Learning to drive stick, at night, with no clutch, when you're 15,..

I remember when I was 9 years old, that it was STILL going to be 7 years until I could drive.  Like many boys, I dreamed of driving ALL the time.  I "practiced" driving stick shift -mentally-from what I understood of the mechanism.  I ran around making engine noises and shifting gears, much in the same way that my daughter trots, canters, and gallops now.  Dad let us steer the cars home, usually from church, so the middle front seat was hotly contested.  To say the least, I was very ready to drive.

  In yet another, "driving home from Uncle T's" episode, I got my big break when I was 15 (1978).  We were making our way home from the farm in the 72 VW microbus.  I wasn't paying attention much except to notice that we weren't taking the normal route, we were on route 209 or 309 or something. Dad stopped at a light, and there was a lot of thumping on the floorboards accompanied by his usual incantations.  We pulled over to the shoulder (a second home to my family...) and Dad slid under the back of the van.  Here's the weird part, where I need some help...  Somehow, Dad either lost or broke his glasses, or he had already lost them before and now he lost his remaining contact lens, or something, but he was blind as a bat.  So he couldn't drive and to make matters worse, the clutch cable sleeve had split, making the clutch inoperable. 

"We'll need to drive her with no clutch,"  Dad said. My mom didn't drive stick at the time, Jim wasn't there, Jenny didn't think she could but she barely had time to consider.  "I got it, Dad," I said nonchalantly.  "You think you can drive it with no clutch?" he asked, but kind of in an encouraging way.  "I think so," I said.  I'm not sure if Dad remembered that I was almost a year from getting my license, or maybe he couldn't see me that well, maybe it was just desperation.  "Okay," he said, "you'll have to start the engine with the shifter in first, that'll be pretty rough on the starter,..  so try not to stop anywhere if you can possibly help it."  This was it, I was in the driver's seat, sitting high over the road, with my arm out the window in the summer twilight, and driving a vehicle!  I was thrilled but I had to make it seem like just another day, you know, driving a car with no clutch, along a route you don't know with your blind father beside you and the rest of your family sleeping behind you.  They trusted me.  As unlikely as it might sound (to anyone but my family) it turned out to be pretty easy to drive with no clutch, and it wasn't that hard to avoid stopping, though there were moments.  It took another hour and a half to get home, even my dad fell asleep for a while.

  That was my first time driving,..   a car.