It’s fun seeing young people visit the Box Butte County Courthouse to pay for their newly obtained driver’s licenses.
A quick silent prayer is uplifted for them by yours truly.
God, please look over this child while he or she is behind the wheel.
When I worked in radio news, if I met a young person who recently obtained their license, I will ask them to be careful. Then I would add a quick statement:
“I don’t want to be talking about you on the news.”
I secured my license 50 years ago.
I turned 16 years of age on July 1, 1975.
About a week after my 16th birthday, my mother took me to Wahoo, located between Lincoln and Omaha, and I took my driver’s license exam at the Saunders County Courthouse.
I aced the written test, drove around a few Wahoo streets with the examiner, and was told I passed the driving test. I had my license and the responsibility that accompanied it. I still didn’t have a vehicle, but Dad promised me I could use his truck to transport my sheep and hogs to the upcoming fairs.
About a month after I got my license, Dad called me from his office in Lincoln and told me one of his co-workers had a pickup for sale. I could tell by Dad’s enthusiasm he thought it was a good truck, and he believed the asking price was fair. I became the proud owner of my first vehicle; a light-blue 1972 half-ton Ford pickup truck. It had a four-speed stick shift on-the-floor with a clutch. It didn’t have air-conditioning, and the radio only aired AM stations.
I had been saving most of my paychecks for the past year with the idea of buying a vehicle, and I paid $1,750 cash for my truck. Dad made a set of removable stock racks for animal hauling, and he also added a set of side mirrors. My three-year-old pickup had recorded 62,000 miles, and I planned to drive it another 62,000 miles in the next week or two. The truck hauled more blue and purple-ribbon livestock to both the Lancaster and Nebraska State Fairs in Lincoln that summer and was used for various FFA projects throughout my junior year.
While the bed of the truck transported several head of cold-nosed livestock, very few girls warmed the interior of the cab. In fact, the number zero comes to mind. Since I was a skinny kid with horn-rimmed glasses who sported hair that resembled a brown scrub-brush and a face that served as a breeding ground for acne, not many girls showed much interest in me. Not to sound repetitive, but the number zero comes to mind. But even though I never had female companionship, I had transportation. And I had a father who had two large bulk gasoline barrels. His only rule was to keep track of how many gallons I burned, because he expected to be paid. At 55 cents a gallon, it wouldn’t take me long to run up a sizeable debt — but I had my own wheels!
As my junior year in high school began, I talked Dad into letting me take the truck to Wahoo to attend the Raymond Central/Wahoo volleyball game. After the game, I accidentally ran a stop sign. I didn’t see the sign, but a Wahoo cop saw me. He pulled me over and wrote me a ticket. Telling me he was issuing me a citation wasn’t the worst news; telling me my parents would be telephoned by the Wahoo police dispatcher was.
Smoke was coming out of Dad’s ears when I got home, and a stinging lecture followed. Dad pointed out how I had received more tickets in two months than he had received in 25 years. I was fined $10, and my name appeared in the Wahoo newspaper, much to the delight of some of my classmates.
However, my delight was not diminished. I had wheels!