When I turned 15, like most my age I got my permit. Probably that very day! My parents were great to let me drive them around, but my daddy is the one I especially remember riding along with me. I am assuming that my kids remember that their dad was a much better passenger than their mama. Ok, I admit it. Yes, they still think that!! 🙂

I don’t remember the specific date that I got it, but it isn’t hard to remember that day my dad drove in the driveway with my first vehicle: a 1970-something gold and white Chevy Nova. While I appreciate that I even had a car, it certainly wasn’t anything like what many of the student drove to the high school I attended. Without sharing all my negative feelings about those days (after all it was only high school and not real life), I will say that the high school where my sister and I attended had a large group of students who came from much more money than we did. So, my Nova was usually parked by a car that … well, wasn’t a Nova. 🙂

I wish I had a picture of the actual car but I don’t. My dad bought it from a guy who had installed jacked-up wheels (is that what you call them?) and had also decided he would rather have a standard vehicle than an automatic one… Due to my back brace, I didn’t have much movement in my back and neck. Getting in and out of that vehicle was a major production! My BF Linda (mentioned in a previous post) found the scene hilarious, and since I was learning to drive a standard car, she also got many laughs at my jerky driving habits. She even nicknamed me “BUCK” … so everyone could get in on the laughs. I am thankful my parents thought it was important for me to learn to drive a stick, but at the time it was so difficult it was comical. Well, it was not really comical then, but now it is very comical. When I first got it, my daddy took me to a parking lot of a shopping center to help me learn to drive. I think the car was packed with family and so it was more entertaining than a movie comedy watching me attempt to drive that thing.
I really don’t think they made me drive that car for too long. Yes, shades of grace! 🙂

I didn’t take a car to college my Freshman year, but by the time I went back to school for my Sophomore year I had a little yellow car I loved! My Datsun Honey Bee took me many miles and got great gas mileage. My very patient cousin installed a radio/cassette player in it for me, but couldn’t get it to fit in the dashboard correctly, so he installed it in the glove compartment. No that wasn’t ideal, but it got the job done. He spent hours on a hot North Carolina day doing that for me.
Although I will reserve the entire story for another post – when I blog about my wrecks (yes, plural) – the day I fell asleep at the wheel, flipped my car and landed in a ditch on I-65 from Birmingham to Decatur, that tape player never stopped playing. When I woke up in that ditch it was playing a tape of the singing group Truth, and I remember hearing Jesus Never Fails ringing in my ear as I was trying to sort through what had happened to me. True story.

A blog post can’t cover all the laughs and stories associated with these cars. I’m thankful for the memories and thankful for generous parents who probably didn’t have that much money, but were willing to buy me something to drive. AND, they would admit they were thankful to have another driver – to help with the taxi service to school! 😉

Thank You LORD for providing me with something to drive so I could get where I wanted to go … every day of my life since I could drive. It is truly a blessing that many people don’t have. May I never take for granted Your generous goodness!