December 3  1964  was a monumentous day. It was a day I thought would never arrive, for I was afraid I would die before it happened. One of my friends had died sliding down a mountain and I thought I would be the next one to suffer such a untimely fate.
I made it! Now I was sixteen years old! As soon as possible I got my learners permit to drive, and as soon as possible I got my drivers license. I was in seventh heaven! That delirium was tempered though by the thought that I would not live to the age of  twenty-one, which at the time was the drinking age and the beginning of adulthood.

Oh well, I was sixteen and there was a good time to be had.
Some time in the spring of 1965, I asked Wally if I could borrow the family car, a 1951 Plymouth 4 door sedan, for a night on the town. He said yes. I talked to three or four friends who would accompany me on the drive about town.

We drove the gut for a couple of hours then someone suggested we drive to Keremeos up Richter Pass way. Knowing that Wally would not approve of me puting a great many miles on his old car, I unhooked the odometer cable and made a mental note of hooking it up later.

We drove and drove and drove. Someone said that the time was late, after midnight, and we still had not reached Keremeos. I turned the car around and returned the way we had come.

Unknown to me, the parents of the boys with me were phoning Wally and asking the whereabouts of their sons. Meantime I was delivering each one of them to their homes.

It was 4am by the time I arrived home. My brain had reminded me to hookup the odometer cable before I arrived home, but my bad judgement kicked in and said do it later, the easier route which I chose.

Auntie Kay awoke me at 7am, 8am, 9am, 10 am, and at 11am I finally got out of bed. Wally confronted me on the odometer gaffe. It was all about broken trust. My reward? A lifetime ban from using the family car! Ouch!

That decision reduced me to my two methods of traveling around the South Okanagan, bicycle and hitch hiking. Bicycle was too slow and hitch hiking was too uncertain. The only other means was motorcycle. The Japanese were marketing the beasts and Honda was the most common.

Where 7 Eleven is now located in Oliver, there was a garage and gas station. The owner was a Honda dealer. I talked Wally into allowing me to buy one, Auntie Kay was totally against the idea! The only one I could afford was the Honda 90cc Sport. Wally would not allow me to borrow any money to buy the classier looking Super Sport.

The Sport cost me all my savings, $ 460.00. The day of purchase was a Friday, I was able to get a license plate but the insurance office was closed before I got there.
We arranged to have the Honda dealer deliver the beast to our yard, so when I arrived home, there it was, sitting on its kickstand, black, shiny and gleaming! I was in seventh heaven! I forgot all about the lack of insurance.

The tank was full of gas, the key was in the ignition, everything was set to go, but I was not allowed to drive it on the highway until I bought insurance which wouldn’t happen until the following Monday.

I drove it up and down the driveway, and through the orchard ducking branches and learning what the machine and I both could take. All weekend was spent driving the beast, I managed to put 25 miles on it in two days, that is a lot when the top speed was 30 mph before you had to slow down again.

When I got the insurance, and upon my mother’s urging, I started wearing a helmet. I drove the machine to school and parked it beside Jim Parks 300cc Honda Dream, that was a machine we all envied, for it was the classiest Honda of them all at the time and the most expensive.

True to Wally’s ban, I never did drive the family car again, but then I started getting my own cars. I also reached the age of 21 and forgot about my fears of not reaching a certain age.
Then in my mid twenties, I got tangled up in a Christian control church where I spent the next 22 years. I’ll talk about that in my next column.

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