I had to take my truck to get it emissions-tested today. It was my second trip for this purpose; during the first trip, it was discovered that my tailpipe was rusty and full of holes, and repairs were in order. So yesterday I spent a couple of expensive hours at Midas having my exhaust system repaired. "My life and cars," I thought with a sigh as I wrote the check, and it occurred to me that "my life and cars" has been a theme of mine for as far back as I could remember.

My history with cars has been peculiar and full of ambivalence. I am the first woman in my family to be able to drive a car. My sister, a bit younger than me, can also drive, but my mother cannot, and her mother couldn't, either. When my sister and I were growing up, this was not at all unusual. We lived in a very small town in Northern Kentucky, and everything--schools, churches, grocery, drug store, dry goods store, post office, bank--was within a ten-minute walk. Very few people actually owned cars in this little community--my father's green Buick was one of the two automobiles on our block.

For the first ten years of my life, I never saw a woman drive a car. Women used bus transportation if they needed to go outside the town. Buses transported people to Cincinnati and back again, and my sister and I made the fifteen-minute trip "over the river" many times with our mother.

It was not an advantage to me that my father owned a car and could drive it, since I rarely had the opportunity to ride in it. I think my car trips averaged about three or four a year, and consisted of occasional trips to the drive-in movie. My mother was not a frequent passenger in my father's car either. He drove it to work and to the local saloon. I made the connection very early that having a car and being able to drive it were indicators of power. My mother worked outside the home (she rode the bus) and my father, a third-shift railroad switchman, cooked and looked after my sister and me during the day, but the gender lines in our home were nevertheless fairly clear. Dad wore pants, drank beer, came and went as he pleased (alone), and drove the car. Mom wore skirts, drank coffee, came and went according to the bus schedule, usually had my sister and me in tow, and could not drive.

I remember playing "house" with my sister when we were both toddlers, before I had even started school. She would dress up in Mom's clothes and take care of the baby (one of her many dolls). I would put on Dad's work pants, roll up the legs, and Drive the Car. I could not conceive of a wife who could drive, since up to that time I had never seen one. But I knew, even at four or five, that Driving the Car was an act of power. Driving the Car meant that I was in charge of the game, and it was up to me where the family went or whether we went anywhere at all. (When I was asked by relatives what I wanted to do when I grew up, my reply was swift and firm: "I want to drive the car." This was just one of the little eccentricities that convinced my family that I was a mite peculiar. At that time, not a single woman in my family could drive.)

We moved to a slightly larger town when I was ten, and my father had by this time acquired a 1959 Buick, baby-blue with big fins in back. Again, his car was one of just a few on our block. Neither of our next-door neighbors owned cars. But I met kids at the new school whose families owned cars, and I came face to face with women -- mothers! -- who drove cars. Secretly I was amazed; I had been convinced that driving was an exclusively male skill, like being able to pee standing up.

Inspired by all these women drivers, my mother began to pressure my father to teach her to drive, but he resolutely refused. "You're too nervous," he would tell her. Nervous she most certainly was, but I think my dad's motives were less pure than that. As long as she was unable to drive, she was stuck, housebound, without any real liberty to move about freely, tied down as she was with my sister and me. My father fully intended to be the only person in the family with the power to come and go as he pleased.

Never one to take kindly to defeat, my mother started to take driving lessons. My father darkly hinted that this was a bad idea, and no good would come of it. As it turned out, he was right, although probably not for the reasons he had anticipated. Mom took only a few lessons, and then stopped abruptly. My sister and I were told only that the driving instructor had "made advances." We had no idea what that meant, and were not encouraged to pursue the matter. (It was several years later before I figured it out.) My father was grimly smug about the whole business, and my mother was still immobile, and for a time she appeared content to remain so.

I could understand my mother's occasional need to escape, but I did not believe that a car was necessary for that. When I started running away from home at age twelve I rode the bus. At first I just went to Cincinnati; later I would travel greater distances, after I figured out where the Greyhound terminal was. I didn't hitchhike, since I was never entirely comfortable being a passenger in a car, probably because of a number of negative associations I had with that experience. My father would drive drunk with no hesitation, and riding with him when he was under the influence could range from unpleasant to terrifying. These were usually occasions for a screaming match between him and my mother, while he was driving, so there was that added stress. Then there was the car trip I took when I was sent, against my will, to Catholic boarding school, where I was locked away (literally -- this was the sixties) for a year and a half. I came to associate being a passenger in a car with fear, anxiety, and being taken where I did not want to go. Being a passenger meant that you were powerless; to have power, you had to Drive the Car.

It was on one of my Greyhound bus trips that I met my first husband when I was sixteen. The most memorable thing about him was his car: a yellow Buick Electra convertible. It was in this car that I finally made my permanent escape from my parents' home, although I never learned to drive it. When we separated in 1971, we lived in an isolated trailer park on the outskirts of Indianapolis. After I insisted that he leave, I realized that I was stranded in an area with no bus service. I got a job at a K-Mart about three miles away and walked back and forth to work. One night I was walking home in the dark, and a couple of guys pulled over and offered me a ride. I climbed in the car with them, and what followed was one of the most terrifying nights of my life. They drove me far outside the city and raped me, and then obligingly took me back to where they had picked me up. After this I moved into the city--so I could ride the bus. My worst nightmares about being a Powerless Passenger had come sickeningly true.

I met my second husband shortly thereafter, and soon after we were married he decided to teach me to drive. After I got my license, he bought me a car. I did not realize it at the time, but teaching me to drive was probably the most important thing he did for me. Once I had unlimited access to transportation, I could escape. Unlike my trapped mother, I could Drive the Car. Eventually I would drive myself and my children right out of my marriage. My mother was outraged when I got divorced, and it took me several years to figure out that she was jealous--jealous that I had escaped from an alcoholic husband, and jealous that I could take my children and drive away.

About sixteen years ago, my mother asked me to teach her to drive. I agreed, and we had several successful lessons before she finally wrecked my father's car, seriously injuring herself in the process. ("You see, Joyce, I told you this was a bad idea.") I was in the car with her, and still have occasional twinges from the whiplash injury I sustained in the crash. Once again, being a Powerless Passenger had resulted in a bad experience for me. I was thus extremely nervous about teaching my own children to drive, and in fact my oldest child didn't learn to drive until after he went into the Navy. My mother still can't drive, and she still sees it as a terrible lack in her life, a lack that keeps her housebound and trapped. She is dependent on my sister for trips to the doctor and supermarket. Mom's inability to drive has served as an excuse for her unwillingness to make positive changes in her life, and this has been her refrain for decades: "You don't know what it's like to not be able to drive."

In one sense she's mistaken. I have had long periods over the last twenty years during which I did not have a car, and I managed without one. I have utilized many different types of transportation, and I still love to walk. However, Mom is right about one thing: I cannot imagine not being able to drive. Not having a car is very different from not being able to drive. One can rent a car, after all, or borrow one. I remember my father's feeling of impotence during the last year of his life, as the cancer that would eventually kill him sapped more and more of his strength; "I can't even drive," he would moan in frustration, and it was clear that he felt that his masculinity was somehow damaged by his inability to drive his car. He was a Powerless Passenger, and he did not like it at all.

I enjoy being able to drive, and I like the convenience of having access to a vehicle, but I find cars to be rather unreliable, so I always have alternative transportation plans available. I secretly believe that I am a "car jinx," and that any car I own is going to perform erratically; this has turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy several times. (This probably says something about my ambivalence about power; I'm not sure what.) I have a grocery cart, in case I need to shop without a car, and I chose my apartment because it is conveniently located on a bus line. I have structured my life in this way for several years. I have had so many car problems over the years that I am now a fairly good diagnostician, since there are few things that can go wrong with a car that I have not experienced. I can change a tire, change my oil, attach jumper cables, and trouble-shoot all kinds of automotive problems. I have had AAA for the last few years, which does give me a small measure of peace of mind. But I still expect the worst any time I am driving.

I am usually a careful and attentive driver, and I have never had a chargeable accident. I wonder if this is tied to my dreadful experiences as a passenger, and my need to be in control. To this day I am far more comfortable driving than riding, and in fact there are few people I will willingly ride with. But driving is a mixed pleasure for me, and it carries with it elements of fear and anxiety. A lone woman in a broken-down car is a target, a potential victim, and I am always aware of that. And of course a woman driving into a garage with a mysterious car problem is a potential victim of another sort. Occasionally I consider learning about cars so that I can do my own repairs, but that doesn't really appeal to me very much. I have often joked that if I ever remarry, the man will have to be either a garage mechanic or a new-car dealer. I have remained in a couple of relationships longer than I should have because the men I was dating were willing to work on my car. (I wonder what my mother would make of that.) Part of the mystique of being able to Drive the Car has evolved in my mind over the years to the power implicit in being able to Fix the Car, a power which I do not possess, a power which I ascribe to males, as I once did driving. When my truck broke down last fall and left me stranded on a downtown street after dark, I discovered to my dismay that my AAA had expired. In desperation, I called a friend's husband, hoping that he could Fix the Car. He could not, and my opinion of him underwent a subtle but significant shift. I had correctly diagnosed the problem before he even arrived on the scene. Retaining the male perogative, he still insisted on trying to jump-start it, ignoring my protestations that it was a waste of time. It was indeed an exercise in futility, and my mechanic later confirmed my diagnosis. The lesson was clear: almost anybody can Drive the Car, but only a gifted few (mostly males) can Fix the Car.

I have watched urban life evolve over the last forty years, from a culture in which owning a car was unusual and considered a luxury, to a culture in which everyone feels that having a car is necessary. Driving was once something that a few men did, then after a while most men did it, then a few women, and now almost everybody does it. But it is still a gender-inflected activity. Jokes about women drivers are still part of our culture, even though women obtain lower insurance rates precisely because they are better drivers than men and have fewer accidents; I have often thought that this is true partly because women so often travel with youngsters in the car. Sometimes this gender bias works in my favor. I almost never get pulled over, even if I am driving erratically, because I'm a middle-aged woman, and on the two occasions when I have been pulled over in the last fifteen years I have not received a citation, even though the last time I was driving eighty miles an hour in a fifty-five-mile-per-hour zone. "Just slow down and be careful, ma'am," was all the policeman said, "and have a nice evening." I am amazed at the number of women I know who insist that their boyfriends drive when they go out together, even when they take her car. I have a woman friend my age who has never pumped her own gas: "That's his job," she tells me, referring to her husband. I am alternately amused and disgusted at this attitude.

I have absorbed some of the gender-bias that was part of my own enculturation about cars. If I meet a man my own age who doesn't have a car, I assume he's a deadbeat, a pauper, or has lost his license. It doesn't usually occur to me that he might simply choose not to own a car. I have a dear friend who is a thirty-something divorced man. He bought his first car last year, and now he dates. He didn't date for the first three years after his divorce because he was convinced that nobody would go out with him because he didn't have a car. (Sadly, I suspect he was right.) I don't actually know any men my age or younger who are unable to drive; technology has made it possible for even severely disabled people to drive. I only know one woman my age who doesn't drive, and she is legally blind. Significantly, she describes her inability to drive as "powerlessness."

I define power differently now, and I know that Driving the Car was an important symbol for me of my father's autonomy (and my mother's lack of it.) I know that I am competent and self-reliant, able to leave bad situations if I need to, and that this is not really tied to car ownership or even to my ability to drive. But my ideas about driving were very important in my early assessment of gender relations as I observed them between my parents. And if I am going somewhere, regardless of who my traveling companion might be, I still want to Drive the Car. Being a Powerless Passenger is not for me--I'd rather walk. And since I am single now and so have nothing to escape from, I can always just stay home. February, 1998, by Marsha Waggoner