Driving

Driving. An activity that has always fascinated me. An activity without which I would not have reached this point in my life. Driving to work, to school, on vacations. I can’t imagine my life without ever owning a car. I owe my success and happy life to car ownership.

There is no way I could have worked full-time and attended college full-time without a car. Without a car, my commute from home to work to school to home would have taken all day on public transportation. I graduated because I was able to manage my time well since I owned a car.

Growing up, my father was the only driver in our household. My mother finally got her driver’s license when I was in the seventh grade. So, everything I learned about driving, I learned from my father. Including bad driving habits. But my father loved driving! He could turn a short trip to the grocery into a two-mile cruise. But not if my mother was onboard.

Our family car was always a used car that constantly needed repairs, which my father loved because he was a mechanic and carpenter by trade. My father never bought a new car until I was in the eighth grade. He bought a lime green 1971 Ford Maverick two-door sedan. He loved that car! That’s when he decided we should go camping to Tippecanoe River State Park in Indiana.

On Sunday morning before going to mass, my father and I would pop the hood of the car and inspect the engine. My father always inspected the engine before every drive. And he always made some mechanical adjustments. Then we would wash the car before driving to church. I really thought that driving a car was a very complicated affair due to my father’s preparations. I also believe these preparations deterred my mother from getting her driver’s license sooner.

When I bought my first car, it was a brand new 1975 Pontiac Firebird. I didn’t want to do all the mechanical work that a used car involved. I was still in high school and working full-time in the Peter Pan peanut butter factory on the midnight shift. I needed a car to drive home from work at 7:00 A.M., shower, and go to school by 8:30. There was no way I could accomplish this using public transportation on the south side of Chicago.

I was the first one of my friends to own a new car. My other friends drove their family car. They always wanted to try driving my car, but I always refused to give them the keys. They were reckless behind the wheel. But not any more so than me. When we were young every one of us wanted to be the driver on our road trips. No matter whose car we drove in, we all fought for the keys to be the driver.

Flashforward a couple of decades, and now we’re arguing over whose turn it is to drive. No one volunteers to drive anymore. And my friends and I no longer go on long road trips. I go on my road trips alone. I actually enjoy driving alone without all the bickering and deciding where to go when we had no definite destination in mind anyway.

Nowadays, I prefer to drive alone. I imagine my car as an escape pod from my mundane life in Chicago. I have driven to California, Rhode Island, Mexico City, and many other places in between. I no longer dream of having an expensive sporty car. My vehicle needs to transport me to my destinations comfortably, with decent gas mileage, and uninterrupted satellite radio.