Bonzer Words!: The Driving Lessons
...The tractor, an orange Allis-Chalmers, had a clutch so stiff that I had to slide off the seat, hang on to the steering column and push with all my might to depress it...
Ellen Fisher recalls that she was nine-years-old when her hard-swearing father taught her to drive.
Our father loved horses, the bigger the better. But this was the time when most farmers of his ilk were turning to tractors to provide their motive power. The arguments were that tractors never got sick or broke a leg, took up so much barn space or got tired and one could feed a couple of cows on the fodder a horse requires. The most persuasive argument was, though, it was the coming thing to do.
He reluctantly got a tractor. Before it had been easy to have a child hold the reins of his well trained horses and he could vocalize 'Gee' or 'Haw' or 'Giddayup or 'Whoa' while he tended the hay loader, moving the hay to the front of the wagon or distributing the load evenly or bagging the wheat from the combine etc.
The logical solution to his manpower problem was to teach the 'big kids' Janet, Ellen and Frank to drive the tractor. I think Janet must have been about 10 years old, me 9, and Frank 8. The little girls, Marilyn and Carol were considered too little for the job. The tractor, an orange Allis-Chalmers, had a clutch so stiff that I had to slide off the seat, hang on to the steering column and push with all my might to depress it. Letting it out slowly took as much strength and more control. I was the biggest of we three and I could barely do it. So he decided to teach us to drive the car first.
It was autumn and the corn had been shocked, that is, tied in bundles and three or four bundles propped up by each other formed a tower or shock of corn. Our father drove the three of us out to the cornfield in his 34 Chevy. Actually he had two 34 Chevys. One was kept for spare parts and its chassis used to make a wagon.
He stopped the car and immediately started explaining the H shaped path of the gearshift. It was completely new to me. I had ridden in cars enough to know about some action being taken with the gearshift but I had no idea why. After the gearshift and clutch lecture Janet, the oldest, was put in the driver's seat, told to depress the clutch while our father put it in gear, and told to let the clutch out slowly. You know what happened. She let the clutch out too rapidly. The little car shuddered and stalled. She broke into tears. 'I didn't mean to kill it,' she cried and winced. The expected blow didn't happen. In fact I don't think he beat us after that.
Our mother overcompensated. The driving lesson went on with each of us having our turn at killing the engine until I had a success. The car went. I was so jubilant that I ran down a corn shock. The lessons went on, more corn shocks went down and we were ready to go into second and third gear. Each time we made an error, he swore and swore and swore. I believe he could swear for a half an hour with out taking a breath. Finally many days and fallen shocks later he declared us ready for the road. We could save him time and labor by driving to a pasture he owned about four miles away and watering the cattle he had pasturing there.
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Ellen writes for Bonzer! magazine. Please visit www.bonzer.org.au
