Nancy Fulton Ingle, Teenage Driving in the Good Old Days

Nancy Fulton Ingle

As a teenage driver, I just used my mom’s old station wagon.  I never had a car of my own until three years after I married. Outside of Wichita, we took the new turnpike and had no problem with the driving. Nowadays, I understand that the driving I did while in high school might be unusual, but I had been driving since I was fourteen. Dad would ask me, every so often, to “Go drive like a teen-ager” to blow out the carburetors.  Different carbs for different ages, I guess.  

Driving little kids was part of the deal. I did not fail to remind my younger siblings that they owed their freedom to me because, if I had messed up, their lives would have been much stricter. Once, I baby-sat with my brother and sister for a week while Mom and Dad were in Florida for a meeting. I was in high school – maybe 16?  Must have been during summer or a school holiday.  Nowadays, parents could be arrested and children taken away for the same things.  I also did overnight baby-sitting with the neighbor’s two little boys. In the pre-McDonald’s days, that was how I earned money. One summer I worked in the Wichita Public Library. When I ran my summer play group two days a week, I drove my campers around in the station wagon to go to the Zoo and other place.  Along with driving came significant freedom. I didn’t even have a curfew until I went to college. 

Molly Mulloy (at left) and I took a Girls’ Trip to Kansas City, driving mom’s station wagon and staying at a decent motel near Country Club Plaza.  We lunched, shopped, had our photo taken and later printed in the Plaza shopper magazine, went to Starlight Theater, and felt very grown-up at the age of 16 or 17.  When we arrived, the clerk at the motel was giving us very strange looks and seemed a little apprehensive.  This was all explained when we got to our reserved room and saw the gigantic spray (think funeral) of white gladioli with a card addressed to me saying, “The Mafia welcomes you to Kansas City.”  I am pretty sure, but it was never confirmed, that Brett Hesser had sent them to me. 

Brett and I went to a car thingy down in Yates Center or someplace like that. His BMW roadster with the welded doors died on us. We spent the night in a rickety, creepy, old two-story wooden hotel which had a rope at the window for a fire escape. We had to wait for a part to fix the alternator brushes (?).  Brett will have to confirm the facts.  I called my parents, of course, but they were cool with it.

Yes, I went to the Senior Prom with Brett (at left) in that car.  My mom came out to the driveway to help stuff me and my full skirt through the window.  How thin and agile I was in those days. 

I still enjoy driving.  Friends have suggested I could be an Uber driver. Hmmm. If I need another career….