You have to remember that when my Mom and I started to drive the 55, 56 and 57 Chevy's were still in great supply.
Mom did learn to drive before me but that only fitting since she is a tad older then me. Not by much granted but
she had to have her license at least five years before me. Dad taught her to drive in a 56 Chevy station wagon.
This is the same car that I had to change two tires on before I was allowed to get my learner's permit.
("You never know when it will come in handy on some dark road."was my Dad's explanation.) He would take her, and
the kids that were home at that time, pack them up and have her drive over to the road by the quarry. Now this was
not the road at the bottom of the quarry but the one on the top of the quarry. He would get out of the car and tell
her to turn it around. She would ask him to take the kids with him but he wouldn't hear of it. She did very well
although I think she was really nervous. She did manage very well and got her license. She was given the two tone
blue 56 Chevy. You have to remember that my Dad was a strict Chevy man. "If you want a good car you get a Chevy.
A good truck a Ford" That was his philosophy. We loved that car. It took us to Ohio and to Florida by way of North
Carolina in 1958. Two adults and six kids in a four door sedan. That was a great trip and worth of another story later.
When I got my license, Mom had been using it to take the kids to school and go grocery shopping. I was given the car to
use to go to work. It was our job to keep it running. The simple things anyway. Mom and I found that it wasn't that hard
to keep it running. It was almost indestructible.
We had our brain to try to come up with ways to keep it on the road. When the carburetor broke we twist a bobby pin to use
as a cotter pin to hold it together and allow us to press on the gas pedal and get the car to move. We were also known to
us paper clips or anything that was handy. One time the radiator hose sprung a leak. Not having the luxury of duct tape
or electrical tape we had to come up with something that we could wrap around it to keep it from leaking. Viola, contact
paper. We always had that in the house to cover the school books. The mechanic at "Johnny's Texaco" had the surprise of
his life when he opened the hood to check the oil and saw the bright blue contact paper with black spots on the radiator
hose. He just shook his head and went on about his business. Mom and I were very proud of the repairs we made and that car
lasted a long time on bobby pins, paper clips and contact paper. I even think it was still running when Elle got her license.
I sure miss that car. It was one of the greatest.