When My Mother learned to Drive or The Doctor Is In (A Full Body Cast)

It was 1975. That was a heck of a year. I was only eight at the time and didn't realize how much truly important stuff was going on.The Vietnam War finally ended. Great Britain got Maggie Thatcher, the first ever lady Prime Minister. The Brits also got 25 percent inflation. Here in the U.S.A., we had our own inflation and a recession. Patty Hearst became Public Enemy Number One and got arrested for armed robbery. Jimmy Hoffa vanished. The first video cassette recorders came on the market. “Jaws” gobbled up the attention of movie-goers.It was also the year my mother learned to drive.Now my mother was in her 30s at the time and it might seem odd that a woman with kids and a business in downtown Omaha somehow made it this long without learning how to drive a car. Sure, maybe in New York City, (As the old saying goes: No one drives in New York. There's too much traffic.) but not Omaha. Somehow, she managed it.She didn't do it by being a homebody, either. This was a woman who did grocery shopping by taxi. As I may have mentioned in previous columns, my folks owned a go-go bar in downtown Omaha. She worked there almost every night, either tending bar or doing the bookkeeping or any of the other hundred or so duties needed to keep a place like that running. Plus, she had to make sure her kids got to school every day with their lunches made and dinner waiting for her family every night plus all the other things one has to do to keep a home running.It makes me tired just thinking about it.So what motivated my mother, who never had any interest in driving, to finally get a driver's license?So here's the thing. When you work in a bar, you do a lot of drinking. I know you think the owners don't have to drink, just serve, but you're wrong. See, customers were always buying drinks for my folks. Especially my father, who was personable and knew how to finagle a drink out of the secretary for the American Temperance Society. When your business sells drinks, you don't turn down a drink. That's just business. If you sold lawnmowers and someone offered to buy you a lawnmower, would you turn it down? Of course not.All this would go a long way to explain why, on an unseasonably balmy March afternoon in Omaha, early afternoon, my father was seriously lit. Except, of course, the bar wasn't open yet.It was a Monday afternoon, which meant my father also needed to get to the bank and deposit all the money the bar took in over the weekend, so there would be funds to cover imminent bills. So he ended up driving to the bank. Also, for no accountable reason, he had one of the go-go dancers my parents employed in the car with him. Years later, I asked my mother about this. She responded, “I don't know how in the hell that all came about and don't give a damn.” (Sorry for the language. My folks worked in a bar, so they cussed a bit).Anywhoo, the dancer was drunk, too. Well, put any two drunks together in a confined space for any period of time and I guarantee you will soon get either (a) a hair-brained get-rich-quick scheme, (b) a plan to drive to Las Vegas/Tijuana or (c) an argument.So they had an argument. My father stopped the car and the dancer got out, slammed the door and stomped away, the heels of her platform go-go boots clacking on the concrete.So what happened next? When angry and drunk, my father was prone to a bit of petulance. A bit. In the words of my mother, “Like a little boy, he stomped on the gas and took off and the car slid and it went into a doctor's office.”So, yes, my father drove his car through the window of a doctor's office and into the waiting room. …to be continued.

A search warrant was conducted by the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office this morning in Fairbury and a suspect was arrested. Read the full story in Friday's edition of FJN.

St. Valentine's Day 1882

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