Learning to Cross the Bridge

In 1952, at age sixteen, I got my first car to drive to Moline High School. My ’36 Chevrolet. The robin’s egg blue was my idea but Daddy never top- coated it with clear lacquer so it was a totally bizarre matte flat looking thing. Because it had no parking brake, I couldn’t stop or park on steep hills, so I had to plan my routes accordingly. The seats were filthy and tattered. I bought brown and white houndstooth check mesh seat covers with my own money because the seats were so embarrassing to me. But it did run okay; Dad saw to that. We’d buy “a dollar’s worth of gas” to cruise around Moline. I drove it to Chicago with Herman Nelson, my best friend in high school, one New Year’s Eve. Without permission, of course. I learned to drive on Dad’s homemade tractor and on a long car trip to Brainerd, Minnesota to Grandpa Dan Guild’s funeral with Dad and Bob in 1947, when I was only eleven years old. The only condition was that if I wanted to drive, I had to agree to drive half of the way. I remember that. Thing is, I wouldn’t go over bridges. I’d pull to the side and refuse to cross. Our loving daddy said to his courageous son, “God dammit kid. Move over,” and he’d get out, go around, get back in and drive over the bridge. But once across, he’d make me take the wheel again. Tough love! Coming home, I drove over the last bridge because he refused to. “Okay, we’ll just sit her forever,” I can recall him saying that like it was yesterday. I was sure we were going over the edge and we’d all drown. Bobby just sat in the back and laughed his head off as I white-knuckled my way across. I still have bad dreams of losing control of my car on bridges. Strangely, given my fear of water, I have never learned to swim. When I finally applied for my Driver’s License (no test, back then) and paid my twenty-five cents at the U.S. Postal Station (just a little booth in Schlegal’s Drug Store in Highland) I had already been driving for over four years. In Driver’s Ed, I was allowed to take the “Road Time” off after the teacher saw I could drive. I can’t remember how the ’41 Ford came into my life. Was it a trade- up from the ’36 Chevy or Bob’s and my car together (like many things we shared) or was it always Bob’s car, and in my mind I wanted it to be mine? Can’t remember. Anyway, the car was black with lots of chrome and a radio. A hundred fifty bucks—like new! I loved that car. It finally brought a modicum of car respectability to Guild family transportation.