MyThreeDaughters

July 4 was my Grandad’s birthday. He raised 12 children, was once one of the first on the Eastern Shore to own a car, ran a farm, a store, a truck farming business, built a church.
I always felt a closeness to him, even though he was very old even when I was a kid, because he was the only other guy around with blond hair and blue eyes. And he said he was skinny when he was a kid, a pole with shoes like me.
So in honor of his birthday, I tell a story that’s been told to me.
Forty three years ago, when I was two, he and I went to get the mail. His farm lane was a mile long, at the end of which was the mailbox, so you drove to check the mail. There was a gate at the end of the first part of the lane, to keep the sheep in the pasture. If you were alone and had to open the gate, you had to put the car in park, open the gate, drive through, put the car back in park, get out and close the gate.
If you were with someone, the person riding shotgun had gate duty.
So we got to the gate that day, and Granddad got out to open the gate. It being 1966, I was standing on the front seat.
I somehow nudged the car into drive, and the car and I cruised past my grandad. I don’t know at what point it dawned on him that there was not an adult in the car pulling the car through for him. Probably right away.
Had this been in the city, and I’ve read stories like this in the paper, I would have crashed into a pole, a parked car, someone’s house, or mowed down a gaggle of pedestrians.
Instead, I gushed to a stop in a muddy field.
The men folk got the car out of the field.
Despite the lack of a five-point harness, a Britax seat, and despite the metal steering wheel and granite dashboard,
I was unscathed.
Being a parent now, I know I never heard the end of the story. I have no idea if my mom, or her sisters, ever let Granddad hear the end of it.
But like I said, I don’t remember it happening, and I know the story pretty well.