Today as I leisurely drove home from a trip into town I noted the speed sign, signaled a left turn and went into the left lane. Something about that simple act triggered a flashback.
It was 1959 or 60. I was driving down four lane, Ritchie Highway in Glen Burnie, Maryland. This was in the days before seat belts and car seats for kids. My children, five and three, were seated beside me on the passenger seat. I was driving in the right hand outer lane with a car on my left, and a strip mall was on my right. Suddenly the car on my left did a fast turn in front of me and went into the strip mall. As I jammed on my brakes, I threw my right arm out to protect my children. I was so shocked by the irresponsible driver that I pulled in beside him, stepped out of my car and began screaming at him. "You could have caused me to kill my children"! I think I repeated it a few times, then got back into the car to calm down before continuing my trip.
It is amazing that there are not more car accidents than we now have. Back in the mountains of Kentucky, where I grew up, it was a common event to get behind a big coal truck loaded down with coal and traveling in front of you, over the mountain. At that time when drivers went over the mountain at night it was common practice to blink your bright lights as you approached a curve. This was for your protection as well as for any oncoming traffic on the other side of the curve, which was hidden by the mountain. I did not drive at that time. Our family had one car and it belonged to my father, who used it for work. The older boys had no car until they went to work to earn money to buy their own. There was always an uncertain time element involved when crossing a mountain. If you got behind a coal truck you just had to be patient as they could not quickly shift gears and make any speed when traveling up or down the mountain. The reality was, if you left our little town you had to go over a mountain!
When I was a young bride my husband did all of the driving as I had not yet learned that skill. One winter we were going over White mountain returning home from a visit into West Virginia. The weather was bad and we both had to get home, after the holidays for our teaching jobs. When a road became hazardous the State Patrol would close the road and you simply had to turn around and go back. On that day our car was the last one to cross over into Kentucky. We were young and foolish and the good Lord was surely looking after us. As my husband gripped the steering wheel, I gripped the door handle, all ready to jump out should we start sliding over the mountain. No doubt at that point I was only concentrating on my own safety! We did make it safely home but we learned to plan more carefully on future trips. But remember that we did not have the advantage of weather reports in the late 1940's. You found out what the weather was like when you looked out the window in the morning.
My mother never learned to drive. She was adventurous enough to try at least once to see if she could handle it. It was my father who could not handle it! My oldest sister Katrine, did drive, so my father must have taught her. It fell to her to give my mother her first and only driving lesson. I was a new baby, wrapped in blankets and lying on the back seat of my dad's Ford Model T, on that fateful day. My father's side job was selling milk from his cows. He had a milk truck which my brothers used for deliveries, but for some reason the back floor of the old Ford Model T was covered with empty milk bottles.
I suppose all was going well until my mother got excited and jammed on the brakes. Well, you can guess what happened to me in the back seat when the force of stopping so fast, dislodged me from my resting place and onto the empty milk bottles. I did have a good set of lungs and I used them! That was when the lesson came to an end. Of course my mother had to tell my father what had happened. His reaction had the intended effect. He said not a word to my mother - for four days!
About six years later when baby number eight was around four years old, he was traveling with my third oldest brother on a milk delivery. They had stopped at the commissary to confer with my father about the delivery. The truck was parked facing the edge of a small precipice above a creek. My older brother went into my father's office to ask about the delivery and left my four year old brother in the back of the truck. If he had stayed in the back there would be no story. But it is difficult for a curious four year old to ignore all of those interesting gadgets on the dashboard. So, over the seat he scrambled and began to play drive. Drive he did, forward over the bank and into the creek. The bad part was that in the back were several large metal milk cans filled with milk, one with buttermilk. Of course you can imagine what happened when the caps came off the cans! I suppose my older brother received his punishment in triplicate as he had to clean up the car.
My driving stories would not be complete if I did not tell about me taking my daughter to Stone Mountain State Park in 1970. It was not crowded during the week back then and was a good safe place to learn to drive. All went well until we left the park at the end of the lesson. She drove through the open gates past the guard house and right over the mailbox, knocking it down. She was driving a large car which I had recently bought and it did a good job on the mailbox. I went to the guard and explained, offering to pay for a new mailbox. From his answer I gathered that it was not the first time the mail box took a hit. He said, "Oh don't worry about it."
Looking back at the incident on Ritchie highway, I guess road rage is nothing new, even if it is justified. It remains one of the hazards of driving.
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