Clutch

State Hill Road twists and turns through two small hills curled into a valley and eventually makes its way to the banks of The Tully. The Tully is what everybody seemed to call the river. It was an area where very few people lived and for the most part it was mostly deserted. Today it is under a hundred feet of water because the stream has been damned. It is and always has been a scenic rural area. Farm tractors were more common than the automobile. Men in feathered caps, drove gigantic, huge Sedans faster than the road was designed. Usually this was done with a beer can in the left hand and their best girl nestled in next to the stick shift. Slim was not a daredevil and he certainly didn’t love to drive. He worked in the steel mill across town and used the time in the car for solitude. He loved his children, yet they had way too many kids. It was peaceful in the car as he was coming through the last of the hills, snow started to fall at the top of the hill and by the time he got to the bottom of the hill, it was a mix of rain and snow. That day, it would turn into a determined heavy snowstorm and he decided that it was time to teach his wife to drive. She had been his wife for 20 years and she never took any interest in driving. It’s about time that she did. It didn’t happen overnight.

Slim got home from work smelling of metal and evaporated sweat. The house smelled of patchouli oil. Red Rose Tea and hearty warm stew. The house was always like that. As the snow pelted the thin windows looking out into the yard, Slim sat down with Matilde and explained how he would like her to learn to drive an automobile. He said this while dunking large slabs of pasty white bread into the steaming soup. The bread mostly dissolved on contact allowing the soup to thicken to a perfect consistency.

“Matilde. I would like to teach you to drive. I know it is something you have showed little interest, but there may be a time where this skill could come in handy.” He said to her as she brushed breadcrumbs out of his day-old beard. She did not respond and sat and watched the snow bombard the windowpane. He followed her gaze and gestured with a useless interpretation of the day.

“It is really coming down out there”

Her enthusiasm toward his suggestion, now semi successfully deflected, was tepid at best.

“I’ll bet you are one great teacher when it comes to teaching someone to drive.” She added back to him. She didn’t want to anger him; however, she knew sarcasm could be lost on him. People who lived in The Coal Regions were a straightforward group of people and those who were not generally moved away.

This part of the story was told to me by my dad so it may be completely accurate, however I simply doubt it. The general direction of the story has been verified, the exact details simply have not.

The snow from the last few weeks had recently melted from the roads that lead to the house. Snowplows rarely made it to these back country roads. Not enough people traveled on them to warrant the work. It was a mild late February and Slim didn’t have to leave for work until early afternoon. He liked to remind everybody he was working the three to eleven.

He drove to the road that ran along the hill above their house, as Matilde observed Slim shifting the gears. He tried to explain how the gas pedals and the break pedal worked. Paul Harvey was talking on the radio, and this seemed to divide her attention.

“You don’t seem be listening Ethel.” He called her Ethel when he was cranky or wanted to get his point across. Hearing the name Ethel was a trigger to her, and she usually went into the shut down mode. Today she avoided their oft repeated argument and tried to get an understanding of the basic concepts of driving without actually driving. Or that is what Slim was expecting. He was not all that articulate as a teacher.

“I am going to park the car on the flat section up there on the hill. You remember the gas is on the right and the brakes on the left. Just go easy.”

“Where are the windshield washers?”

“Dammit women it ain’t going to so that don’t matter.”

“If you want me to learn to drive, you had better be nice to me”

“Here I am getting out, you slide over into the driver’s seat. I’ll get in on the other side.”

And this is how the driving lessons went. Despite not being crazy about driving Matilde thought she had done well. She learned to use the turn signals, how to use the gas pedal and to pull out on a hill. The steering wheel felt like navigating a boat, which she had done before. She even backed into a road that was used for a cattle crossing. The road was gated, and she expertly stopped the car with adequate time to spare.

“Do you want to drive home? “Slim asked his wife as he slowly took out his pipe and started to pack down loose bits of tobacco. The drive was a half mile down a steep hill, and then a quick left before they got to the river.

“Do you think you can pull it into the driveway when we get there?” Slim asked as he lit his pipe. It didn’t light the first time, but he was successful on the second strike.

“We will see when we get there” Ethel responded with a bit of an acerbic tone.

“Did you put any cold beers in the refrigerator?” Slim asked without a response. Ethel was now completely focused on the task at hand.

She was cruising down the hill at a normal pace, yet she got nervous with Slim fidgeting at her side, so she decided she should slow down. This is the longest she had ever driven before. In her panic she applied the brakes, got the left and right thing briefly mixed up and accidentally hit the gas instead of the brakes. She suddenly was going far faster than she remembered Slim taking this hill.

Slim felt a tremor of panic and calmly implored Ethel to slow the car down in a hurry. This was a sentence with complexity in actual meaning which put Ethel into a panic mode.

She reached out her right hand and suddenly put the car into reverse. The calculations that went into that decision were at an appropriate tenth grade level.

And this moment of decision brought the family car to an absolute standstill.

“You dropped the transmission.” Slim yammered.

“No, the car stopped running.” Ethel barked back.

Slim sat and fumed without saying a word.

I really don’t want to drive. I don’t want to learn to drive.

Slim was not a very patient man and did not argue as he did not savor teaching his wife to drive. If she were to learn to drive, she would have to do it on her own. Ethel sat there and fumed as did Slim. Ethel turned on the radio for good measure.

“See the car is fine, the radio still plays. “

Mathilde never learned to drive and never drove a car again.

Many years later she became a widow. Slim passed away from ailments common to coal miners and those who use too much salt. At the ripe old age of about 85 she met a man that that she loved dearly.

She fell in love with his kindness and ability to listen to her. He listened with a keen intensity. Mr. Peterson, she never knew his first name, and she always referred to him as Mr. Peterson. He was not a younger man he was five years her senior, and still they had a relationship that she cherished. I remember driving with her, and she told me about how much she loved Mr. Peterson and their relationship.

One day they were driving through Shillington Pennsylvania. Yes, it should be noted, he still drove a car at the young age of 92. They were driving down to the Acme Market to get some groceries. Apparently he needed some razors, and she wanted to get them those sticky buns she loved. It was a brilliant spring day and the radio played softly in the background. They approached an intersection, and suddenly Mr. Peterson brought the car to a sudden stop.

“What’s wrong Mr. Peterson?” Ethel asked as they sat, idling in the far right hand lane leading to the supermarket.

“ Ethel , my eyesight gave out and I can’t see.”

“Are you sure Mr Peterson”

“ Let’s just sit here a few minutes and then see if it takes care of itself”

There they sat in the second lane of business Route 222, as cars honked and veered to get around them. They figured they could wait this out. It was the middle of the morning and traffic was light and they weren’t in any hurry. Cell phones were not an option , they were pretty much on their own. There they sat and waited for Mr. Peterson’s eyesight to come back. Ethel was calm, confident and composed. They waited and waited and Mr. Peterson could not see the point. It as if his eyes had just reached the end of the warranty period. But love is blind, and with conversations with my grandmother I had come to learn that Ethel truly loved Mr Peterson. It is really a beautiful thing to find love later in life even if you weren’t really looking for it.

“Ethel could you take the wheel of the car and drive us to the end of this block.” Mr Peterson said as he looked for something in the glove compartment.

“I never learned to drive my dear.”

“I somehow knew that.” He said as he put on the sunglasses he found in the glove compartment. It was a silly ornamental pair of sunglasses he brought at the Leesport Farmers market. If the glasses made him look like Roy Orbison, he had pulled off the intended effect.

“You look ridiculous”

“I know but I am happy to be here with you.”