Handing me the car keys

I'm not exactly sure when it started, but I drove almost every time Gumpy and I went somewhere together after I started college. There was little begging on my part, usually he just tossed me the keys on the way out the door.

What made this remarkable was how much he loved driving himself.  Few people could ever drive the right way.  He was very particular about how someone should drive, so much so that he would not let my mom drive his truck without appropriate lessons.  Even after administering the lessons, he still wouldn't relinquish the keys to his truck to her.

I know his penchant for perfect driving started when he asked his dad for permission to drive the family car for the first time.  A few years earlier his brother had borrowed the family car and had a wreck that totaled the two week old vehicle.  So Gumpy's dad let him borrow the car with the understanding that it would be returned dent and scratch free.

Even in his colorful late teens and early twenties, the car was always returned without a scratch.  He only had two speeding tickets on his driving record, which he received in Bellevue, MI.  After the second one, he told the officer that he would no longer be spending any money in Bellevue.  It was a promise he kept until he stopped driving.

He never accelerated hard, always gave plenty of room between him and the car in front of him and would only slam on the breaks to avoid an accident.  He did not accelerate up to a stop sign, he would see the sign and take his foot off the gas, allowing the car to coast until it was time to stop.  When the car was up to cruising speed, he did his best to keep the flivver at that speed consistently.  Even when he was pulling a 5th wheel trailer, riding with him was drama free.

I must have picked up some of that because he rarely complained about my driving.  He would comment if I was accelerating a bit too fast for his liking and he hated when I would drive my customary five miles per hour over the speed limit.  Even with his occasional complaints, he always rode shotgun.  I still miss having him as my passenger.