Lord help me...

[Chicken Dinner]

My oldest drove off by himself in my truck for the first time tonight. My truck!

[Arty]

And so it begins.
You'll be saying "be careful" every time he leaves the house from now til you die.

[Captain]

And in what seems like 3 weeks he will be graduating college. In what seems like 4 weeks he will be getting married. In what seems like 4 weeks and one day he will be saying we gonna make you a granddaddy.... Trust me it goes that fast.

[BarryBobPosthole]

Don't worry, you'll survive.

The truck on the other hand......

BKB

[Chicken Dinner]

Don't worry, you'll survive. The truck on the other hand...... BKB

That's just hurtful...

[johnboy]

Junior got to drive an old Honda Accord we had. Turned it into a beater pretty quick.

[Chicken Dinner]

I'm due up for a new vehicle this summer and goo back in forth on whether to replace my truck and buy something economical for him (and his little brother eventually) to use or buy my self a midlife crisis convertible and let the boys "use" my truck when I don't need it for hunting and what not.

[DeputyDog]

When it comes to getting a vehicle for a young driver I'd go for safety over economy every time. If I could find one, my daughter will be driving a tank when she gets her license (and I mean an M-1 Abrams not just a big vehicle).

[Thumper]

Ha ha! Speaking of tanks! My first car was a 1956 Chrysler Town & Country station wagon. My grandfather was a traveling salesman (furniture business) and drove about elebenty-bazillion miles/year. I inherited the car when it had 280,000 on the odometer. My friends loved that car as we could pile something like a dozen kids in the dang thing (it was HUGE and had a 3rd seat in the back). The year I started driving was the same year Batman came out on tv, and as a take-off of the Batmobile, my beater was referred to as "The Bat Tank"! I called it "My HEMI" as it had a 354 cid Hemi engine ... with a 2bbl carbureator! (whoopie ding!) ;)

If we had any sort of outing planned, half the kids at school asked if I'd have a space in the Bat Tank that they could claim!


https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/ab/f1/c1/abf1c12e56deb236f529ccd83a1ac83d.jpg

[Chicken Dinner]

That's one of the reasons I like him driving the truck. The flip side is, as Jim indicates, all that room (in both the backseat and the bed) is an attractive nuisance. Virginia does have a rule against more than one unrelated minor in the car (unless an adult is in the front passenger seat) for the first year. My son knows where I stand on that, but from what I've observed it seems to be fairly routinely disregarded.

[Thumper]

Yep, I grew up in a MUCH different time and age. Heck, the Bat Tank didn't even have seatbelts! In those days, even if we got caught drinking and driving, the cops would simply make us pour our booze out on the side of the road, then tell us to go home and he didn't want to see us out again that night.

Even crazier, back then, we got a learner's permit at 14 yrs. old (no clue what the age is now), but as far as I was concerned, it was a "driver's license"! Heck, I even worked for a Cadillac/Pontiac/Buick/GMC dealership in Vicksburg, Mississippi when I was 15. My job? Picking up and delivering customer's automobiles! That included the bigger GMC trucks like dump trucks and the like. I even drove the company tow truck at times to pick up broken down cars. Now, I was not only 15 years old, working at a new car dealer in Mississippi, but driving on a Florida learner's permit!

I once got stopped at a roadblock (while running an errand for my mom) ... a random license check ... and got written up for "driving without a valid driver's license". After I was handed the ticket, I drove home! Even sillier, when I went to pay the fine, I left work on my lunch hour, DROVE to the local JP's HOUSE, parked in her driveway, knocked on the door and sat in front of her desk as she determined my punishment. She charged me $30 for the traffic offense plus an additional $30 for the "State of Mississippi Driver's Education Fund". I even remember her name ... Judge Lucy Dillon (no clue why/how I remember that). I paid my fine, politely thanked her, walked back out to her driveway, then drove my car back to work! Now try THAT in this day and age! :D

I didn't get my actual driver's license until I turned 16.

[Chicken Dinner]

You and me both! Our cops only made us pour out the open ones though. The rest were confiscated - I'm sure for their own post shift enjoyment. I live in the same town I came of age in and I don't get the impression that kids today get those kind of breaks.

[Captain]

True story I had been driving on highways tractors and motorcycles since I was 10 or 12. I bought a new 1973 Honda 750 about a year or so before I got my drivers license. Driver education class was always held in the summers after school was over for the year. I actually drove every day to my drivers ed class. I'd hang out in the smoking area behind the gym until the instructor left and go hop on my bike and head home or to some hoochies house... The 750 was big chit back in those day and gals liked to ride it. :D

[Chicken Dinner]

I remember the summer I was 14 and was helping an Uncle out on his farm. One day he tells me to take his pickup down the road and pick up a load of firewood and then stack it in the wood pile. I wasn't about to tell him I'd never driven before and figured I could wing it. Imagine my surprise when I jump in his truck and am confronted with a 3-speed manual with a column shift. He wasn't too hard on me. I remember him mumbling something about city boys and 14 and the Good Lord. I got my first driving lesson that day and was hell on wheels the rest of the summer. I sure miss that man. Cancer took him way too young.