The six-year-old truck driver

When he was six my brother Davie graduated driving toy trucks to drive the real thing. He convinced dad to let him drive the truck - alone - through the fields of our company in Montana and around the courtyard. Davie knew all truck driving by then. He rarely missed a movement dad or grandfather made while driving.

It 'was a dismal spectacle watching Davie drive that truck, because he could not see it. It looked like the truck was driving. Then you identify the top six inches of her blond head on the dashboard, his eyes watching carefully in advance. In those days he did not ride in a seated position: he drove with his small fund just brushing the edge of the seat, while his feet on the pedals and grabbed the neck tended to keep their eyes on the dashboard. He drove well, putting his whole body and mind into it. In fact, he drove so well that in the fall that was allowed to drive a truck full of wheat fields over at Our Farm barn in the barn.

That day he glowed with happiness.

When he was eight, he was allowed to drive the family car in the driveway. He spent whole Sunday afternoon to do so. He had the car back at the end of the driveway, stop, change gears, steer the car forward forty feet to the garage, stop, change gears, the machine again at the end of the driveway, stop, change gears ...

One Sunday afternoon when he was nine years began to show the results of these training exercises. The day was March 1, when the snow had melted and the ground just thawed, turning the field next to the house of clay gumbo frozen. Gumbo which was several feet deep. Davie - who has since let us know that David, not Dave ever Davie was the choice of his name - David took the truck out in the middle of gumbo and deliberately stuck to its hubcaps. All afternoon we heard the rumble of trucks and spin and spin noise ... a silence of five minutes, then spin and roar, roar and spin. A miserable, cold and windy afternoon, and even David would be driven in to warm his hands freezing and drink a glass of water.

David reports were always cheerful. The first ad really explained how he got hopelessly mired truck. Following reports that efforts by the chains, tables, and jute bags, all done with their bare hands in the freezing mud.

"It 's halfway out!"

Very roaring from the field.

"It 's almost there, only a few attempts more."

Sounds like a truck from the field in his last agony.

"It 's out!' Out! I took off! "

Glance the kitchen clock. "I think I have time to do it again blocked before it gets dark."