I started driving a car of this year, make, and model when I was 14 years old. It was the family automobile, and I learned to drive it mostly with my mother sitting beside me since I had begged her to let me do it. Driving a car never proved much of a challenge to farm boys like me who had been sitting on a tractor already for several years. The only real difference - the car went faster.I still remember taking my driver's test in the county seat of Lisbon. With my permit, I had gotten a small booklet to study which I did, diligently. The day of the test a big, uniformed highway patrolman got in the car with me and we were off. I think he gigged me on one little item, but then, isn't that the way it is with people in power? They need to find a little fault to justify their position.
Cars have changed a great deal since this one. I remember how it rattled on washboard roads, how poor a winter starter it was, and how it leaked dust. Dad liked it, though, because the lip of the trunk was cut low and he could easily lift cream cans in and out, and hauling the cream to town was a very important activity in those days. The cream check, our only steady cash flow, represented grocery money on Saturday night.
After many years, the merchants started promoting a new idea. They wanted more weekend time for themselves, something they didn't have with Saturday night openings. Thus Friday night openings came about, and that little action accompanied the death of the little farm towns, it seems to me. A bit of the nostalgia died then since a Saturday night bath always took us into Sunday leisure activities and then through the rest of the week to the next Saturday. Of course, taking baths in the galvanized washtub is another story.
