Dad cut his fatherhood teeth on me, the eldest of six kids. This was never more apparent than one day when he was teaching me to drive in the family station wagon. It was a huge white Plymouth without power steering, so it took a good amount of muscling to get it to go where you wanted to go when you wanted to go there.
We were sailing down North West Street Road at the allotted speed limit when Dad told me to turn right at the next country intersection. “OK,” I said, heading straight down the road with the intention of turning as Dad had requested. I cautiously glanced in the rear view mirror and noticed another car following me quite closely. I accelerated a little bit, and so did it. I accelerated a little more, and it did likewise. “Turn right at the next intersection,” came the calm reminder from the passenger seat. “I’m going to!”
Suddenly, the intersection was upon us and so was the car behind us. “Turn right,” Dad reminded me strongly –and I did. The big wagon lurched right, flying around the corner with the right side wheels leaving the ground, followed by the car slamming back down onto the pavement and me wildly sweating, grunting and pulling the steering wheel this way and that, managing to stay on the roadway with Dad screaming, “Christ Almighty!” and diving under the dashboard beside me. This was in the days with no seat belts, so I’m not sure what he clung onto, but he remained in the car and had no visible heart symptoms until years later. Oh yeah, I broke Dad in for the other five just fine that afternoon.
His only other response after catching his breath, crawling back onto the seat and looking around in amazement, was “WHY didn’t you slow down?” To which I replied, “you didn’t tell me to.”
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