Driving

My father always had cars, all second-hand but in very good condition. He took great care to find the best mechanics, so even though his cars were old, they never left him stranded due to an unexpected breakdown.

But he never liked teaching us to drive, at least not his older children. I don't know if he ever gave the younger ones driving lessons. Every time I asked him to teach me, he refused, telling me that a car was more dangerous than a gun, and there was no convincing him otherwise. So I reached adulthood without knowing how to drive a car.

When I started working as a teacher, I was 21 years old, and at that time my salary was enough to support a family. A few months later, I got married, and my wife and I decided it was important to have a car, so for a year I saved up enough for the down payment on a Dodge Dart, an automatic, one of the most popular and economical cars on the market.

When I had the money, I had to ask a friend to pick up the car for me at the dealership. I remember that my wife, he, and I went together. I had taken some lessons at a driving school, but I felt very insecure about driving on my own.

That afternoon, we went to a fairly deserted area of Maracay where I could drive around for three or four blocks. We spent hours driving around at very low speed until I felt I could drive forward, but I still had to learn how to control the reverse gear.

My friend almost forced me to drive the car to my house, which was about five miles away on very busy streets. I gathered my courage and drove very slowly, trying to stay in the right lane. Everyone behind me honked their horns to hurry me up, and I, sweating cold, stuck my hand out the window and motioned for them to pass.

That's how I got home, where there was a very large parking lot. I had already bought two plastic soda crates, which my friend had suggested I use to learn how to park the car. I spent the rest of the afternoon hitting the soda crates until I managed to park the car, in reverse, in my designated space.

In two weeks, I already felt confident enough to drive around the city, but the real test was still ahead of me: driving on the highway to Caracas, a distance of a little over 100 kilometers.

My wife convinced me that I could do it, but I felt insecure. Cars drive at much higher speeds on the highway than in the city, but it had to be done.

We left for Caracas on a Friday at noon, thinking there would be few cars, and indeed there were. From the moment I left Maracay, I looked for the right lane, which for us is the slow lane, and stayed in it until I reached the capital. My average speed must have been about 65 or 70 kilometers per hour. Sometimes I got careless and saw that the speedometer had reached 80, so I slowed down again. On the return trip, I did much better and the average speed remained at about 80 km per hour.

I taught my wife to drive with that car. A year later, my first child was born, and then there was a need for a second car. I started saving again to buy a Jeep CJ7 with a canvas roof.

With the Jeep, the same thing happened as with the car. I had to ask a friend to pick it up from the dealership because I didn't know how to drive a manual transmission. We went to the same lonely spot in Maracay, and that afternoon I learned the basics of shifting gears. It was inevitable that on the way home, the Jeep stalled several times and at other times jumped forward as if it were a runaway horse.

When I felt a little more confident, I went for a drive to a mountainous area east of Maracay. That day was really tough. The climbs were very steep, and I had trouble controlling the clutch; the Jeep kept rolling backwards. Where there were curbs, I would bump into them so they would hold the car until I could get it started. It was at the end of that trip that I really learned how to control the Jeep.

I kept that Jeep for more than twenty years and went to some beautiful places in my country. I have very fond memories of them. Buying the CJ7 was one of the best investments I have ever made.

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