Remember getting your driver’s license? The test? That first driver’s license photograph? As noted here previously, times change.
I read somewhere that teenagers don’t aspire to drive cars like they used to. Don’t remember what the percentages were, but in my own case, I counted the days until the Big Sixteenth, which meant I could get my license.
In fact, I wanted to drive so badly that I did it anyway, with a secretly acquired key to that big-finned black Chevrolet. That was so long ago that my first driver’s license didn’t have my picture on it. They were made out of some kind of fuzzy thick paper that allowed for the easy changing of the year of birth. Not that I know anything about that. Can’t do it anymore, in this day and age, when things are different.
According to the item, the cost of gasoline was cited as one reason why an increasing number of teens are disinclined to become drivers. Lack of a car was another. Some just had a general malaise about the whole idea of getting behind the wheel.
It seemed like everyone wanted to drive when I was young. You’d dream about the car, and pick out a radio – or stereo, if you could afford one. You might sit out in the car after dinner, just listening to music and maybe wiping the dashboard down in case a speck of dust might have settled there.
Don’t think I was fanatical, really. But my friends joked that I changed jobs the way they changed cars and I kept cars like I was expecting a gold watch when I retired from my driving career. I’ve had the Firebird over a decade.
Just spent half an hour and nearly ten bucks trying to high-pressure wash the black dots of tree sap from the red paint. Sweetgum tree. Not so sweet to park under. Honestly, I should have done the wash-off a couple of weekends ago, but didn’t. Now, it’s baked on. My pants legs are soaked and my shoes are squishy with water from the overspray at the car wash. Still wouldn’t come clean. At least it was a nice evening for a washjob, especially considering the time of year. In fact, there was a nice cooling breeze as I blasted the water around and I was surprised to see a hot air balloon drifting over BA as I drove to the auto parts store.
O’Reilly’s has an aerosol-spray bug and tar cleaner – on sale, thankfully – which also promised to remove tree sap, that I grabbed for another go at it tomorrow.
Who’d a thought? When I visit the shopping centers, I park the car at the far end of the north forty so I don’t get a door ding, and then all but ruin the paint by leaving it under the tree beside the driveway.
Back in the day (which means about a lifetime ago) I used to enjoy washing the car. Not an everyday kind of thing, but more of a non-chore that needed to be done somewhat regularly. Back then it was inside and out. Today? Not so much. There are lots of things I’d rather be doing with my time.
But – by gum – I’ll be washing again tomorrow. By sweetgum, that is.
The street should be reopened by Monday, and all the dinosaur-looking yellow machines should be parked somewhere besides right in front of the shop door… so – Come visit!
McHuston
Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main St. Broken Arrow OK!
