Learning to drive in the 1970s

Although most of my history adventuring is done in my imagination, traveling into the distant past or future, I was actually there in the 1970s. In fact, that's when I learned how to drive a car. Time-travel with me.

I learned to drive on my parents 1973 Ford Torino Station Wagon, which was a monstrous, clumsy boat of a car that had a hood that a friend of mine in high school described as "getting there fifteen minutes before you did". In fact, the nose of the car was so ridiculously long that my dad actually made a bump-out at the end of the garage for it to fit so you could close the garage door. Parking that car in the tiny garage that my parents had was like threading a needle!

By the way, we're in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the neighborhood where I grew up, which was built in the late 1920s. But don't imagine that it was some kind of historic neighborhood, it was just old, and very worn. The streets were terribly narrow, and even more so after it snowed (which it does a lot in Minneapolis) so driving my parents' "boat" wasn't easy - and that's when I learned to hate driving oversized vehicles.

There were no seat belt laws back then, but seat belts had been required by law to be in cars for almost ten years by then, and I was the first generation (as far as I know) who learned why they were good to wear in the event of a crash. As I recall, the movie we watched in Driver's Ed was called "Blood on the Road" (not absolutely sure of the title), and I vividly remember seeing some gory stuff, and I decided then and there to not risk having my face hit a windshield. Of course the older generation never wore seat belts (not until laws were passed on the '90s), and if I forgot to fold the shoulder strap back up (which you had to do in that car) after driving my parents' car, I got yelled at for being careless.

The car that I bought for myself when I was eighteen was a tiny little British sports car, called an MG Midget. It had a clutch and stick shift and I had to learn on that - it's actually pretty easy to do, but of course if you'd never seen that kinda thing before it seems very mysterious. I had a high school friend teach me how to do it, and I must have figured if he could do it, I could do it (don't tell him that I said that)!

I went on to own a series of sports cars, and really enjoyed driving, especially in the canyons around Los Angeles. Like I say, driving a big vehicle never interested me, although I did do it when I had to. I know quite a lot of people who enjoy driving big vehicles, but it's not for me. And somehow I believe that learning to drive on a big clumsy boat made driving just about anything else after that easier for me.

Thank you for visiting the 1970s with me while I learn to drive. What's that? At least go the speed limit? Thanks for the advice!

Thank you for the encouragement! If you want to see daily pics of my adventures on my recumbent trike in suburban Phoenix (just for fun, of course!) you can follow me on buymeacoffee.com/bradhall, and you can buy me a coffee if you'd like to!