A MEMORABLE RIDE ON THE OL PACKARD...

My father, who was known to be fairly obedient (for the most part), evidently had a mind and will of his own when it came to experimenting with the art of testing his will against his father's. In this story, my daddy- once again as a small boy- tested his fate, and his father's temper, and barely made it out alive from this particular scrape.

Dad had decided one day that whatever his father did during his frequent trips to town must have been much more interesting than life back home on the farm. So during one particular afternoon when he was either bored, or simply inherently curious as to how Grandpa passed the hours "in the big city", dad decided to join him in his venture. He asked if he could tag along, and was gently rebuffed by Grandpa, who evidently had some banking business for the farm, and felt it was best to not have the distraction of a small boy in tow. Dad was not about to take no for an answer, but several requests were turned down most decidedly by Grandpa, who loaded his suit jacket and various papers into the old Packard, and proceeded to climb in to start the car. Apparently that process must have taken a while, as I think he had to crank the car in the front, and then adjust everything inside to get the car running. Anyway, once that task was completed, off he went down the little winding dirt lane toward the paved road that led to town.

Along the way, he had quite a few honks, seemingly from friendly neighbors calling out a "howdy" and waving as he drove the several miles on this small two-lane road. When he arrived, he parked, exited the vehicle, and turned to face a friend who approached him rather rapidly. The friend informed him that he had a passenger on board, and asked if he was in the habit of allowing his kids to ride on the running board while he drove. Grandpa walked around the car, and there, hanging on to the handles of both doors on the passenger side, was dad. Now those were some very wide running boards in those days, but not meant for anything other than a footstep, and most decidedly not for errant passengers who wanted to hitch a ride.

Grandpa apparently turned as white as my dad, who evidently got much more adventure than he bargained for in the process of hopping that ride. What exact punishment he received, no one recalled. But he returned a much wiser, and quite unhappy little boy, as for one of the few times I can remember from the family storytellers, Grandpa's method of punishment definitely met the crime, so this was much less gentle than what he met after his time in the backyard tree. Dad never tried this stunt again.