When I was 12, my brother and I lived with my mother in a small three room cottage at the end of a dirt and gravel road. When my mother was asleep or away with someone else, I would take the keys to her ‘51 Chevy and back it down the narrow dirt road.

The car was parked nose-in to a parking space on the side of the house. I would put the car in reverse and back the car down that road, stop, put the car in low gear, and drive it forward to the house. Up and down that road I went time and time again. I learned how to use a clutch and I’ve never had a problem backing a car up.

My first car was a Chevy ‘53 Chevy which a friend of mine unceremoniously totaled on New Year’s Eve a couple of weeks after my 16th birthday.

Not an auspicious start.
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