Don't count up my age, but I was born in 1947. I couldn't wait until I could drive like many young people.
My mother took me to a friend's house who had a dead end street and allowed me to drive up and down it while instructing me. I was thirteen or fourteen.
Our car was a 1953 Plymouth Cranbrook that we called the Blue Goose. My grandmother, who had never got a drivers license, bought the car for my mother to drive to work.
The summer of my fourteenth year, mother, grandmother, brotherandIwenton a vacation to Corpus Christi. On the way, my mother got one of her migraine headaches and allowed me to drive part of the way on the two lane highway. Dad about died when she told him later what we had done.
The next January, I got my beginner's license. My grandmother knew nothing about driving and read the highway signs incorrectly. I didn't listen to her.
Mother would do the herky-jerky driving at stop signs not knowing if she had the right of way or the other driver. I am fortunate I never had whiplash as a child.
Fast forward to all of the signs on the roads and the many highway repairs. It takes me hours to get to a close destination because I take the 'bridge freezes before the road' signs seriously.
I don't care what time of the year it is, I slow down. One day, my granddaughter and I left Texas from visiting family. It is an hour and a half drive. I knew the way home butendedupinWichitaFalls, then Henrietta, Okla.which I assume is the 'scenic' route but not Rt 66.
The next time coming home from there, it took me eight hours to get home. Again, I took the wrong exit and traveled in the same neighborhood for over an hour.
IfoundBucc-eesandknew where I was. I left there and headed south; it was a long time before I could turn around.
Finally, I knew my way home on I-35 until I got to the 82 exit in Gainesville; which I missed. I got turned around again.
Now, you'd think there shouldn't be any more problems but I got turned around again.ItookthewrongMadill exit and pulled into a parking lot to get back on the road.
Soon, I was safe on the road again; heading to the Willis Bridge which was still under construction. As I got near the warning signs near the bridge, three deer ran across in front of me. Luckily, they made it across the road safely and I got home. Needless to say, my daughters told me I couldn't go to Ft. Worth by myself alone again.