Learning To Drive | Three On The Tree

I learned to drive when I was thirteen years old. We had a dark green ’56 Volkswagen, the one that I would choose if I could have any car again that I ever owned.   I would sit in it for hours, pushing in the clutch, shifting the gears and pretending I was driving all over hell and half of Georgia, if not the world. On a Sunday afternoon in the spring of 1969, my father came to me and told me he was taking me driving. We rode through Gresham Park, down Clifton Springs Road and stopped just past the newly completed Panthersville Stadium. Beyond the stadium to the right was the construction site of DeKalb Community College South Campus. Daddy pulled off the road onto a flat dirt road on the construction site, which led all the way up to Panthersville Road. He stopped the little green Bug, put it in neutral, pulled up the brake, looked at me and said, “Alright, let’s swap places. I’m going to teach you how to drive.” We spent the rest of the afternoon riding up the road one direction, stopping, backing up and going back up the road the other direction. When it was time to head home, I stopped the car, put the shifter in neutral, pulled up the brake and opened the door to get out. “No,” said my father, “you’re driving home.” I was excited and nervous, but pulled out and headed back up Clifton Springs Road. Daddy sat in the passenger seat smoking a Lucky Strike and told me when to slow down, put on the turn signal and look both ways before pulling out. We made it home safely and I didn’t hit any mailboxes or run into a ditch. In retrospect, I’m really surprised how quickly I caught on. I had watched my parents drive for years, so between that and taking my imaginary trips in the Bug, I was familiar with the workings of a manual shift transmission.

It seems that a lot of us Boomers growing up learned to drive on a manual shift and usually a year or so before getting a learner’s license at age fifteen. My friend Dave’s family is from Adel, Georgia. He learned to drive at thirteen in his grandfather’s early Sixties Ford Ranchero with a three-on-the-tree. A three-on-the-tree was a three speed manual transmission with the shifter on the steering column. For decades it was standard equipment on most cars. If you wanted an automatic or stick shift, you had to order it. My parents’ ’65 Fairlane was a three-on-the-tree, as was my father’s ’60 Chevy Apache pickup.   Dave’s grandfather taught him on the back roads of Adel and whenever they would see a cop, Dave would sit up straight so he would look taller. He was tall to begin with, so he could pull it off. At thirteen, I could have been sitting on a large Atlanta phone book and still looked suspicious.

My father once told me that when he turned thirteen, my grandfather took him to the State Patrol headquarters to get a learner’s permit. “Does he know how to drive?” the patrolman asked my grandfather.
“Yes.”
“Well, let’s just go ahead and give him his license. Just keep an eye on him for a little while.” Things were a whole lot different in 1940 than they were when I got my learner’s in 1970.

Jackie learned to drive on her grandmother’s farm in rural Clayton County in her father’s 1955 Ford pickup truck. It had a 256 V-8 engine, a three-on-the-tree with a hydraulic clutch. If you learned to drive in something like that, you could drive anything. My friend Randy also learned to drive on a farm, his aunt and uncle’s in Newnan, Georgia. He and his cousin learned at age fourteen in, of all things, a 1957 Corvette. His uncle had it on the farm and it was, according to Randy, less than pristine. Ragged out, to be more specific. His uncle told them if they could get it running, they could drive it. What he didn’t tell them was they could only drive it on the farm. They got it running and spent the summer driving a Corvette convertible all over the pastures and dirt roads of the farm.

I tried to teach my daughter to drive in our ’69 VW Convertible. I was not successful. When she was little, I would take her down a small one-way street about a mile from our house, sit her up in my lap and let her steer while I worked the pedals and the stick. I remember my father doing the same thing with me, only he sat me up in his lap behind the wheel of our ’59 Ford and let me help him drive through East Atlanta. Things were different back then. When my daughter turned fifteen and got her learner’s permit, I was determined to teach her to drive a stick shift. I took her to the Ingle’s parking lot, taught her the basics and then we ventured out on the road. Try as she might, she never got the hang of it. I finally told her mother that it wasn’t going to work, so we bought her a used VW Rabbit convertible with an automatic transmission. She took to it like a duck to water and never looked back. She did eventually learn to drive a stick when she bought her first new car, a Honda Civic with a five-speed.

Learning to drive can be challenging, but it can also be funny. My friend Doug’s dad had a ’69 Camaro SS with a four-speed that he taught Doug and later his sister Deb to drive in. When it was Deb’s turn to learn, Doug wanted to come along for ‘moral support,’ so his dad reluctantly let him ride in the back seat. They lived on a gravel road and Deb drove down the hill to the dead end and had to turn around. About a dozen stalls later they were headed in the right direction. She stalled the car once again and Doug couldn’t hold it in any longer. He started laughing at her and she started crying. “That’s enough of that [stuff], said their Dad and made Doug get out of the car and walk home. Apparently Deb got the hang of it pretty quick though, because she threw gravel all over Doug as she drove up the hill.

Manual transmissions are becoming more and more a thing of the past, which is sad. To me there is nothing quite like taking a car through the gears on a curvy road. I think that is one of the things that made a Volkswagen so much fun to drive. Rowing the 60-horse engine through the gears took a good bit of skill and a lot of patience. About the only time a stick shift is no fun is when you are stuck in traffic, which is an everyday occurrence here in Atlanta.

A generation has grown up not knowing how to drive a manual transmission. A couple of months back we ate at a restaurant in a Buckhead neighborhood with valet parking only. The sign pictured here was at the top of the lot. “So what if someone pulls in and has a stick shift?” I asked the young man standing next to the sign. He pointed at the street and said, “They have to find a place on the curb to park,” he said. I couldn’t believe it. I would have thought ‘Can you drive a stick’ would be one of the first questions asked in the job interview. Obviously not.

Things have changed a lot between 1970 and now, just as they had changed between 1940, when my father got his license, and 1970. Time marches on. I get that. But learning to drive was a rite of passage. I suppose it still is, to a certain degree. One thing about it, I guess these days it’s easier to teach your kid how to drive. No clutch, no stalling, no shifting gears while keeping your eyes on the road. Just think how much fun it’ll be to drive if eventually all cars go electric. I can hardly wait.