Driving Lessons

My brothers and sisters taught me to drive through necessity.

My father had an Isuzu vanette (what many people refer to as a bakkie or pickup truck) which was used as the run-around, gopher vehicle and was basically driven by anyone who was available and was also used, on many occasions, by my older siblings for their own transportation.  Unfortunately, due to sanctions by a world hating Ian Smith and punishing all who showed their support of his leadership in having the audacity to remain in Rhodesia, spare parts were hard to find.  Interestingly, nothing much has changed which makes me wonder if it has something to do with the location on the map rather than leaders, but I digress.

The Isuzu’s starter motor malfunctioned and, due to the lack of spares, this resulted in a lot of push-starting for some time.  The assigned driver for the day would have to use an incredible amount of ingenuity to portray their desperation as a lot of fun in order to cajole any one in close proximity into pushing the Isuzu.  Usually, the assigned driver was generally one of my older brothers or sisters and the closest and readily available victims were, more often than not, our siblings!

The last time it happened, my brother Leonard applied his interpretation on the theory of thrust to weight ratio – see below

 I, being the youngest and therefore the least weighty, was thrust into the driver’s seat.  The set of instructions given by each of my older brothers and sisters seemed fairly simple.  I firmly clasped the steering wheel with my nine year-old hands and stretched my legs to maximum length by extending my toes as far as they would go, strained my neck to see above the dashboard and listened carefully for the command “NOW!” which meant “take your left foot off that pedal (release the clutch) and put your right foot on that pedal (hit the accelerator)”. The excellent student that I was, I did exactly as I was told. 

However, as my siblings were focusing on the lift they would have to the local bioscope (movie house or cinema for those of you not as old as I am now) thus alleviating the drag of staying on the farm, they omitted to tell me how to stop the confounded vehicle without stalling it and off I went at a cracking pace with my brother, Leonard, hanging on to the tailgate screaming “Lift your feet up, lift your feet up!”   Fortunately, this happened along a very, very sandy farm road and the vehicle came to a majestic halt - eventually.  See below

 Needless to say, my next "driving lesson" focused on stopping without stalling! 

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