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Off and on throughout my fifty years of existence on this planet, I have had little or no access to a car I could call my own.

When my teenage peers were getting their driver's permits, licenses and finally their own cars, I was dependent upon my parents, my bicycle, and the public school bus to get to the places I needed to go. My mother, fearing I would certainly have an auto accident should I get my license and be allowed to drive, did not encourage me. She herself did not get her license until she was in her 40's.

My family lived at least two miles from the city limits. Many times during the summer, I pedaled my bike into town to get books from the public library. I would stop at the local Dairy Queen to refresh myself before starting on the sweaty two-mile trek home. I had few places I absolutely needed to be so I was not very concerned about owning a car of my own.

When I started college, I lived in an apartment about half a mile from the campus. A public bus ran by my apartment building and I used it frequently. I got a waitress job at a cafe several blocks from the apartment. I was young and healthy and thought nothing of the distances I had to walk to get to and from work, the campus, and my apartment.

Two years later, I transferred to a different university in a different city, one that did not have public transportation. Again, my apartment was several blocks from campus. I walked, but was beginning to wish I had pushed my parents for driving instruction a little more. This was most annoying when it was raining and I had to get to class. I was a music education major and had to learn to play several musical instruments. The long walk to my apartment was especially tiring when I had to carry a French horn or cello in addition to my textbooks.

Then I met my future husband. Within two years we married and left school to live in the trailer court on the outskirts of a small mining town. I depended upon my husband and my own two legs to get anywhere. One winter my husband doubled up with severe abdominal pains. Possible appendicitis the doctor said and urged us to drive to the nearest hospital one hour away. My husband was in too much pain to drive. Terrified, white-knuckled, I somehow managed to transport him to the emergency room driving my husband's stick shift car. I had never driven a manual transmission vehicle in my life.

You would think that experience would have convinced me of the necessity of getting my driver's license. For four or five more years

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