Driver's ed was a rite of passage for many, especially if your parents could provide you with a car to escape the wretched school bus.  In the summer of my 15th year, I was already an experienced driver.  By the age of 12, I was taller than many adults, so my brother Wes decided it was appropriate to take me to the Fort Sam Village shopping center parking lot on a Sunday afternoon and teach me to drive.  The parents were cool with it.  One less thing for them fiddle with.  They had more confidence in us than they probably should have.  I learned to drive in a standard VW beetle and drove standards for the next 20 years.  When time for the real driver's ed rolled around, I took the required classroom phase over at Roosevelt High School.  We learned about the internal workings of a car's engine, and watched that time worn video about the two poor fools who were either too lazy or too inept to get their leaky muffler replaced, asphyxiated themselves on the highway and had a crash.  The rumor was it was actual footage of bodies being removed out of the car.  Did it scare us?  Not really.  Most of us drove under the influence of controlled substances at one point or another anyway in the next years.

(We once drove all the way to Austin for a football game while finishing off a fifth of Ron Bacardi on the way.  We were so inebriated on arrival at the stadium that we accidentally sat with the opposing side.  When we realized our error, we jumped the fence and ran across the end zone to the other side in the middle of the game.  We had no fear.)

Our actual driving instructor was Coach Moseley.  There were four of us every afternoon driving endlessly around Loop 1604 in the hot July sun.  I spent a lot of time in the back seat sandwiched between two enormous football players who sat with their enormous football legs splayed apart.  They engulfed me.  It was like sitting up against tree trunks.  I shrank down as small as I could get but there just wasn't enough room for us all.  My hour came, however, when it was time for me to get behind the wheel.  The first time I drove, I floored it out of the parking lot and onto Bitters Road.   It was painfully obvious that I had done this before, and frequently, but Coach was too polite to say anything.

Final step, the driving test at DPS off Perrin Beitel Road.  I took the test in my mother's land barge Buick.  My eyes were wide when that state trooper climbed into the seat beside me.  He was big, wore reflective aviator sunglasses and was cold as a glacier.  Most likely he thoroughly enjoyed horrifying inexperienced female teen drivers.  For my part, I was on the verge of a panic attack and stiff as a surfboard.  But I actually made it through the test.  When the ice man announced that I had passed, I was amazed.

The following school year, I proudly drove a 1969 8 cylinder 327 Camaro, silver with black interior.  It was a little beauty.  A real muscle car.  Those cylinders were totally wasted on me as all I ever did was toodle back and forth to school and the mall, but I was still proud of the ridiculous power of that engine.  When brother Wes got behind the wheel he was adept at laying strips and outrunning the San Antonio police.

I drove and loved that car until I married, and we sold it during our Austin life.  It was unbelievable how many phone calls we got and how many people wanted to buy it, even when it was 11 years old and had seen better days.  You can still see a few of those old 1969s around and they still make my heart flip flip.

F

I had a small motorcycle license before I got my drivers license.  But yes, I still had to go through the class, and I think I took it over at Roosevelt HS.  We got to see all the films, gory and otherwise.  I don't remember much of the driving, just listening to coach Smith, as I remember he being one of the teachers just talking to you about what all I was doing wrong.

I was ready to drive my first vehicle to school, a 1960 Chevy Impala that I bought for $250.  The shocks were bad, the carburetor was bad the car leaned to the left, (bad shock), but it was all mine!  Ha!  Loved the car.  Didn't keep it long but still it was a great car for my 1st one.  I made sure both my girls learned how to drive a stick shift, as they both learned to drive my "no Frills" chevy pickup truck.  They hated it but they can both drive one, and they know lots of people who can't.

But as Shirley said in her note, I can imagine being in the back seat with the football players!  I hope I wasn't one, but back than, that is exactly what I would have done, to make sure I was comfortable in the back seat.  Ha!  I bet she wishes she still had the 69 Camaro  now!  I know I would!  My Mom had a 1957 Chevy Impala that I liked and wanted so bad,but she got rid of it long before I would have been able to drive it.  Plus, somehow she managed to run it into a parked car!  Of course, while still in High school, I managed to run into a police car one Sunday morning!  But, that is another story!  :-)

I didn't remember anything about drivers ed until Shirley mentioned Coach Mosley. Now I do recall he was my instructor but beyond that I have no recollection of anything else about the class.

My first car was a 1963 Chevy Impala. My folks gave it to me two weeks before graduation. On the night before graduation a lot of us rented hotel rooms downtown at the Palacio del Rio and I parked my car in a parking lot near the hotel.  The next morning it was gone. At first I thought I was too hungover to know where my car was parked but turns out it really was stolen.  Amazingly, the police found the car 3 weeks later and it had not been stripped......just taken for a joy ride.

Coach McManus taught me how to drive in 1967.  I wonder if that explains the way I sometimes drive.

After weeks of learning in a 67 Cougar with an automatic transmission, one morning he showed up with a stick shift Comet.  When it was my turn, he just had to have stopped the other kid going up a slight hill for the driver change, didn't he?  Having never used a clutch before, I rolled backwards for a while and then of course popped it, burning rubber.  He was yelling, "Shift, shift, shift..." Got scratch in the first two gears.  He was not pleased, to say the least, and expressed his displeasure in the way that was uniquely Coach McManus.  Made quite a strong impression on the 14 year old Larry.  But I was hooked for life.

First car was a 64 Corvair.  Underpowered automatic but probably best for a 14 year old to learn the skill set.  Probably the only reason I survived my Dad's 69 Camaro at ages 16-18.

Like I said, I've been hooked all my life.  Ever since then it's been fast cars, fast sailboats and  occasionally, fast women.

I took driver's ed at Mac during the summer between my sophmore and junior year. I don't remember who our driving instructor was but I had been driving with my beginner's liscence for several years by that time. My parents let me take our car and I parked at the 7-11 on the corner and walked up to Mac so no one would see me driving by myself without a full liscence. Boy, was it scary riding with those newbies...they hadn't driven cars at all and it showed. I was so glad to make thru driver's ed and live to tell the story... If it hadn't been for my friend Rhonda Warnick I would have had to ride the bus until graduation. I did not have a car to use on a daily basis until I was in college. The car I drove after I got my liscence was a Ford Fairlane stationwagon that belonged to my parents. The car I drove in college was a '67 Ford LTD with a ripped vinal top...ah, those were the days!!!

 No, Robert, you were not one of the football players with tree trunk legs.  One was Tom Gee.  I can't remember the others.

Sometimes I do wish I still had my old Camaro, but after the experience of owning a vintage 1986 BMW 735i I know the pitfalls of owning older cars.  That Beemer was a spectacular, elegant old car and in near-perfect condition, but talk about expensive maintenance.  We used to joke that it cost us $800 every time we even drove past the repair shop, much less took the car in for anything.  Tune-ups ran about $900.  We sold it earlier this year.

When my daughter got ready to drive, we put her in a 12-year-old Volvo 240 with 150K miles.  If you know about volvos, you know that at 150K miles, they're just getting started.  Those 240s were veritable tanks, with no acceleration!  Did we do that on purpose???  The 240 was pushing 300K miles and still running when we finally got her another one.  She had numerous fender benders and wrecks in the 240, always destroying the other cars with hardly a scratch on the Volvo.  I think it was that 500 lb. rubber bumper front and back.

The first time I drove with her when she got her learner's permit, we pulled out on Gessner Drive in Houston, which is an extremely busy Houston thoroughfare we live close to.  Literally, I was convinced that was the day I was going to die .... driving with a fifteen year old in Houston, Texas .... when she got her full license and drove off down the street for the first time by herself, my husband ran back into the house and started drinking ...

Poor Larry Sowle having Vernon McManus for his driving instructor.  I don't think my nerves would have survived that.