As a courthouse employee, I have witnessed several faces of smiling 16-year-olds who pop out of the DMV office sharing news that they have passed the requirements needed to possess a driver’s license.
I obtained mine 46 years ago, and the memory of that excitement never fades.
In January, 1975 the second semester of my sophomore year began at Raymond Central High School. The school curriculum for sophomores required taking speech one semester and driver’s education the other semester. Since my 16th birthday wouldn’t arrive until July 1, 1975, I enrolled in speech the first semester and started driver’s education in January 1975.
I spent the first two months in class learning the rules of the road from a textbook and Mr. Al Henkel’s lectures. Then the next two months required actual driving. While it was supposed to be a driver’s education class, Mr. Henkel didn’t have me drive as much as I thought would be needed to pass my state test. I needed more practice. So Mom and Dad allowed me to drive while they coached me from the front passenger’s seat. I was confident I would pass my driver’s test on the first try and anxiously waited for July to arrive.
My enthusiasm about driving was dampened considerably when two Raymond Central High School boys were killed in an automobile accident in on March 31, 1975. Paul Nicholson and John Rosenquist were traveling near Valley, Nebraska, when an oncoming semi-trailer came unhitched from the tractor and hit their car head-on. The deaths of the two boys paralyzed the student body for two or three days, but classes went on as usual. The school’s administrators shied away from offering any counseling, and the teachers kept mishaps unmentioned. It was if they hadn’t even existed.
Paul, who was two years older than me, had been in my business math class, so his empty chair was a painful reminder. Our teacher, Mr. Leo Jelinek, allowed us to use the class as a study hall the day after Paul’s death, but no one felt like studying. To Mr. Jelinek’s credit, two days after the tragedy, he stood in front of the class and told jokes for an hour, and it lifted everyone’s spirits. It was the closest thing to crisis counseling that any of us received.
Seven days after my 16th birthday, Mom took me to the Saunders County Courthouse in Wahoo, and I took my driver’s license exam. 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 of which it accompanied. 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 and informed 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 was 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 been traveled 62,000 miles, and I planned to drive it another 62,000 miles in the next week or two. The truck hauled 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 my truck to Wahoo to attend the Raymond Central vs. 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 a citation wasn’t the worst news; telling me that my parents would be called by the Wahoo police dispatcher was.
Smoke was coming out of Dad’s ears when I arrived home and a stinging lecture followed. Dad pointed that my first ticket meant that I had received more tickets in two months of driving than he had received in 29 years. I was fined $10, and my name appeared in the Wahoo newspaper, much to the delight of some of my classmates.
A few speeding tickets would follow during the next 46 years, but nothing more serious.
A boy’s first driver’s license: His thrill of victory but mom and dad’s agony of increased insurance costs, three-dollar-a-gallon gasoline, expensive vehicle repairs, and, of course, taxes.
As a parent, I went through it twice. And yes, daughters are a bit cheaper than what my parents had to fork over with four sons.