I was thinking recently how my father trained me to think like an engineer. Likely this was because he had wanted to become an electrical engineer but his father wouldn't let him become that during the Great Depression for a variety of reasons. On top of all this he was Valedictorian of his Senior High School Class in Seattle and so he eventually became an electrician like his father and an Electrical Contractor like his father in Los Angeles as well.
So, I was thinking how and why I did my first term paper at age 15 (sophomore in High School) on the History of the Automobile.
Also, my family had cars pretty much from the beginning of cars because my family was mobile (my father's father. My father's father was born in the 1870s and my Great Grandfather was born in the 1840s and was a Captain in the Kansas Union Army during the Civil war. I know for sure that my Grandfather who was born in the late 1870s was a baseball player nicknamed "Pinky" because he had Red Hair who was a pitcher when he was young. I also know he traveled a lot and after he met his wife they lived in Oregon, Arizona, Texas and Washington because my grandfather was an electrical Contractor and went wherever the work was and took his family with him. I know that that from about the early 1920s (my Dad would have been 4 in 1920) they had a Dodge vehicle that had wooden spoke wheels and they traveled from California to Texas over dirt and rock roads because paved roads only existed inside of larger cities then in the early 1920s. I know that my father talked about being a child and the only one with Goggles so their eyes didn't burn was their Dad who was the driver with this now old Dodge and their eyes burned from Alkali Dust on the roads through Arizona and New Mexico Deserts whenever they drove over these sections. My father told me how the alkali in the dust made your eyes cry and made sores inside your mouth that took a month or two to heal. I know that the car had windows on the side but had a fabric roof and so if the weather was good they left it open to the air and put the fabric roof in place when it was raining but rain came in a little through the windows on the side because the seal wasn't perfect. I know that they tied their dogs onto the running boards (at that time they always kept at least 2 hunting dogs) because my grandfather was a hunter. This was what my grandfather liked to do in his spare time (hunt for food for his family).
I know that I think at one point when they moved to Breckenridge Texas I believe a bully kept beating up my Dad's oldest brother so Grandfather told him he had to make the bully stop beating him up anyway he could. So, my Dad's oldest brother got a 2 by 4 plank and waited around a corner for the bully and hit him on the head with the wooden plank and knocked him out and the bully stopped beating his older brother up after that. This was how things were done in the 1920s to stay alive from bullies. It was a little like this when I grew up too to where you had to be able to hit a bully harder than they hit you to not have to fight them. So, it was the same principle when I grew up in the 1950s too. But, it's different now that everyone uses guns and gangs are such a problem too. There weren't as many gangs when I grew up.
I remember my father wanted me to be able to drive a car in an emergency for the family just like he had to when he was young when his father was away at work and his mother was pregnant with his youngest sister. He told me the story of being remote and there were 3 brothers all under 12 and one of them operated the brakes, the oldest one the steering wheel and the other one the stick shift on the floor and clutch and they had to drive their mother to the hospital because the Dad was working on a job and couldn't help right then and didn't have a phone while working doing electrical work. So, the three boys drove their mother to the hospital to have their littlest sister while their mother held their other sister because she was under 5 then.
So, the first time my father wanted me to drive a car in an emergency I was 8 years old. I had been sitting on his lap and steering for him when it was safe to do that since I was 4 years old. So, at 8 he had me drive his new car which was a 1956 Century Buick when I was 8. One day on a back road he just got out of the car and told me to drive it for a block so I did. He seemed satisfied that I was a competent driver in an emergency and so was happy at this point. Later that year my grandmother gave me my Dad's old Remington Pump 17 shot .22 rifle and bullets to keep in my bedroom to protect the family which had been traditional for about 400 years at that point too.
It was an amazing honor to be thought stable and conscientious enough for these two honors in my life at age 8. These two things were not lightly given and it was being given adult responsibilities in some ways to protect the family in emergencies which had been traditional for hundreds or even thousands of years in my family down through history.
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