I’m not one given to reminiscing. Life goes forward, not backward. I suppose it was reading of the sad death of Roselynn Carter, US President Jimmy Carter’s wife. He’s been in hospice care for some time and his wife only joined him there two days before she passed away at the age of 96. It was a long life, yet however old one is it’s never quite long enough, if one isn’t in serious pain or distress.
It wasn’t her long life that set me reminiscing, or the ex-president’s at 99 years of age. No, it was reading that they were married in 1946. That’s a date burned into my memory. It would be, it’s the year I was born. I had a sister five years older than me and when we were old enough to have an inkling of such things, we would giggle together that she was the last thing our Dad did before he went off to World War II, and I was the first thing he did when he returned. Then she’d nudge me and giggle, “I wonder if he took his boots off first!” Still embraced in at least the partial innocence of childhood we thought it the funniest thing.
Looking back now over seventy-seven years, it’s just amazing how the world has changed. There’s no sense of time or distance. Events of a long time ago can be brought into focus as though they only occurred yesterday.
There were very few cars back then. My parents were the first in our road to own one. I have a vivid recollection of the day it happened. The sales area wasn’t the plush sort of polished floor palace where one buys a car these days. It was a piece of wasteland on a slight hill and the sales office was a corrugated iron shack, not very pretty but surprisingly strong as we were to discover.
After the initial test drive my parents decided this was the vehicle for them. It was an Austin 10, meaning 10 horse power, quite small but with huge running boards on each side.
1936 Austin 10.
It wasn’t new, probably well pre-war. My parents could not have afforded a new car.
Once the decision was taken to purchase the salesman invited my parents to sign all the documents in the sales office. My father parked the car on the slight slope and my sister and I, who had occupied the back seat during all the goings on, were told to stay put and behave ourselves while the paperwork was completed.
Once the adults were gone we both chatted and giggled at the thought of actually owning one these cherished horseless carriages. My sister started to show off her rather scant knowledge of the vehicle’s various equipment, pointing to the steering wheel, and then the gear lever.
At the age of five years I was not going to be outdone by a mere female when it came to mechanical matters, so leaping up from my seat I reached forward between the front seats for the handbrake. It was a very long, upright device with a silver lever attachment at the top that needed to be pushed forward before the brake could be released. In my enthusiasm not to be outdone by a girl, even if she was five years older, I was halfway through announcing, “And that’s the hand….brake,” while realising my forward momentum had caused me to hit the silver lever rather harder than I had anticipated.
There was a loud, “Click,” followed by a low rumble as tyres gathered momentum. With horror we realised the vehicle was moving down the slope and gathering speed, and heading directly towards the sales office.
Corrugated iron is noisy stuff when disturbed, and it took a violent dislike to being assaulted by a motor car. With hindsight, the old Austin was probably moving at no more than walking pace when it made contact with the front of the sales office. The resulting cacophony of those metal sheets was still sufficient to send mother, father, and salesman rushing outside, ears no doubt still ringing. They soon learned it was not an earthquake that had caused the pandemonium of rattling and noise.
As no actual damage was done to either office or vehicle, recriminations were remarkably few, though on the journey home in the Austin 10 there were lectures from father on the dangers of touching anything within the driving compartment of an automobile.
Frankly, I just couldn’t wait to get behind the steering wheel.