The way we were when we were car crazy...

Heffernan's 40 Ford

Written by Jim Heffernan for the DuluthNewsTribune/10-5-24

One of my grandsons recently passed his driver’s license test upon turning age 16. He’s very happy to be able to legally drive a car, just as his older brothers and cousins were before him.

But this milestone seems more routine these days compared to when I got my driver’s license many long years ago, at mid-20th century. Being able to drive was a huge deal in the lives of teenage boys of my generation.

 Back then we were able to get a permit and take the driver’s test at age 15, and most of us promptly did so. The reason is we were what was referred to as “car crazy.” I don’t think many of today’s teens, including my progeny, are car crazy, even though they are pleased to have passed this D.L. milestone and sometimes speak of Lamborghinis.

 

Passing the driver’s test for me and some of my friends was considered the overarching achievement of our lives then and forevermore, amen. It was everything we wanted to achieve in life. Crazy? Of course. Car crazy.

 

In those days, the tests were headquartered at the National Guard Armory on London Road where Bob Dylan saw Buddy Holly perform a few years later. You can’t mention the Armory without including that. Never mind that world renowned composer-pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff once performed there too. 

 

A Minnesota highway patrolman known as Officer Blinn (maybe not his exact name, but close) gave the tests, with dreaded parallel parking roped off on Jefferson Street alongside the north face of the Armory.

 

A close friend, a few months older than I, passed the test before me with an almost perfect score — 98 of a possible, flawless, 100. Whew, that was daunting for me when my turn came around a few months later. And I didn’t achieve it but I did OK with an 87. Seventy was passing.

 

Why do I recall all this so vividly lo these many decades later? Because it was so important to most boys of my generation. It opened the door to possibly getting a car of one’s own, and “customizing” it into something akin to a “hot rod.”

 

Customizing involved altering the outside of the car by removing such things as hood ornaments and trunk handles, filling the remaining holes with lead and repainting. Lowering the rear end was also de rigueur.

 

Possibly the most important alteration (other than huge fuzzy dice dangling from the inside rear-view mirror), was installing dual exhausts with “Smitty” steel-packed mufflers that rumbled loudly through chromium echo cans on the tail pipes when the engine was revved. These were called “twin pipes.” (Later, after I got car of my own, I was pulled over and ticketed by a Duluth cop for having those loud mufflers on my twin pipes.)

 

Mechanically minded kids “souped up” their engines so they could beat the drag race competition at downtown traffic signals.

 

But back to the state driver’s test at the Duluth Armory, where, about a week after I passed the test, I almost lost my license.

 

I was allowed to take the family car — no twin pipes — to school on the day of a city-wide high school music festival at the Armory, which I attended with other Denfeld kids. On a lunchtime break from the festival, a friend lined up a trio of girls from another high school to join us for a noontime joyride in my family’s car. Fun.

 

With the girls in the back seat and my friend riding shotgun, I “peeled” out of my parking place on London Road and began roaring through the neighborhood, “scratching” in second gear when I shifted. Scratching meant making the tires squeal by popping the clutch and “goosing” the engine when shifting a manual transmission from low to second gear. Peeling out was also known as “burning rubber.”

 

Just about every 15-year-old driver tried it, and my dad’s car always responded well, even if he wouldn’t have. Ford V-8.

 

Anyway, after tearing around the Armory neighborhood for several minutes we arrived back outside the festival where I screeched to a stop, a uniformed law officer waving me down. Yikes, it was Officer Blinn who had passed me in the road test barely a week before.

 

He strode over to my side window and sternly said something like, “Any more driving like that and I’ll take that license away from you.”

 

I was chagrined, the passengers in the car cowed, and I never drove that way again until the next time I got the family car a few days later. There was something about peeling out and scratching in second that couldn’t be resisted…when you were 15.

 

But don’t tell my grandchildren.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.