Personal History #6

What form of transportation did you have while growing up?

The earliest car I remember driving in was a brown station wagon, although I do vaguely recall an unused blue car (maybe a Chevy?) being parked in our driveway at some point in time in my early youth. I remember that the back seat of the station wagon faced backwards, and that I liked sitting there. The back seats in the car must have folded down, too, because I remember sleeping in the car the night before leaving on vacation, and it was all flat. Mom and Dad would get up early in the morning and we would be on the road before we kids ever really woke up. Of course, those were the days before laws requiring seat belts and car seats. Eventually our family grew to a size that required a van. I remember a couple of different blue vans in my teen years.

We were a one car family for most of my childhood. Dad would ride his bike to work. My siblings and I would walk to school and back, and my mom had the car to do whatever errands she needed to do. It wasn't until my older sister got her license and a job that my family acquired a second car. I don't remember the second car that my family had very well. It seems like it was a well used automatic four door sedan. I imagine I practiced driving that smaller car mostly when I got my permit. I know I didn't like driving the huge, 15 passenger van.

My first personal form of transportation was a bike I received for a birthday nine or ten. It had pinkish flowers on it, and read "Desert Rose" on a bar, so that is what I called it. Of course, with my over active imagination, I frequently pretended it was a horse. I loved racing down a steep hill on the way to school, and trying to go fast enough that I could get up the even steeper hill on the other side. I don't think I ever made it all the way up again. I did ride my bike to elementary school for a year or two, before I left it in the bike racks at the school over a weekend and it was stolen. My siblings and I liked to set up our driveway as a street. We'd post stop signs and street lights made of paper around the driveway, and then ride our bikes, tricycles and big wheels around the miniature "town". I think we also had roller skates - the kind that clamped on over our shoes and were tightened with a key.

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