A Short Career as a Driver’s Education Teacher

Teenagers, boys much more than girls, often don’t known when to quit, and had we just a scintilla of knowledge about reasonable limitations, my 18th birthday party might have concluded nicely. But the evocative lure of a never-ending party and way too much beer led to a most common bad scene during my adolescence. Over this time period I often wondered why a black cloud always tracked my life course. With age and slightly more maturity, I finally cleaned up the mirror some to see the real cause of most difficulties. Interestingly, it’s been my experience it’s this very same but often illusive mirror nearly all dysfunctional people never find. Almost all of the troubled people I’ve known, and this is a pretty big number, had the same blindness about the real cause of personal problems, and consequently always blamed others or bad circumstances. It seems there’s not a whole lot of accurate self-reflection on Cellblock Six.

I did have enough forethought to know my old Corvair breathed its last gas fumes as it limped back home in a haze of oil smoke to begin crumbling completely into a pile of rust, rotted rubber and broken glass. We all knew the belt now holding the generator instead of my pants would let go any second, the car finally a dead issue. Sadly, GM’s Zombie Ride would no longer resurrect and move on its own power, and previously planning for the car’s imminent demise, I’d bought another fifty buck special, my second Corvair, this one a chalky white and not nearly as rusty. Still, the price reflected mechanical qualities, or more correctly, the lack thereof, most specifically what I called a “Mystery Shifter.”

My new ride came with a three speed stick shift that worked like a slot machine–every time I pulled the lever I never knew what I’d get. Sometimes the balls all lined up and paid off with the intended gear, but just as often, it would spit out a surprise, the shifter mechanism, or maybe the transmission itself, so worn it just seemed to randomly select gears. My new Mystery Shifter, though, at least had moderately decent brakes, good buddy John reminded me, and then suggested, since we’d just diligently practiced with Lou for the written test, it was time to move on to phase two of our inebriated learning program, hands-on instruction over the road. I don’t know how many points we were over the DWI line, but I’m relatively certain there’s less alcohol in an embalmed corpse and probably more coordination.

Now according to page one of Mike’s Drunk Driving Manual, revised edition, every driver had to be equipped with the proper road utilities, a cigarette in one hand and beer can in the other, which was a bit more difficult to master with a standard transmission, as opposed to my other junker Corvair with a crude two-speed automatic. This primitive transmission let the engine wind up to about 10,000 RPM in first before shifting into top gear with a lurch that made the old Vair go thump, thump, thump like an old John Deere tractor before the tired engine gradually gained momentum, just short of the Vermont line.

Realizing the new complexities, I suggested John ride as passenger first while I demonstrated various shifting methods with the proper accoutrements. I diligently presented most options, holding the cigarette in mouth and the beer can between legs to allow simultaneous control of the steering wheel and stick shift, and other variations around the same theme, knowing driver’s education classes didn’t cover these most important aspects of foggy navigation. I felt obligated and honor bound to fill in all instructional gaps for John’s benefit as I drove the unlicensed vehicle down the driveway into deeper knowledge of proper motor vehicle suicide.

“Don’t kill me man,” is the only thing I remember saying directly to John when I turned the car over to his control right by a big pile of salted sand always next to the Town of Jackson highway garage. My previous experience of John’s ways around anything with wheels had already cost me a motorcycle and prompted the request, but I’d yet to conclude that no matter how good a friend John was, and he was one of the best I ever had, I was still a total idiot to let him drive anything I owned. In his youth John seemed destined to become the next great American Demolition Derby champion or die trying. Of course, he received excellent instruction in this regard, so I must take some credit where credit is due.

For decades afterwards, we often talked about the accident, trying to revive memories doctors told us were wiped out by concussions, crash helmets not on either of our equipment lists but should have been absolutely required with us along with seat belts and roll bars, or better yet, straightjackets.

Having no memory, I can only theorize, but long suspected, the Mystery Shifter dropped the car into a lower gear unexpectedly and this locked up the back wheels and spun the vehicle. Regardless of cause, we shot across the road in the direction opposite of what one would expect from losing control due to excessive speed, which in our condition was anything over a slow walk.

I do know we missed, by only about a foot, a reinforced concrete ramp left over from somewhere in the 1940s when the property we picked for our crash landing near my house had been used as a race track of some sort. The tall end of the ramp faced the road to facilitate loading and unlading whatever was raced in the adjacent field. Had we hit this directly, or just as bad if not worse, a big tree also very close, I have little doubt both of our obituaries would have been printed the following week.

Instead of the ramp, we rode a stone wall fence for about 30 yards and then came to rest in front of a small tree that finally stopped the car. The ride atop the stone fence, I’ve long thought, slowed the vehicle and prevented the catastrophic sudden impact that’s killed millions since the car’s invention. There was also a ditch between the road and field and this helped launch the car slightly airborne to drag along the top of the stone fence and also, most fortunately, popped out the windshield, instead of my face serving this purpose.

I have no memory, but do know Will McMorris said he found us hitch-hiking on the side of the road about 100 yards from the crash, both of us completely out of our minds and bloody. He asked where we were going. We told him to get more beer, but Will, who might have accommodated us under different circumstances, thought this wasn’t such a hot idea and brought us both back to my house. This is where memory resurfaces a bit, sitting at the kitchen table with mom looking like she just saw a ghost.

My head was pretty clear by the time we were in the emergency ward, but I have no memory how we got there. What I remember clearly is Mrs. Virtue standing over John with a most concerned expression, while John, still absolutely out of his mind, used every curse word in the English language. Now John never spoke to his mother this way and Lois Virtue was one of the nicest adults I ever knew in Cambridge, a woman of almost infinite patience and enormous compassion. With these qualities she managed to keep an almost serene composure as John continued his monologue almost nonstop, the performance also witnessed by my mother who I’m sure was most impressed as well. While eloquent, John’s soliloquy was strangely muffled for reasons I’d learn about later. At some point, the nurse came with the Demerol shot and I drifted off until the following morning.

I woke up in the men’s ward of the hospital in more pain that I’d ever known before, feelings that became even more intense with every breath. I was informed I had a fractured sternum, three broken ribs and a whole bunch of cuts and contusions all over my body. John was still comatose. I was further informed he was due for surgery to wire a jaw broken in two different places, I figured the product of trying to take a big bite out of the steering wheel, my injuries mostly from hitting the dash, hard metal as all were at this time, the idea of padded dashes and airbags unknown until much later.

State Trooper Marty Wesott, later a two term Washington County Sheriff, greeted me in the hospital the following day. I was never surprised to see Mr. Wescott’s success in the political arena as he truly was a nice guy, one I knew fairly well because he was also a scoutmaster in Salem.

It took Marty over an hour to write all the tickets that I also accepted on behalf of John who was undergoing surgery when Trooper Wescott arrived. For every infraction, from failure to keep right to operation of an unregistered motor vehicle, John received a ticket and then I got one from allowing him to commit his evil deeds since John only had an invalid learners permit. I only questioned one ticket, the failure to keep right citation.

“Gee, Mr. Wescott, how was I supposed to prevent that?” I pleaded and was told this was just how things were done, something I accepted as even at this age I knew arguing with a state trooper most unwise, even a nice guy like Marty.

Two days later and still in the hospital the old “it only hurts when I laugh” became reality as John and I watched All in the Family on the ward TV. As Archie went off on Meathead, we winced at every joke because the physical reaction of laughing caused great pain to my chest and John’s jaw, but we still watched the show anyway. Nobody was going to tell us we didn’t know how to have a good time.