think a couple other brands. Dad would point out to some field or construction site and say “what’s that?” And we’d say, “a dirty rotten stinkin’ Euclid” or “there’s a Case of bad judgment.” Dad passed away a couple years ago, but I have all these small toys their company made. I have a big decision to make, so need to see if anything here is a “sign” I should heed. Happy Friday, Phil.

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