Scoot over, you're driving.

So, I've mentioned this before, but I grew up a farm kid.  Well, I was a farm kid compared to city kids, so technically a "town kid" according to all the other farm kids around us.  My family lived in town, and my dad drove out every day to "the farm" to work.  We went out there a lot too; our grandparents lived on the farm as well as my aunt, uncle, and cousins.

One day, when I was like 7 and my sister was 10 and my little brother was maybe 2 or 3 (my sister says she was 10 - in my mind I thought she was a little older than that - like 12...but I can't be certain), we were heading out to the farm, but first we had to stop at the local grocery store to pick up some groceries for Gramma.  That day we were traveling in the 66 Ford F100, (ours was green) (and although I say "ours" it wasn't really ours, I think it was "the farms" but vehicles came and went often enough that we never really had 1 vehicle...except for the Cadillac, and that's a whole post in it's own).  Back to the point.  So it was a nice summer day, I think I had decided to ride in the pickup bed for the ride out to the farm.  It was 6 miles out of town.  My mom comes out of the grocery store with a bag of groceries, which btw, we were able to pick up on store credit, you could go get your groceries and "put them on the bill"; the cashier would tally up the groceries and write it down, and off we went!  So she comes out of the grocery store, and idles over to the passenger side of the pickup and says "Scoot over, you're driving," to my 10 year old big sister.  My brother, who had never seen or sat in a car seat in his life, was standing, as usual, in the middle of the seat.  So Jean, scooted over and got behind the wheel.  As I remember it, she was very reluctant to do it, but my mom insisted.  I remember it being VERY EXCITING, and had my nose pressed to the glass watching all the action on the inside of the cab.

The ride out was...slow, with my sister killing the pickup multiple times before getting it to move.  I guess I should point out that this pickup was a manual; no learning on an automatic here!  After a few times of doing this awkward rabbit hopping down the road (letting the clutch out too fast...you all know what I'm talking about), she managed to get it going.  Shifting was a little rough especially since the '66 didn't seem to have a clear path to where the next gear was.  The "stick" would bounce all over and you kinda had to guess where the next gear was.  Talk about satisfaction and relief when you actually found 3rd gear!  At the time, it was all dirt roads to the farm and you had to drive in the worn down areas for the smoothest ride.  Usually, there were 3 paths on the dirt road, left middle and right, and generally you occupied middle and right paths when driving, except when you meet a car, you have to pull over on to the gravel so both vehicles have room to pass.  The highlight of the drive, was meeting an oncoming car, making Jean panic, and mom having to reach over and pull us out of on-coming traffic!  Or, well, mostly just forcing us to share the road.  Luckily, everyone knows everyone out there, so we received a friendly wave after seeing a little kid who could barley see over the steering wheel driving.  We made it to the farm without incident...although I'm not sure that Jean volunteered to drive us back home!  She did eventually get behind the wheel again, and I remember driving became a joint venture.  She'd push the clutch in and say, "Clutch!" and I'd sit in the middle and do the shifting.  She was so skinny it took all of her weight to push the clutch down, imagine her little body practically standing on the clutch when it was time to shift!  Sometimes we'd still kill it which would cause eruptions of giggles from us.  Good memories!