SLIM JIM

I got my NC driver's license in August of 1962, one day after my 16th birthday.  It was the most liberating feeling I have probably ever had!  I had wanted my driver's license since I was a small child.  I was obsessed with driving!  The very next month, I would be exiled to a boarding school in another state a couple of hours away.  I would be brutally ripped out of an element that I had prepared my whole life to conquer, only to be thrust into an alien world that would be utterly unimpressed with my careful planning, and no automobiles to use.  I was determined, however, to live as much of my life as possible in the three weeks or so that were left.

I had passed the ubiquitous parallel-parking obstacle in the driver's license test and was thus unleashed on the innocent planet!  My mother had a 1960 Oldsmobile 88 station wagon, one of the largest vehicles ever built!  It also had a very large, powerful V-8 engine!  Therefore, one balmy summer day I was demonstrating for one of my evil friends a major discovery: how to manipulate the "Slim-Jim" Hydramatic transmission in that Olds to make it "get rubber" like a manual-shift!!  It first required mashing the shit out of the accelerator, pushing the car really fast, then taking one's foot completely OFF the accelerator just as the transmission is shifting from a lower gear to a higher gear!  As there is a momentary neutral pause between gears, I then would slam my foot back down on the accelerator and hold it firmly in place!  That would cause the very powerful and big engine to scream loudly in that momentary neutral then, as the next gear catches, the car would lurch forward with a roar and, sometimes, squeal the tires!  It was fantastic!  For some stupid reason, there was only one exhaust pipe on that car, all of its 8 cylinders having to push their burnt fuel gases out a single tailpipe that would make a vicious hissing sound like a jet plane taking off!  It was SO gratifying to my 16-year-old ears!

Well, as an unindicted co-conspirator, I was enjoying these manifestations so much!  My evil friends were horribly bad influences on me; they would encourage the WORST in me!  As we roared down the long straight stretch along the local golf course that day, we were laughing maniacally!  A woman on the golf course asked my MOTHER if that was not her car roaring down the road!  They were out there playing golf, I was showing off most horribly right in front of my mother's eyes!  With her car!  Duh!  Needless to say, when Mom got home, she ate my ass alive!  It was all my friends' fault!

I think I now understand why I was put into boarding school.