Adventures With Grandmother

(Chapter Three: Gentlemen, Start Your Engines!)

          As most of you know, a considerable amount of time has passed since my last entry. What can I say... I've been a little busy. Anyway, I have recently had several requests to fire it back up. It would appear that I have something of a fan club. Who knew?!! ~~~~~~~ Okay, Okay... maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration. The truth is, I vaguely remember about a year or so ago, someone saying they heard that I had once written a blog and they were asking me whether or not it was true... or maybe they were just shocked to learn that I actually knew how to write... At any rate, back by semi-popular demand (even if only in my own feeble mind...), here goes nothing!

          I am going to venture a guess and say that at some point in your life, someone taught you how to drive. I'm going to be so bold as to venture another guess and say that for most of us, that "someone" was probably our dad. Mine thought he taught me... but little did he know, I had already been driving for quite some time, long before he ever gave me what he thought was my first "driving lesson". I never had the heart to tell him before he passed, so he went to his grave thinking that he was the great and mighty mentor, who so graciously bestowed upon me all of my mad driving skills. No, as I'm sure you've probably guessed by now, that somewhat dubious honor goes to my grandmother.

          For those of you who don't know, my grandmother owned and operated a real estate business that she and grandaddy started before he passed away. They lived just west of the city limits of Odessa, Texas so that is where many of their properties were located. I bring this up because this was the perfect area (back then) to teach someone how to drive. Anyway, the beginning of this story actually goes back to a time before grandaddy's passing. As far back as I can remember, he would take me with him when he would go look at properties out in the country. I must have been about four or five years old when one day, he asked me if I wanted to drive. Oh man! I couldn't get behind that wheel fast enough! It was the quintessential American scene of a grandson sitting in his grandaddy's lap, too short to reach the pedals and barely able to see over the dash, slowly swerving and weaving down an old dirt road in an old white '65 Chevy Impala. You know, for years I maintained that grandaddy taught me how to drive when I was little. In fact I was well into adulthood before I finally admitted to myself that he had not been the one to teach me how to drive either. He had only introduced me to driving and consequently, instilled within me a love for it.

          I really can only remember there being one major difference between my grandparents. My grandaddy would joyfully indulge me in anything I wanted while grandmother, on the other hand, usually took a little convincing. Now that I think back on all of the crazy shenanigans I managed to rope  her into, I probably should have gone into some type of sales. But I digress... Anyway, sometime after grandaddy passed, grandmother started letting me drive her car. She owned a white Ford Maverick that she bought used and I want to say it was a 4-door but it may have only been a  2-door. At any rate, it was as plain as plain could get. As far as I know, grandmother never owned a brand new car in her entire 91 years on this earth and if she had one that had a working A/C and an AM radio, then it was bordering on being too fancy for her tastes. Otherwise, they were pretty nice cars. Not too terribly old when she got them and always in good working order. Of course you have to also keep in mind that grandaddy died in 1972 and from then until her passing in 2001, she only purchased two cars. And for you younger folks, if you don't know what a Ford Maverick is then Google it,  I think you'll get a kick out of it. It wasn't much bigger than a VW Bug.

          Okay, back to the story... So by the time grandmother started letting me drive her car, I was plenty big enough to both reach the pedals AND see over the dash. She started off just like grandaddy had, letting me drive her around on deserted country roads while checking on her real estate properties. Grandmother was always the very best of teachers, no matter the subject and driving was certainly no different. She was patient and calm and never raised her voice. She was always quick with a compliment and gentle with criticism and I always took to anything she taught me pretty quickly. She must have been fairly impressed with my driving prowess because it wasn't long until she was letting me drive on FM roads. Then she started letting me drive solo in the big lot in front of her house. Maybe it was so I could practice my backing and parking skills, or maybe it was just to get me out of her hair. Probably the latter... For the sake of clarification, grandmother didn't really have much of a front yard. It was mainly just this huge dirt/gravel lot that ran from her house to the corner of the next intersection. She owned all of the properties on the southeast corner of that intersection, which included her house, another house, a vacant lot and an old storefront building. Between all of the dwellings and accompanying land, I'm guessing she had somewhere close to 10 acres all together. Anyway, the driveways/parking lots etc. of all of these properties were connected so it made for a fairly large driving space for just goofing around. If my memory is correct, the total driving area would have been maybe 20+/- yards or so wide and maybe close to 100 yards long. Anyone with a more accurate figure is welcome to correct me if I'm wrong.

          At this point I feel compelled to say that I don't know if I was just really charming, or if maybe sometimes grandmother got a severe case of "brain fog" because even Forest Gump  could have told her that if she let me goof around in her car alone, eventually things were (literally) going to take a turn for the worse. (Eat your heart out Bob Phillips!) I suppose that mangled pile out back that had once been my tricycle, metal pedal-car, bike and other various toys, didn't register as much of a clue in her mind either. On the other hand, all of grandmother's praying must have afforded her the most charmed life of all time because it took a whole herd of miracles to save her property (and her sanity) from the real life version of the Tasmanian Devil that I was back then.

          Learning to drive was one of the top three most awesome experiences in my life. ~~~~~ (I know what you're thinking... and you can just forget about ever finding out what the other two are! And no, it's not THAT, so get your collective minds out of the gutter!) ~~~~~ To have something so huge respond to the slightest of my movements was a true rush! But like any drug, you eventually have to take more and more to get the same effect. So once the "new" started wearing off on my driving experience, I started getting bored. Therefore, to keep recapturing that rush, I had to start pushing the abilities of that car, as well as my own. All I can say at this point, is that it's a darn good thing grandmother had a Ford Maverick. If she would have had something with a little more power, I might not be writing this story today. It all started predictably enough... Of course I wanted to peal out, so I would take the car to one end of the lot and take off as fast as that little thing could go. Then I naturally wanted to see what it was like to pull off one of those sideways sliding stops. I also wanted to slide sideways around a corner and do all of those sexy car stunts you see in the movies. What I ultimately discovered was that "sexy" and "Ford Maverick" are two things that should never go together in the same sentence. 

          That poor little Maverick didn't have enough power to spin the tires, even on dirt. And with only a 100 yard running start, I couldn't get going fast enough to pull off any kind of spectacular slides or stops. Once I realized all of this, my frustration grew so I had to figure something out. So one day I was dribbling around the lot in that old Maverick, when a new plan began percolating in my mind. Grandmother's garage was very tiny. It was barely big enough for one car and that was made even worse by all the junk she had lying around in there. It had a dirt floor so she had two parallel wooden slats that ran the depth of the garage, to pull the car onto. Now me being the intelligent lad that I was, I somehow knew that those wooden slats were a lot slicker than dirt. At first, I pulled into the garage and once I got on the wooden slates, I tried to peal out in reverse. It took several attempts but I finally figured out that wasn't going to work either. So I started wondering if it were even possible to do a burn out in a Maverick?

          I refuse to go back in my mind to try to uncover the thought processes that led me to do it... Let's just say it was probably the ill-fated result of my frustration. Or even better! I was possessed by a foul demon that likes to take advantage of wayward children. Yeah, that's it! ~~~~~~~~ So me and this demon are sitting in the front seat of grandmother's Ford Maverick, parked on the two slick wooden slats in grandmother's garage and the engine is running... And I'm thinking, "Okay, I've had enough fun with this driving stuff for now. I'm going to just go give grandmother her keys back and find something else to do before I tear something up." So I'm reaching up to turn the key off when Clinton (the demon) stops my hand and says, "What, are you kidding me?!! You're a good driver, AND you're lucky! You're not going to tear anything up so don't quit now... try something different!" To which I replied, "You really think so?....nah, I'm ready to go do something else. Plus I'm not convinced I'm not going to tear something up and then I would be in humongous trouble!" Clinton responds with, "Okay, Okay... I get it, but just think about this. There's no telling when you might get to drive again so just try this one thing before you go." So I say to Clinton, "No, I'm heading in... but tell me your idea real quick anyway." Clinton says, "No way Jose'.... only if you promise to do it! Besides, it will only take a second and it's gonna be REALLY fun!" I give him kind of a dissenting wrinkled expression and say, "Yes way hose 'B' either tell me or I'm heading in." And he says, "Come on... just do this real quick and I PROMISE I won't bother you anymore. Besides, if you don't do it, I'm gonna tell all the other child-bugging demons you're a big fat chicken!" Now I really wanted to just head back in but there was just no way I could have my name besmirched amongst all the child-bugging demons, so I finally relented. I turn to Clinton and say, "Okay, what do you want me to do?" Clinton excitedly yells, "Yeah! check this out!!! Just pull the car up reeeeeaaal slow like, until the front bumper is pressed up against the wall. Then, floor it!" Then he literally starts clapping his hands and jumping up and down in his seat while exuberantly shouting, "Oh man! I can't believe it! This is going to be so much fuuuun!" So I do as Clinton has instructed and slowly pull the car up until the front bumper touches the wall and when the car stops moving forward, I look over at Clinton and and give him my best "now what?" expression. With this wild-eyed demonic expression he suddenly yells, "FLOOR IT!" His yelling startles me and I reflexively hammer the gas pedal to the floor!

          The exact details of everything that happened next are now a little fuzzy but I can assure you, it definitely was NOT pretty! There was a lot of horrendously loud banging and crashing, and dust and smoke were pouring out of every nook, cranny and orifice of that tiny little garage! It was HORRIBLE!!! ~~~~~ I'll just put it like this... I had finally figured out how to get a Ford Maverick to slide sideways. Or rather, Clinton had figured it out for me. Regardless, it's fairly safe to say I panicked at this point. My sympathetic nervous system kicked in full blast and my little mind went almost completely blank. All I knew was that I had to get out of that garage, immediately! Of course Clinton quickly spotted my dilemma and I vaguely recall him reaching over and slamming the gear shifter into reverse. When I looked over at him I'm sure I had a terrified but questioning expression but all he said was, "FLOOR IT!" Since my brain was on complete lockdown, I just did as Clinton said and suddenly, it was as if I had awoken a mighty beast within the Maverick! All the power it had been missing before had suddenly come to life and it propelled itself out of that tiny little garage, like a big white ball being shot out of a house-shaped cannon! The problem was, it somehow latched onto a couple of extra passengers on its way out and like a scene straight out of "The Dukes of Hazard" the Maverick blasts out of the garage in reverse with wood, dust and smoke flying everywhere and along with the sounds of a horrific crash, something that sounds an awful lot like metal gears grinding! In the meantime, I've gone gone completely rigid and spend the entire flight paralyzed behind the wheel! It quickly dawns on me that we are rapidly hurtling straight for the busy highway in front of grandmother's house when I notice Clinton reach up again. This time he grabs the steering wheel and gives it a hard jerk! We round the corner and are flying in reverse past the front of grandmother's house and as we pass, I see grandmother come running (yes running!) out of the front door, waving her arms and yelling inaudibly! Right about then I start regaining my senses and I realize we have to stop! I look over at Clinton for any kind of assistance and he just gives me this real mischievous smirk and says, "Later dude!" and then "POOF!" disappears. I yell out, "Hey, where in the heck are you going?!!" All I hear is his voice fading away, like he's falling down a well. I can't quite make out what he says but it sounds like he's calling out something like, "To get my life inspected!" or maybe it was "To get my wife ejected!" I suddenly think to myself, "Did he say 'wife'?" So does that mean demons can marry other demons? How horrible is that?!! I wonder if they could have little demon kids...I wonder what they would look like? EEEEWWWW GROOOOSSSSS!!!!"

          Like a flash of lightening I snap back into the present and once again, I'm flying like a reverse speeding bullet in the form of a white Ford Maverick. I quickly determine that I have to stop but being such a new driver, I have not yet built up any muscle memory in my feet. Out of the corner of my eye I see the gear indicator and deferring to the only driving reflexes I have, I reach up and slam the gear shifter into park! The car doesn't stop right away but I immediately hear a new sound added to the mix... something like a thousand pieces of string, breaking in succession. FINALLY, the Maverick mercifully comes to a screeching stop. When I look up and see grandmother's face, there's no question my driving lessons have also come to a screeching halt. 

          Considering all of the drama I had just been through, there was miraculously very little damage! Grandmother's angel must have been following along right behind my demon and me and cleaning up the messes as we went along. When I got out of the car we started inspecting all of the damages. An old junk vacuum cleaner had somehow gotten stuck underneath the car, which was the source of all the noise. Other than that, I can't really recall any other damage to the car. We walked around the house to the garage and I think only two boards had been damaged and they were only pieces of trim, nothing structural. 

          As usual, once all of the dust and tempers settled, grandmother and I found things about the whole incident to laugh about. And in keeping true to her ways, grandmother never uttered a word about it to my parents. That is exactly why today I will say without even a  hint of hesitation that any measure of kindness, or gentleness, or especially forgiveness, I am able to extend to others, I owe to the treasured gift of my grandmother's influence.

I know I normally tack on a few items here at the end but I currently have a paper due for school and I need to get at it. Plus I didn't want to hold up posting this any longer. Therefore, I will try to resume including the extras in my next post. 

As always, thanks for stopping by and I sincerely hope you enjoyed the story. ~~~ CHJ