The Fourth “F”

By Brian McLane

Ask anyone.  I’ve long contended that at the center of my life are what I’ve long called the “three F’s:” faith, family and friends. Over the years, those three things – those three touchstones – have fueled just about everything I’ve ever done or dreamed about.

That said, as I spent these past few months gathering my thoughts and dusting off some old memories for this blog, it was pointed out to me that, perhaps, I should think about adding a fourth “F” to the things that have always driven me and kept me grounded.

Freedom.

But not, perhaps, the kind of freedom you’re imagining or “freedom” in a broad and general sense.  No, the freedom I cherished for the bulk of my adult life was a far more specific kind of freedom.

Because I promise you that no one you know – no one – ever relished the ability to get behind the wheel of a car and drive to wherever his imagination took him any more than I did. As a college student, I was a kid full of life and brimming with a giddy mix of confidence and promise. But I was also a kid who’d spent every one of his adolescent and teenage years reliant on others, a kid shut out of so much of life simply because he’d had the misfortune of being born before wheelchair accessible was even a thing.

For me, getting my driver’s license and first car, therefore, was a bit like sprouting wings. It was almost as though, after years of being shackled and earthbound, out of the blue I could fly.

What’s more, behind the wheel of a car I was on equal footing with all those on whom I’d relied so long for my mobility – even if, while they were braking and accelerating with their feet, I was doing so with my fingertips.

Before I got my license and first car, I’d come close to driving only once in my life. One Friday night my senior year at Syracuse, my little brother Terry and I had been at a frat party where he inadvertently fell prey to a drinking game from World War II the GI’s used to call Cardinal Puff. After the party, since Terry was pretty drunk but had a license, and I was sober but had no license, in our infinite wisdom we put our two knuckleheads together and decided to go with something of a McLane family mash-up. Terry’d sit me on his lap, we determined, and he’d control the brake and accelerator pedals, while I sat there, steered the car, and told him when to hit each.

Was it the smartest thing either of us has ever done?  What do you think?  And was it incredibly illegal?  In, I would imagine, just every state in the union – except, perhaps, Alabama, Mississippi and parts of rural Georgia.  But it got us home and in one piece, and it did so without us having to call mom and dad for a ride.

But more than anything, it triggered something inside me. The experience of sitting up and behind the wheel of a car, the city lights stretched out before me, was both liberating and thrilling.  I’d never felt anything like it.  And I knew right then and there I wanted to learn how to drive, if at all possible.

And that feeling was only amplified the very next night.

My girlfriend at the time was working at a women’s store on Marshall Street in the heart of the S.U. campus. She and I’d made plans to double date on Saturday with my friend, Chuck, and his girl. Problem was, Chuck had been the instigator of the Cardinal Puff game the previous night, and my girlfriend was mad at him for getting Terry drunk.  She told me in no uncertain terms that she had no intention of double dating, if Chuck was going to be part of the equation.

I was okay with that. What I wasn’t okay with was having a woman drive me around on a date.  Because the plan had always been – as was always the case – that Chuck would drive the four of us in his car. But when she told me she wasn’t interested in double dating, my mind immediately started racing.  Because at that moment I realized I’d only been on double dates my entire life – since, obviously, I couldn’t drive. And that 1960’s version of me felt it unmanly, if not rude, to be driven to the movies or a restaurant by a member of the fairer sex, much less to have her haul my chair in and out of her car.

The long and short of it was, I realized that night I needed to learn how to drive.  What’s more, I needed to buy myself a damn car.

My desire had not only been amplified but validated a short time earlier when I took a test conducted by the State of New York to measure, as a cerebral palsy victim, the breadth of my physical aptitudes.  It determined, among other things, that I might just be able to drive someday.

When I eventually approached my father with the idea of learning to drive, he looked at me like I had carrots growing out of my ears.  The guy was a Dubliner, a practical Irishman right off the boat, and he just couldn’t wrap his brain around the concept of his wheelchair-bound son being able to drive, much less stop a car.  But I wouldn’t let the idea go.  Before long, our debates got hotter and hotter, and each exchange a little testier than the last – my iron-willed father standing toe-to-toe with his equally determined son, both of us pleading our case and hoping against hope that the light bulb would, somehow, go on over the other guy’s head.

This went on for months, until one day, out of the blue, he looked over his paper and told me there was a special delivery coming for me later that week.  I was puzzled.  “A special delivery?” I asked.  “What is it?”

“Just a little something,” he said almost dismissively as he took a sip of coffee and returned to his paper.

That Saturday, as I was in watching the Game of the Week on NBC, I heard a commotion in the front room.  “Brian, come here. Look!” my mother called, the screen door slamming behind her.  I wheeled my way to the front window and looked out into the driveway, where my family had since gathered.  My eyes suddenly grew as big as saucers.

There in my own driveway sat one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen in my life: a brand new 1970 Chevy Nova – a powerful V8, to boot, and one in an awesome shade of metallic gold.  It had just been delivered by the guys at East Syracuse Chevrolet, where the old man knew the owner. Apparently, he'd done some research and discovered that it was, indeed, possible for those of us without use of our legs to drive a car.

As I wheeled myself down the ramp and toward my family, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Not only was the car mine, but it was entirely retrofitted with hand controls and a specialized and elevated driver’s seat.

I’m not sure why my dad did what he did. Maybe my arguments finally won him over.  Maybe he saw the fire in me and thought it better to feed his son’s passion than to try to kill it.  Or just maybe he was simply being who he was at heart, a good man and a great father.

Regardless, I was as excited as I’ve ever been in my life.  And when I opened my car’s front door for the very first time, looked in, and smelled its unmistakable new-car smell, my father said somewhat matter-of-factly from behind my right shoulder, “Hey, if you’re gonna kill yourself, I just figured it would be better if you didn’t do it in my car.”

I knew my dad. That was Irish code. His kind of Irish code. That crusty old hard-ass whose emotions he kept under lock and key for fear they might actually escape one day, for all intents and purposes might just as well have said, “I love you, Brian. I was wrong. Now, go out there and show all those idiots who doubt you just how wrong they are, too.”     ###

As someone who was always, shall we say, not so much a skilled driver as a colorful and creative one, I suppose yours truly could fill an entire volume simply using my many misadventures behind the wheel. But I leave that to you, my friends. If you have a Brian McLane driving story (or two) you’d like to share, please let me know. I’ll take your anecdote, commit it to the page, and post it in this space under your byline. The more colorful the better, of course. (What’s more, wild embellishments – as you might expect – are not merely accepted. They are encouraged.)   BM