Driving Lessons”

*BACKSTORIES FROM MY MEMOIR ROYAL ROOTS”

 

Bruce Springsteen came late to the utility of automotive technology, in the phrasing  of his biographer. In other words he was late to learn to drive. Why? Because of the terrifying driving lessons from his dad who was bipolar and a scary dude.

 

My dad gave me driving lessons…briefly. It did not go well for me either as my dad was mentally ill and quick to fly off the handle. He did this with 16 year old me while teaching me to drive. He actually got out of the car and said I would need to make my own way home. He said I gave him a nervous breakdown.

 

I describe my dad’s temper and volatility in my memoir ROYAL ROOTS. 

 

DID YOUR DAD TEACH YOU TO DRIVE? How did it go?

 

My dad was a wheel man. I remember good dad days when he would pop little me into the basket of his bike and fly around the neighborhood like we were ET and Elliott. I can still feel the breeze in my little girl curls.

 

He loved motorcycles. I have the letter he wrote home from the service asking his parents for money to buy a motorcycle.  After the horrific incident during the war in 1943 that blew his mind, he was arrested for going AWOL on a motorcycle, wreaking havoc all over Norfolk VA, and being subsequently committed to a secure psych ward for 14 months. After September 1943, his life would be a fractured hell on earth with continual psychiatric treatments until his tragic death in 1980. 

 

My high school friend, and fellow varsity cheerleader, Micky Cullen, finished my driver’s Ed. (1967). My dad drove me to the testing place. The doctor who delivered me happened to be there with his son at the same time. His son and I both went with our respective test monitors. 

 

We came back to our dads in the waiting room at the same time. Dr. Forrester’s son passed. I flunked.

 

Dad seemed resigned to it. For once.