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Letting my son drive the Gran Sport.

3K views 19 replies 7 participants last post by  MARTINSR 
#1 ·
I had such a ball today, I was going to get something done out in the garage but the sun was shining and I asked my 15 year old if he wanted to go over to the Highschool and drive the Gran Sport, oh yes he did. Mind you, he is a teen ager x100 he is a loner and says no to just about anything like this so I was thrilled to get him out there. We drove around the parking lot for three and a half hours! It is such good time we talk about everything and it is great father son time, unlike I can EVER get out of him. He first complained a little how it's an automatic. He just couldn't understand why anyone would have bought an automatic car like this. He said "Automatics should be only for woman". LOLOL But after a while he was digging how it handled and he was using the speed bumps as pylons and running a figure 8 around them hanging the corners pretty hot. There wasn't a car in the lot at that time so don't get upset at me. He was REALLY digging the way this car handles, it stays FLAT it really does. And by the end he said "Why did they ever make any other car"? Like this is the car of cars, funny stuff.

Brian



 
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#2 ·
How cool is that? Priceless. :thumbup: That time with your boy is the greatest gift you can give him. Not to mention what it means to you. My daughter reminded me I let her drive the '47 Ford when we went to Pigeon Forge one year when she fist got her license.. I had forgotten it but it was still etched in her mind. :thumbup:

John L
 
#3 ·
I sure remember my dad letting me drive used and new cars he had brought home. Even before I had a license he would let me drive them when we were off road out fishing. You darn tootin it sticks in our heads.

Brian
 
#4 ·
You know whats funny John, I posted this on my facebook page and one of my "friends" on facebook is a man who when he was just 12 or so use to sweep my shop. He posted how he remembers how I let him drive a car and park it out front. I don't remember this but that was a huge thing for him and it is "etched" as you said in his mind. Isn't that neat? I know the man who gave me my first job (at his restoration/hotrod shop) when I was still in highschool let me drive a 29 Model A sport coupe with a SBC out of the shop once, I remember it like it was yesterday, a VERY responsive motor. Moving that car 150 feet was the highlight of my young life at that point. :D

Brian
 
#6 ·
LOL, Nope, he doesn't even have a license, if anyone got this car it would be my oldest son. He drove it to high school a little. I really plan on letting him drive it for a while at least. But I could see that this guy sure would like it.

Brian
 
#7 ·
Very cool Brian. I too took all three of mine to the high school lot for their first time. We were trying to teach my oldest son the wonders of a clutch in my Wife's Corvette. Out of the three, he was the only one who "wanted" to learn a stick. Sadly he was (and still is at the age of 30) terrible at driving a clutch car. The other two (20 and 24) could care less about sticks, neither have been behind the wheel of my wife's car and don't want too:(
 
#9 ·
When he asked to learn to drive he brought up the clutch thing and I told him we can do it in his mom's van so he doesn't have to worry about it and he said no he wanted to learn the manual transmission. So the very first time he ever moved a car it was my Rambler over in the school parking lot. This photo was from that night.



I may have told you guys this pretty funny story during those days back a few months ago. But how many of us, any of us, at any age let alone a guy who learned to drive in 2012 can say he learned how to drive in a Rambler, and not only a Rambler but while he was learning he had to yield to a marching band? LOL, My son will be able to say that the rest of his life. We were going around his school parking lot and he had to yield to the marching band who was practicing there too. :D I tried to get a photo but it was just too dark out.

Brian
 
#8 ·
Precious Moments and Memories MartinSr !:thumbup:
I can remember my Granny teaching me to drive an old 52 three on the tree and of course I'll never forget teaching both of my sons to drive. The smile on that young mans face are worth a million words. Here's a little something from Alan Jackson along those lines.
 
#10 ·
#11 ·
Yes Brian, the memories your son has of that day in the parking lot will be etched in his mind forever. I remember my son and what he tells me now is one of his favorite memories of car moments we shared and I don't know if I ever told this story on the Forum before or not but here goes.

I was working on the front brakes on a car I gave my son for Christmas 5 months earlier, the car was pulling hard to the left and found that a caliper was sticking...I replaced the front rotors, calipers, pads and packed the front wheel bearings on his 79 Pontiac Lemans 305 4 bbl. He was with me the whole time and I got him involved in the repair and the bleeding of the brakes. So now it's time for a test drive and being that it was a Sunday morning, not much traffic on the road, I'm at a red light and for some unknown reason I thought it would be nice to do a burnout...so I did and we did manage to make quite a bit of smoke. My son looks back and tells me that there is a cop right behind us. I told my son to not say a word and let me do all the talking and we stopped for another red light...I did another burn out with the cop right behind me and then I turned into my shop's parking lot. The red lights went on and I opened my window. Before the cop could say anything I told him that I knew he was behind me (which was true) and because one of the front calipers was sticking my son and I where solving a front brake locking up issue and where working on the brakes so that in the future, (which was true) when he drove it the car would be safe for him (which was true). I went on to tell the officer that the reason I had my son with me was so that he could learn how things work on a car and perhaps may not need to rely on a repair shop for everything in the future (which was also true).

The officer looked at both my son's and my hands, saw that they where dirty, turned to my son and said "do you know how lucky you are young man? You have a father that is willing to spend the time to make sure that your safe on the road", and went on and on about how lucky my son was and thanked me for being a good father.

Here we are some 14 or 15 years later and very often when I speak to my son this event comes up, among others, but for some reason this is one that I don't think he'll ever forget....I know I won't....LOL.

Ray
 
#13 ·
Growing up in the 50's,, I think I was around 13 or so,, my dad owned a Chev/Oldsmobile dealership,, he had a old 46 chev sedan ( at that time it wasn't really old , 8 y/o)that he had brought home to keep for himself,, we lived on a dead end road, that had a huge field at the end of it,,he hardly ever drove the car,, so after school one day ,my buddy and I decided to take it for a spin, back in those days everything was stick shift, I got the thing started and down the road we went, got to the end, and the brakes weren't working too good ( of course I was going too fast ,and I went through the fence, trying to turn around ,, I got stuck in mud,, down to the axles,, I knew I was in deep do-do , so we had to get it out someway, so we went to my uncles farm. and took my uncles farm tractor and hooked a chain up to the front bumper,, first yank , off came the bumper,:pain::pain:, (so then we hooked up to something under the car, I think it was the A-Arm ( its been a few years) anyway we finally got the car out of the field, less the bumper. and a few dents and gouges,,
Dragged it back home and washed and cleaned it up as good as we could, we had to park it back in the same spot, or he would notice it being moved, but we had to put it facing the opposite direction because, the thing wouldn't go in reverse.. that was better anyway cause that way the missing front bumper didn't show,
it took about a week for him to notice how it was parked , and when he did ,, I could hear him hollering for a mile,
needless to say, my a z z was burning for a LONG time,, I hated that car after that,, :D and never cared for the 46 chevs either
 
#14 ·
LOLOL, boy does that bring back memories of being a dumb ars. My dad gave me the job to take his truck (55-F100) and go to the dump. I filled up the back, which included a couple of barrels full of garbage. I got the bright idea to dump it down near the bay in an area we called "the salt flats" (near the hundreds of acres of salt ponds where Leslie salt got the salt that is on your dinner table) and keep the five bucks or what ever he gave me to dump it a the dump. So I took the truck and went off towards the dump but ended up at "salt flats" in some trees and dumped my load (what a jerk!) and I hear the helicopter! A helicopter from some government agency (flood control I think) use to fly over the creek near my home once in a while. It had been completely rebuilt a few years earlier so I guess they kept an eye on it. Anyway, I drive out of the trees with the helicopter following me! I was freaked crapping my pants as I drove around away from my house as far from the creek as I dare go waiting for this friggin helicopter to stop it's following me. It finally does and I went home to find out I had left one of the barrels at the salt flats! :pain: So I can't take the truck anymore because I wasn't allowed to just drive it when ever I wanted and I couldn't tell him why I wanted it. So later that night I got a cart from a friend that his family used to put their garbage can on. This cart was basically like an upside down garbage can lid with small casters on the bottom. I rode my bike all the way out to the salt flats (about a mile one way) and hauled that friggin barrel back on the trail along the creek back to my house and it got dark while I was down there, I was FREAKING OUT pulling that darn barrel all that way along the creek. :pain::pain: I would say that taught me better than anything my dad could have ever done. :spank:

Brian
 
#15 ·
WOW...now my 57 year old memory is getting jarred. When I was 14 my buddy and I went halfer's on a 1954 Chevy 4 door. The battery had a hole in it so it needed to be push started, the brakes where well, for lack of better terminology, only working at 50% capacity (because the driver's side, front and back had the steel lines pinched to avoid the metal on metal sound when you applied the brakes). It was green with a bunch of fluorescent Orange graffiti all over it. All this for $5.00.

First thing we did was push start it to get it going and drove it to my Dad's shop about 4 miles away in the country and parked it until we could get enough gas money to go joy riding. Three days later, I had $3.00 for cutting grass, my buddy had a $5.00 bill he rifled out of his mother's purse I'm sure...but he had $5.00 non the less. We took my Dad's 5 gallon Jerry can he used for the lawn mower and put $2.00 worth of gas in the can and it almost filled the gas can. We took turns carrying the gas can the 4 miles to the shop and poured in into the tank of new 1954 Chevy.

Stupid us, we had parked it in a field that was full of weeds and couldn't push it quite as easily as if it was on pavement...Of coarse, I had an idea...my Dad had a shop truck and the key was always hidden under the floor mat...just borrow the truck to push start the 54 and we are then cruising. I jump into the shop truck, fire it up, my buddy is behind the wheel of the 54, I start pushing the car, my buddy pops the clutch, the old car fires up, goes sideways and takes out the headlight, headlight door and puts a dent in the front fender. Not a big deal, we got the car running.

We start driving down a country road (we chose this road because nobody used it any more) having a blast and all of a sudden coming over the top of a hill what do we see but a truck coming right at us...My buddy was driving, hits the brakes, the car pulls hard to right (only had brakes on one side) and we end up in the ditch...we wave the truck driver on saying we're OK (we didn't want any witnesses...Stupid or what) not thinking of how are we going to get this hulk running and out of the ditch. Well if we weren't the two luckiest guys you could imagine...the car started for the first time, the one and only time, off the battery.

I thought to myself that if I had been driving this wouldn't have happened so I insisted that I drive the car back to my Dad's shop. Now my Dad's shop was about 70 feet off of a major Highway, with only a gravel service road leading to the shop, I pull into the service road and what do we see...on the Highway an RCMP patrol car driving along looking for speeders. We weren't speeding, but we didn't have any plates either so we hurried to get the car to my Dad's shop with the RCMP right behind us. We park the car and where invited to sit in the back seat of the cruiser. I am now at the point of wondering what could possibly happen to us and I was the one caught driving so I would get the brunt of whatever punishment was going to be dealt out.

I start pleading with the RCMP officer to please don't take my drivers license away, thinking that I'm 14 years old, the legal age to get a driver's license was 16 years old, they might make me wait until I was 18 years old...(it's amazing what goes through a condemned boys mind at 14). One RCMP officer, of coarse the one that well over 7 feet tall, at least he looked to be that tall at the time, turns to me and says "take your license away, take your license away, your 14, you don't have a license to take away". We did however, both get a summons to appear in court the following Tuesday with one of our parents. I picked my Mom...My Dad volunteered.

My Dad in his wisdom, suggested that we go to the shop and move the eye sore of a car from the front of his shop and move it to the back where it couldn't be seen and to then hand the keys over to him and he would dispose of the car. We headed to the shop and of coarse the car wouldn't start...it needed a push start...with the shop truck...with the busted out headlight and broken headlight door and dented fender....and green paint from the Chevy all over the damaged area. About now I thought that not only would have been better to take my license away until I was 18, it would have been better to give 4 years in the Provincial Penitenitiary so I wouldn't have to deal with the wrath of my Dad.

I looked at my Dad...do any of you remember the cartoons where one of the character's gets angry and he turns red until steam comes out of his ears...he was getting redder and redder...everything but the steam. He walked away, sat in his car (he was driving a 67 Chrysler 300 with the 375 HP 440 CID at the time, beautiful car) for what seemed to be forever. He finally gets out of the car, very calmly gets in the truck, tells me to get in the Chevy and once we get it going to park it in the back, come back to the shop and hand over the keys...which I cheerfully did with a yes sir, three bags full sir, anything you want sir...I walked back to the shop and my Dad told me to get in the car. I started to apologize and he just looked at me which was enough for me to know that he wasn't in a chatty mood at the moment.

Tuesday comes along, I've been dying inside...what's going to happen...are they going to suspend my ability to get a license until I'm 18 years old, is there going to weekend jail time, what in God's name is going to happen to me...we go to court, the judge hears the story...looks at both my buddy and I, and we looked very remorseful and then looks at both parents and says, boys will be boys, if you promise not to do this kind of thing again, I'll suspend sentence...I didn't know what that meant, all I knew was that the judge didn't say anything about no license until I was 18 and I never heard a thing about weekend jail time so I was good...My Dad on the other hand said to the judge, "that's it?" Now I'm thinking, Dad, I'm your son, don't throw me under the bus. The judge told my father that just because he suspended sentence didn't mean that my Dad had to.

OK jail on weekends doesn't sound to bad now...seeing that I worked for my Dad evenings and weekends anyway, how about I work evenings and weekends for free until the $175.00 required to repair the shop truck was worked off and he had a dozen trees that needed to be cut down, stumps removed and back filled with top soil that he would think I would be happy to do seeing he had to take time off from work to hear a judge suspend sentence. I agreed and felt the punishment fit the crime.

You know, when I think back, my Dad took it pretty good, at the time I thought my life as I knew it was over.

Ray
 
#19 ·
Ok, Amigo,, this won't be as long as Rays was . and a bit off tropic ( is that a surprize,,? it what we do best isn't it?
I went to a high school that was a boarding school, kids from all over the country were enrolled there , ( I was was local and a day student) so there was a bunch of kids (mostly girls)that would sneak out at night and kinda party, this was a small town so there wasn't a lot to do,,
My 2 best friends ( Mike &Tony)were sons of the district judge, anyway we would sneak out at night and go to my uncles farm and take his horses out for a ride, we had done this for quite some time and never got caught, so we had a board on the back of the shed that they kept the saddles and stuff in,
This one night we had these girls all lined up to meet us for a ride,, and possable a romp in the straw,:D
we pulled the board off the shed and climbed in and as soon as we got inside, the light came on and there stood My Dad, my uncle, his hired hand, and DA JUDGE,
we were so friggin scared , only thing I could think of was what was it gonna be like in jail,, :pain:
the JUdge just looked at us and said " you 3 little turds be in my court room tomorrow morning at 9am, and walked off with Mike and Tony, They got their Rears beat just like I did,, and the next morning I was really dreading what was gonna happen to us in court,,
in Court we were all sitting at a table, shaking like a leaf, scared to death,
in comes da judge, sits down at his throne, calls us all up in front of his big desk, and started the *** eatin, I remember it like it happened yesterday, You boys are in deep *(&^ you were caught red handed stealing horses, that is a federal offense and is punishable by years of jail time or hanging by the neck, which do you prefer?:pain::pain:
we were crying like a bunch of babys,
the judge continued his rant, and told us he was going to sentence us to 25 years in prison and no chance of getting out till we had served every day, case close,, he told me to go home with my parents, get my stuff together and be ready to head to prison tomorrow,
Mike and Tony were amazed that their own dad would do that to them, but what could we do.. I had a feeling my life was over with,,,
I didn't sleep at all that nigh,,my mom and dad was really quiet, wouldn't talk to me at all, soon it was time to go back to the court house and go to jail,, we got there and saw the judge, in court , he told us he was going to give a little break for 2 months and see how we did in school and to go meet with my uncle and have him give us something to do to repay him for all that trouble w caused him,,
Long story,, but it all turned out good , the judge did this to scare us into changing the direction we were headed,, Believe Me It Worked,
I though for years that I had a criminal record, but actually didn't , and Mike and Tony remained my friends, both grew up to become great attorneys
GUESS I LIED ABOUT THE LEGNTH OF THIS sorry
 
#20 ·
Oh my God that is a hilarious one Jay. Yep I remember like it was yesterday my ride in the back seat of a police car. It was literally about a hundred yards, and that was enough. The cop left us off with the father of my friend who I was with at the time of the offense (stealing a water spraying fire extinguisher). With the cop standing there he had me call my mother. LOLOLOLOLOL I called her and when she answered I didn't say anything and just stood there holding the phone to my ear and then hung it up telling the officer she wasn't home. He left me with my friends dad for him to tell her which was a LOT better than the cop doing it!

Yep, that ended my career as a criminal.

Brian
 
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