Don’t forget thanks for the little blessings Published 2:17 pm Wednesday, November 20, 2024 By Editor By Les Ferguson, Jr., Columnist Back in the day, you could get your Mississippi driver’s license at the tender age of 15. If you had the correct circumstances, you could apply for a hardship license at 14, like my wife.
But the regular license at 15 had no restrictions or limitations. If you passed the written and actual driving tests, congratulations. You were free to move about the country, and boy, did we? Learning to drive was a challenging task for me.
Some of my kids had the privilege of growing up where they could drive lawnmowers, four-wheelers, an ancient side-by-side, a tractor, and even an old beater truck on a long gravel driveway. A couple of them even got to teach themselves how to drive a standard on the family farm. But me? We grew up in the country, driving a few miles or more on a gravel road.
That road will be necessary for this story to continue. But in the meantime, our daddy was either cheap or poor or both. We had a huge yard to cut and had to do it with an old-fashioned push mower — no self-propelled mower for my brother and me.
Notice my precious sisters were left out of the grass cutting. I hated cutting grass. For years, I swore I would concrete my yard and paint it green when I had one of my own.
But I digress. So, without the opportunity to drive anything else, my learning experience did not always make my dad proud. He had no one to blame b.