A Hair-Raising First Drive, c.1936: Travel Tuesday

I cannot resist sharing my father's memory of his first car.  I was lucky that he wrote down for me stories of his life in  "Family Recollections".   Dad was a commercial traveller  and in the 1930's got a new job with instructions to pick up a car at Derby and drive 90 miles north  to a position in Blackpool.  He had never driven before and here is his tale of his first  hair- raising journey.

""I had never driven a car before.  On Boxing Day, I went to the British School of Motoring and said I wanted some urgent lessons.  When I told the instructor I was driving to Blackpool the next day, he nearly had a fit.  I collected my car - a four door Morris saloon which I was expected to buy on hire  purchase at 18 shillings per week.  It was a traumatic journey with me being  a complete novice, having had no proper tuition.  There was no heating, no radio of course to help pass the time, and the windscreen wipers kept seizing up.  I had also been told that the tyres were awful for punctures.  Still I made it, as darkness fell - just as well, as I wasn't too sure about the lights!"

The photograph shows my Dad, John Weston (on the left) with his brother Charles. I was delighted to get this photograph from my cousin,  as it  is one of the few photographs I have of my father prior to his marriage in 1938  to my mother Kathleen Danson.   John and Charles were close as  brothers and often went on motoring trips together.

Copyright © 2011 · Susan Donaldson.  All Rights Reserved

An adaptation of an earlier posting for Wordless Wednesday