Brenda Gets Her Driver License

Unlike a lot of people, Brenda and I did not get our license as soon as we turned 16. As explained in the previous story, I got mine in Vietnam, Brenda did not get her license until she was 26, we were stationed in Fort Sill, Ok. I remember we had a brown 1977 Honda Civic station wagon that I taught her in. It had a manual transmission which meant she had to learn to use a stick shift. She had most of the driving skills down pretty good when it came time for her to take the test. In Lawton, Ok., the test was given, not on a driving course, but on the actual city streets.  Brenda had practiced driving, stopping, signaling, & parking in a pull in space. When she got ready to take the test I said, "Oh! If they ask you to parallel park.....do this." We had never practiced parallel parking. I proceeded to tell her, "You can park with three turns of the wheel, if you do this. Pull up parallel to the front car until you can still see the rear of that car in you rear passenger window, then turn your wheel all the way to the right - back up until your front clears the rear of front car car - turn your wheel all the way left and back up up until you are 6 - 12 inches from the curb and careful not to hit the car behind you - straighten up you wheel and pull forward until you are about equal distance from the car in front and the one in back." and then I drew her a diagram (hand drawn - similar to this one I did in PowerPoint) of how to parallel park. I told her doing this you should be able to parallel park every time.

At one point during the test Brenda stalled the Honda and threw up her hands, "Does that mean I failed?" The person giving the test just laughed and said no, just start it again. and sure enough they asked her to parallel park between two cars. She did what I told her and parked it without a problem. She apparently had paid very close attention when I explained it to her. She passed the test without a problem and is a fairly good driver except for her interactions with "mailboxes", which is a story for another time.

Learning To Drive A Stick Shift the Army Way

So here I am, an E-4 with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment at Quan Loi Base Camp, Vietnam, when the First Sergeant calls me to his tent. He tells me he wants me to fly down to Long Binh and pick up a 3/4-ton truck. I tell I do not have a drivers licence. He says no problem, you drive the truck back and I'll give you your licence. I load up in a Huey (helicopter) with Sgt. Bailey and we fly to Long Binh. We get the paperwork and the truck and head back to Quan Loi. Sgt. Bailey was trying to teach me to shift gears, driving all the way back in 1st gear would have been a pain, and I was not picking up as quickly as he would have liked. My steel pot (helmet) probably had some new dents in it from his motivational methods. Then there came a point my motivation peaked and I quickly began to learn to shift gears. The increased motivation came in the form of bullets hitting the truck. We were traveling though an area where the Viet Cong liked to ambush vehicles. We were in a serious ambush. While the Sgt. return fire, I suddenly understood what he was trying to teach me, and became a master stick shifter and had us flying and bouncing down the road at a break neck speed. You might say my "pucker factor" was extremely high. When we finally got back to base camp, the 1st Sgt, after checking the truck, began to chew me out shouting, "I can't believe you brought my new truck back shot all up. You got your drivers licence, now get YOUR truck out of my sight!"

I was sitting on my truck when the above picture of me was taken. Me and that truck had a lot of adventures together, but they are for telling in another story. (The picture of the truck to the left is not of me or that truck - just one like it with someone I don't know)

This story did not end in Vietnam. When I got back to Maryland, and needed to get my civilian drivers licence, I found out that, since I had a military driver licence,  all I had to do was take the Maryland written test. Doesn't it make you feel good to know that I got my Maryland driver licence without ever having to demonstrate that I could actually drive a vehicle.

(By the time I got my Maryland licence, I had learned to drive among other things, an armored personnel carrier (tracked vehicle), a 2 1/2-ton truck, a 5-ton truck and self propeller howitzer, so I guess you really do not have too much to worry about my driving.)