Does anyone remember his/her parents talking about their youth? One good story each…
Jim Forrester started this email thread this morning, and because my mother has just completed her third driver’s requalification I suppose parents and cars would be a likely theme for the Croskery contribution.
My dad’s stories of his youth generally centred around his riding horse, Prince. That’s because his father, Charlie, never drove. Well, not quite. When his sons Alden and Glen grew old enough to drive, Charlie invested in a Model A Ford, but his one attempt to drive the thing left it nose-up against a small ironwood when it failed to respond to the usual commands. For the next sixty years Grandpa relied upon friends and family for transportation. My dad preferred Prince for courting visits, as mounted he could travel cross-country and cut many miles off the trip to the Bresee household which ran rich to daughters.
As the eldest child in a growing family my mother’s summer duty from the age of ten involved driving the family automobile along behind the horses and hay wagon to and from the hay field with the younger siblings aboard. When Mom had reached the age of twelve Grandpa Bill asked the Westport police chief for a permit to allow Edna to haul the children who lived on the Noonan sideroad up Hwy 42 to school in the 1926 Plymouth. So Mom has driven since 1938, a claim which astonished the test administrator of the day last October and left her counting up the years on her fingers.
the Walnut Diary 