One day in 1948 my brother and I were delivering groceries using my father’s ’36 Plymouth. I was fifteen and Paul, who was six years older, was behind the wheel. On the way home, he asked if I would like to drive even though I didn’t have a permit: at the time one had to be 16. I was excited and hyped as I slid behind the wheel, put the car in gear and moved ahead. When Paul said that I should shift to second, I looked down at the gear shift lever and proceeded to skip the curb and almost hit a tree. So much for my first lesson. The following April I received my permit and Dad became my official instructor with Paul helping out.
During the summer, my parents took me to visit our relatives in Easton, PA and said I could stay for a week. That was my first vacation ever and also the first time I’d been away from home without Mom and Dad. It was a great week visiting with aunt Bella and uncle Ike and my cousins Paul, Hank, Sol, Jeanette and Eke (Eck-kie). Paul introduced me to the piano and Eke to double dating. The former was fascinating and the later daunting. The most exciting event of my stay came when cousin Hank asked me if I’d like to take my driver’s test. I was so excited. What I didn’t think about at the time are the many hills, some quite steep, throughtout Easton, especially there my relatives lived. And sure enough, when the officiating officer directed me up one of them and then had me stopped at a hill-top corner, I felt a shroud of doom hover over me as I prepared to stop the car knowing that I had to disengage the clutch as I engaged the brake pedal and then fix the emergency brake to come to a full stop. Phew! Did that! But then, to move on, I had to do the same steps in reverse while making sure the car wouldn’t drift backwards. When I pressed the gas pedal too hard, the engine roared and the car hick-upped as it lurched forward. Boy was I nervous. On the way back to the station, I awaited the bad news but, to my great surprised and joy, the officer said “you passed.” What a moment – a memory hard to forget. For the rest of the vacation I kept thinking what my father would say when I told him that I had passed my driver’s test. When Mom, Dad and Paul came to Easton to pick me up, I told them the great news and on the way back to Philly, I asked Dad if I could drive some. He said, “not this time.” For the rest of the trip, I stared out the back window in silence as the miles slowly went by.