84 Ford Escort
Check out this beauty:
The car isn’t half bad, either!
That’s right: that’s my first car ever. I was the proud owner at age 17.
On the day I turned 15, I passed the test to get my learner’s permit. This meant that I could now operate a motor vehicle under adult supervision, so I could drive my folks around the neighborhood and take them to run errands, and maybe induce a few micro-heart attacks here and there.
About 3 months later, I passed the only actual driving test I’ve ever had to take. This involved me demonstrating the ability to parallel park and a three point turn, among other things—I remember those two because they were among the most dreaded tasks we had to demonstrate, and everyone had to do both of them in order to pass.
Imagining a fifteen year old kid driving on the same roads I use today seems like madness. The phrase hell on wheels does justice to what my mind is doing with this memory right now.
At age fifteen, my driver’s license was restricted, meaning I couldn’t …
