My little brother, a year younger, had a paper route and threw papers off a motorcycle during the week. Sunday’s paper was huge and too much for his 50 cc bike to carry such a heavy load. Having acquired my drivers license that year I agreed to get up at 5:00 and take him on his route, if he paid me. My dad had a 51 International Pickup with a granny 3 spd that he had gotten from his father who purchased it new. We just thought it was an old, highway stripe yellow colored, pickup that we were kinda ashamed to be seen in, but would do the job. Little brother loaded up the papers and would ride in the back and throw as I drove him on his route. Afterwards we would go “joy riding” all over town till the sun came up. This particular time, we wound up in a park and were doing off road maneuvers in the old truck. The grass was wet and we found out if you got going pretty fast and turned you could do some swell drifting. We were laughing and having fun till the wheels caught on something and we went over, from one side to the other with the passenger door pointing skyward and me laying on top of my brother. We managed to get out the window and push the truck back onto it’s wheels but there wasn’t a fender, hood, or top that didn’t have huge dents in them. Surprisingly, even with oil dripping out the sides of the hood, it started back up. We knew we were toast when my Dad saw the truck and we were too scared to tell him what we had done when we got back home and knowing we would have to wake him up to tell him, so we coasted down the driveway and went and hid in the travel trailer. The sun was up for a while when my Dad came and opened the door and though we knew he was mad, I think he was more relieved to see we were still alive after seeing the truck. Didn’t get to drive the truck on the paper route again and had to do yard work for seems like forever.
I had just bought my first 4x4 truck. Was driving it around the mountains in Colorado on some narrow, muddy roads. Got all turned around and couldn’t figure out how to get out of the maze of trails. I ended up seeing the road way down a grassy slope and made it down okay, but with big, deep, brown muddy ruts tracing down the long green slope. Across the sidewalk in between two condos and tracking mud down the street.
All my old man said was “maybe we should drive out onto the freeway before we head back to our condo”. We had driven down one of the ski slopes at Vail! (We found a car wash up in Eagle too!)