Rebecca Copeland's Blog, page 3

Between an Economist and an Economizer: On Learning to Spend Money

“I’ll take the sirloin steak, I guess.”

“Hamburger?” Dennis asked with disdain. “You’re going to get a hamburger?”

His parents had invited us to an Italian restaurant in Manhattan to celebrate our engagement.

The restaurant was far more elegant than any I was accustomed to: white table clothes, candles and flowers on each table, waiters in crisp white shirts with bowties.

Our waiter rolled his eyes.

“And how would you like that prepared, Miss?”

“Medium,” I said, uncertainly.

“Becky, do you really want a hamburger?”

Dennis was not going to give up. His parents looked at me with some suspicion.

I glanced over the menu again. I was not familiar with most of the items on the menu: prime rib, porterhouse, filet mignon, medallions… And, I didn’t even know that a “sirloin steak” was a hamburger. I had simply scanned the right side of the menu for the prices.

Some of the entrees didn’t even have a price!

I selected “sirloin steak,” because it was the least expensive—and even then it was far more than I would have paid.

“Maybe I should get the spaghetti and meatballs,” I ran my gaze over to items under the header “Primi Piatti.”

“We’re being treated, Becky. This is a celebration. You should order what you want.”

By now, Dennis knew that I was almost pathologically price conscious.

Cost was one thing, of course, but I was also woefully unfamiliar with cuts of meat and any food not served at a church picnic.

Occasionally, Mother would prepare a t-bone steak when I was growing up. It was always the cheapest selection she could find at the Winn Dixie. Invariably the steaks were tough, and after she broiled them, even tougher. The only way I could make it through the meal was with copious amounts of A-1 Sauce.

I noticed there were no bottles of sauce of any kind on the table. Not even ketchup. I guess that meant no French Fries.

Once in a blue moon Mother prepared a pot roast. I always found the meat stringy and so chewy my jaws would ache after the meal.

Not that Mother was a bad cook.

She could whip up a good pork chop, and the hams she prepared were always tender and juicy.

My brother and I had fun when she fried salmon patties because they came with bones that resembled tiny spools. I wanted to make jewelry with the ones I collected, but Mother always threw them away.

It was her fried chicken that I especially enjoyed. Whenever it was my birthday, that’s what I always requested along with rice, gravy, and green beans that had been stewed to a pulp in fatback. Add some homemade buttermilk biscuits and my favorite white cake with chocolate icing and I was in culinary heaven.

There was nothing like that on this menu though.

I looked at Dennis in panic.

“Try the filet mignon,” he suggested.

“Will the lady have the filet, then?” the waiter asked. He had a slight accent.

“Yes. Make it medium rare,” Dennis instructed, handing the waiter my menu.

His parents looked visibly relieved.

“Medium rare?” I whispered to Dennis. “Will it be bloody?”

“If it’s cooked too long, it loses flavor and gets too tough,” he explained.

That must have been Mother’s mistake. But my older sisters were squeamish with meat that was pink. And so I was, too.

I can’t remember much about the meal now. We had drinks before dinner. Mine was a whisky sour. Wine with dinner—a heavy red. And sambuca after dinner, complements of Vito, the owner.

What I remember about the dinner, was the lesson it provided.
On the way home, Dennis returned to the question of the menu.

“You wanted the sirloin steak because it was the cheapest on the menu, right?”

“Right. Everything was so expensive.”

“But what did you WANT to eat?”

“Honestly, I didn’t know. I didn’t even know that a sirloin steak was a hamburger. I just didn’t want to spend so much money on a single meal. I mean, it seems wasteful.”

“The sirloin was $12.00, the filet was $15.00, and my parents were paying. Really, Becky, you need to allow yourself to splurge now and then.”

I was on such a tight shoestring of a budget, though, trying to pay my way through graduate school, and I’d spent my entire life watching my mother agonize about spending money.

At the Winn Dixie, she only bought the store’s “Thrifty Maid” brand. And often only when there was a sale.

We’d have to push the grocery cart past all the foods we saw advertised on TV—the Fruit Loops and Cocoa Puffs—to buy whatever was cheap and available in bulk. No real butter, no fancy brands, and definitely no filet mignon!

Once a week we were allowed “a coke,” only it was really Chek Cola or some other off brand. Sweet, but without the zesty fizz of a real Coke.

Mother had ingenious ways to economize. When she made us soup, for example, she added extra water to create a fuller pot. She’d cut the milk we used with a powdered product. And once a month she’d drive to the big Wonder Bread outlet to buy the leftover bread at a discount. She’d put what she got into the freezer and thaw it out as the weeks went by for toast and grilled cheese sandwiches.

She collected S&H Green stamps.

Mother was a superb economist.

But so was Dennis. And his economic practices were completely unlike Mother’s.

“It makes no sense to choose something just because it is cheap,” he’d tell me. “Cheap things leave you unsatisfied, or they break. You end up spending more because you need to keep replacing them. Every now and then, you need to buy yourself what you really like.”

Even so, Dennis was not a spendthrift.

He also came from modest means. Somehow, though, his parents still managed to enjoy nice things. They always treated us to fancy dinners in the city; once a year, they went on a week-long vacation, and for Christmas they were generous with all three of their children.

Dennis enjoyed haggling. He loved to look for a bargain. He bought nice things, but only after scouring all the stores for the best deals.

For me, it was easier just to stick with what was cheapest—it took far less energy. And, cheap things didn’t always break.

Today when I head to the store, both Mother and Dennis accompany me (virtually, of course); my mother from the grave, and Dennis from a long-ago memory.

“Look at the Laura Lynn store brand coffee,” Mother will offer. “It’s on sale.”

I’ll survey the shelves in the Ingles grocery store.

“Yeah, but the “Jamaica Blue Mountain” is just so much better,” the Dennis voice will rebut.

“I don’t know….” I’ll stall, pondering the options.

“That “Jamaica Blue Mountain” is so ex-PEN-se-ive,” Mother will caution, drawing out the syllables to emphasize the cost.

“Becky, look, for a few dollars more, you can enjoy a really good cup of coffee. Spread the cost difference out over the month, and you’re really not spending much at all!”

Mother won that round, but only because I’m not much of a coffee connoisseur. I buy bottom-shelf wine, too, for the same reason.

Perhaps thanks to my mother, my palate prefers a cheaper taste.

Now and then, though, on the big items, on getting the leather seats in the car or the granite countertop for the kitchen, I let Dennis coax me into the higher prices.

The post Between an Economist and an Economizer: On Learning to Spend Money appeared first on Rebecca Copeland.

Driving for Destiny: How a Cup of Coffee Became a Trip to New York and More

I hadn’t expected him to order coffee.

No one ever did.

I’d been working the midday shift at Charlie Goodnights for a week by then. In fact, hardly anyone bothered to stop by the bar on Hillsborough Street before 7:00 pm. My shift ended at 8:00.

Mostly I spent my time setting up the bar in preparation for the late-night rush of college students from NC State, stocking the beer cabinets, refilling the popcorn maker.

I hadn’t really noticed the coffee, to tell you the truth.

I could smell it, competing with the stale beer from the draft tap overflow bins and the rancid buttery smell of popcorn.

I don’t think anyone had brewed a fresh pot for several days.

“It’s not fresh,” I told him.

“I don’t care,” he said. “I need the caffeine.”

He had a northern accent. Not quite New Jersey. Maybe New York?

He pulled a magazine out from the satchel he had set on the bar stool next to him—The Economist—and started to thumb through it.

I set the mug of pitch-black coffee in front of him.

“Cream and sugar?”

“Black’s fine,” he said and took a swig.

“On second thought, I’ll take some cream.”

I pulled the cup-sized metal pitcher out of the small refrigerator behind me, placed it on the bar next to the coffee, searched out a clean spoon, and then went back to washing and drying beer mugs.

“I haven’t seen you here before,” he said, eyeing me.

His dark eyes were bright, a bit intense, and strangely inviting.

“I just started last week,” I said.

“How’d you pull this shift?” he asked. “Don’t you die of boredom here?”

“I don’t mind. I like the quiet.”

Before I knew it, I was telling him about my work schedule, my job delivering pizza on the days I didn’t work at Charlie Goodnights, my mornings reading to the visually-impaired state employee.

“Why so many jobs?”

“I’m trying to raise money for graduate school.”

“What’s your subject?” he asked, as he continued to thumb through his magazine. Probably he expected something like nursing or education.

“Japanese literature.”

He looked up sharply, shutting the magazine with a snap.

“Japanese? I didn’t know they taught that here.”

“They don’t.”

His eyes were framed by aviator-shaped glasses. Bedroom eyes. They were large and slightly droopy, kind of like Dustin Hoffman’s. He had Hoffman’s sly smirk, too, and thick black hair that curled behind his ears and over his collar.

For fun I had him guess where I had been admitted. He went down the list of local schools, and at each name I shook my head.

“Okay. I give up. Where?”

“Columbia.”

“New York, Columbia?” his dark eyebrows shot up in surprise.

“Yes.”

“Wow. I’m impressed.”

“Really?”

“I’ve been in Raleigh for two years now and you’re the first person I’ve met who’s even mentioned Columbia.”

It turned out, he was from Allentown, Pennsylvania and was just finishing his Masters degree in Economics at NC State.

He had the kind of confidence and directness typical of a “Yankee.” In some people, it turns me off. But I found his bravado appealing.

He pulled a pen and notebook out of his satchel, tore out a scrap of paper and wrote something down. He folded the paper, set it on the bar, and handed me a $5 bill. I turned to the register to make change.

“Keep it,” he said. “And here’s another tip.” He tapped the folded scrap, picked up his satchel, and sauntered to the door.

I unfolded the paper. “This is the best tip you’ll ever get: Go out with me.”

When I looked up, he had gone.

I took his advice, though. Two days later I met him at the bell tower on campus, and we strolled together down Hillsborough Street. We were all the way to the Capitol before I realized how far we’d gone.

After that, he took me to movies, to dinners, to his boarding house on Bloodworth Street. When the summer of 1978 came to an end, he took me to New York.

Originally, my brother, Luke, had planned to drive the Chevy Nova to the city and drop me off. We were both nervous about the excursion. How would we find my dormitory, where would he park? There were so many unknowns.

Dennis was on his way to take a teaching position at Shippensburg College in Pennsylvania.

“It’s not far from the city,” he said. “I can drive you there.”

I trusted him and his swagger. Dennis was not afraid of anything.

We loaded his car with my suitcases; I still had the red vinyl ones I had gotten as a high school graduation present. I had two boxes of the books, all accumulated in college: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance—which all the incoming students had had to read— the collected works of Chaucer, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Mishima Yukio’s tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility (in translation), and more.

“Do you need all these books?”

“I think so.”

Dennis urged me to limit what I packed. The dorm room would be miniscule, he explained. He balked at the old “Persian rug” I dragged out to the car. I had gotten the rug from an older dorm mate at St. Andrews after she graduated. I inherited her dorm room, too. I enjoyed the warm sophistication the carpet lent the linoleum floors.

“I can keep it for you,” he offered when I hesitated to part with the rug.

And off we went to the big city, to more dates, to visits with his parents, and to marriage.

The tip Dennis gave me that afternoon at Charlie Goodnights paid off.

The post Driving for Destiny: How a Cup of Coffee Became a Trip to New York and More appeared first on Rebecca Copeland.

The Summer I Ate Mistakes: Delivering for Domino’s, Part II

Some evenings, I was so hungry, I would walk into the refrigerated case and scoop up a handful of the pre-shredded cheese to eat. I was tempted to pinch off pieces of raw dough, but that would have been too noticeable.

I had to be quick.

Whenever Dave sent me into the cooler to bring out a new bin of pepperonis, I’d sneak a mouthful of shredded cheese.

Pepperoni was the most popular topping.

That and sausage.

After that it was green peppers, banana peppers, and mushrooms.

The black olives waited on the counter, barely noticed, a glistening film slowly spreading over the surface of the bin.

If I had been smart, I would have stuffed my mouth with them. Dave would never have noticed. But the cheese coated my stomach and took the edge off my hunger.

I worked three jobs the summer of 1978 in Raleigh, North Carolina. I needed to make enough money to help offset some of the costs of living in New York City, where I was heading in a month or so for graduate school.

I didn’t have much money for food, but more than that, I hardly had time to shop, let alone cook. I was up at 8:00 am to catch the bus to West Jones Street. I worked from 9:00-12:00 in the Legislative Office Building, reading mail and typing documents for a visually impaired state employee—my first real taste of affirmative action. Once that was over, I rushed home to change and either went to my job at Charlie Goodnights on Hillsborough Street, where I worked 3:00-8:00 tending bar, or I headed to the Domino’s store on Oberlin and jockeyed pizza.

“No eating the supplies!”

The note greeted me one evening when I got to work.

“Someone’s been eating in the refrigerator,” Dave explained. He clearly suspected the new guy, Cody.

Cody had just graduated high school and had the physique of a football player—wide shoulders and narrow waist—the blue Dominos polo shirt strained to cover his muscular biceps. Dave and the assistant manager, Kevin, sent him on runs to the sketchier neighborhoods, worrying that it was too dangerous for me.

Once, when Cody was on vacation, they had no choice but to send me to a dicey location.  It was a run to a video store near the Moore Square bus station. They were pretty sure the owner, who had ordered an extra-large “meat deluxe” pizza, dealt pornography.

“Just drop it and come straight back,” Dave instructed. “If you’re not back in 45 minutes, we’re calling the cops.”

I picked up the warm pizza box, slid it in the blue pizza sleeve to retain the heat, and tipped my red ball cap at them as I rushed out the door.

I rang the buzzer alongside a dark, unmarked door when I reached the destination. The door lock clicked opened and I pushed my way into a narrow vestibule. The walls were bare and grimy. Straight ahead was a counter of sorts in front of a closed, tinted window. The room was completely empty. I felt a chill run over my neck, despite the heat, and was deciding that maybe I should leave when I heard a rustling behind the glass. A heavy-set man with strands of greasy black hair plastered over his nearly bald pate slid the window open, a bank of VHS tapes behind him.

“Just set the pizza down,” he said, gesturing to the empty counter.

He gave me a $50 bill and told me to keep the change.

That was the best tip I received all summer.

The bartender at The Mousetrap also tipped well. Dave hadn’t told me much about the place when he sent me off on a run to the club at Five Points.

“It’s next to the Rialto movie theater,” was all he said.

I had walked past the club earlier when I went to the Rialto with Tim Silva to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show but hadn’t even noticed it.

I pushed open the doors and found myself in a dark room that smelled of stale cigarettes. It was still early, and no one else was there except a man behind the bar washing glasses. He looked up at me and then went back to his task, his face darkening slightly.

“Just leave it on the table.”

There was a large photograph on the wall next to the bar of two men kissing.

I breathed a sigh of relief, realizing I didn’t need to worry about him hitting on me.

He opened the register and put two twenties on the bar, gestured for me to take the cash, and then turned back to his washing.

As I walked out with my empty pizza sleeve, stuffing the change in my pocket, I could see the signboard in front of the Hayes-Barton Baptist Church across the street.

“Life’s battles are won on our knees.”

Hayes-Barton was the church Senator Jesse Helms attended, when he wasn’t busy in Washington, D. C. opposing civil rights, disability rights, women’s rights, gay rights, or any other expression of individual freedom.

I couldn’t help but snicker at the brilliant irony.

The following week when The Mousetrap ordered again, Dave sent Cody.

Kevin and I could hardly stifle our laugher, imagining the surprise our resident jock would find upon delivering the pizza. But he returned to the store none the wiser. He bragged though about the tip he received.

“They sure are friendly there. Best tip I’ve made since I started here!”

The worse tip I made was on a run to a house full of junior-high-school girls. They must have been having a slumber party. Cody had delivered to the address a few weeks earlier and told me to expect a lot of giggles and a sizeable tip.

I pulled my Chevy Nova in front of the sprawling two-story Colonial and slid the two large pizzas out of the portable warmer and into the carrying sleeve. When I rang the doorbell, I heard three or four sets of footsteps. Giggles erupted as the doorknob turned and three gleeful faces peered out at me.

“It’s a girl!” one of the partiers announced.

The others turned and slouched away, repeating “it’s a girl” dejectedly.

The leader snatched the pies and, shoving the exact amount for them into my hand, slammed the door.

Well, if they’d been expecting Cody again, I can see how they might have been disappointed.

The worst run I had that summer was to the dorms at NC State.

There must have been a game or some kind of sporting event going on. AC/DC’s “Bad Boy Boogie” blared out over the sidewalks between the buildings and students hung out of the windows screaming and jeering at whoever passed below. A few began to pelt me with water balloons. They thought it was hilarious.

Most of the missiles missed.

The few that hit almost felt good as the cool water sprayed over my neck and back.

When I got back to the store, I told Dave about it, and he got angry.

“We’re not going to deliver to campus anymore. I can’t have my people treated like that!”

Dave meant it, too.

“Another wrong order,” Kevin shouted as he pulled a large pizza out of the oven. “They asked for sausage, Dave, you loaded it up with pepperoni.”

“Oops. Looks like we’ll have to eat this one ourselves.”

Kevin slapped the pizza down on the counter and sliced it up, beckoning for me to take a wedge. I snapped it up, folded it longways and took a big bite. The cheese was so hot, it burnt the top of my mouth, but I didn’t care.

“You can take the rest with you,” Dave said.

I’d noticed that they’d been making “wrong orders” fairly regularly. Either that or they cooked the pie too long and “ruined” it. Whenever that happened, they let me carry the damaged pizza home.

I ate pizza every morning for breakfast. When I got home at night, I’d finish off what was left.

I don’t know how I would have survived that summer without all of those “mistakes.”

And, I’m pretty sure Dave and Kevin knew.

The post The Summer I Ate Mistakes: Delivering for Domino’s, Part II appeared first on Rebecca Copeland.

Driving for Destiny: Delivering for Domino’s, Part I

You would think I was destined to earn a living by driving.

First school buses. And then in college, I drove the campus van into town and back on weekends, carting the few students who didn’t have access to a car. The van was smaller than the school bus, but it had a hydraulic lift in place of the center door to enable the driver to move wheelchairs in and out of the conveyance.

St. Andrews Presbyterian College was renowned for being “barrier free.” Long before federal mandates, the college had installed ramps and electric doors, allowing wheelchair-bound students easy access to campus facilities. The van was just another gesture in the direction of accessibility.

On my weekend runs to the little town of Laurinburg, North Carolina, I would roll wheelchaired students one by one onto the hydraulic lift, elevate them into the van, and then secure them into place alongside the windows.

Some of the chairs were electric-powered and equipped with heavy battery-packs. If I was not able to bring the lift gate completely to the curb, I had to push the chair over the gap, which required considerable strength.

Not all the passengers were comfortable with my abilities.

My van-driving career did not last long.

It wasn’t the physical toll the job required, or the lack of confidence some of my passengers felt that cut into my weekend driving.

It was basketball season.

I was on the team—a certified bench-warmer—and I spent many of the weekends with the team traveling to away games.

When I graduated college in the summer of 1978, I returned to Raleigh and scrambled to find a job. I needed to raise as much money as possible.

I’d been admitted to the graduate school at Columbia University in New York City, starting in September. I had to cover the cost of housing there, tuition, and incidentals. I managed to secure a loan with the North Carolina College Foundation, but it wasn’t going to be enough.

I scoured the help wanted section of the News and Observer. And found the usual openings for waitresses and bartenders.

And then, this one caught my eye:

Drivers Needed for Pizza Delivery.

Do you have a valid driver’s license? ✓
Do you have a clean driving record? ✓
Are you 18 years or older? ✓

Domino’s wants to hire friendly, diligent, and responsible workers to fill delivery jobs at its Raleigh location. Drivers should have basic math and problem-solving skills.

This looks like something I can do (the basic math requirement, aside.)

I had a car. A Chevy Nova.

My parents, who were then living in Japan, bought the car the last time they were back in the States so they could travel from North Carolina up to Ohio for my older sister’s wedding. When they returned to Japan, they left the car with me. I planned to hand if off to my younger brother when I headed to New York at the end of the summer.

The timing was perfect.

I stopped by the Domino’s store on Oberlin Road, it was still fairly new.

The men running the franchise, Dave and the assistant manager, Kevin, were surprised to see me.

“We’re looking for drivers,” Dave explained, thinking I’d come for something else, a cooking job maybe.

I pulled out the help wanted page and pointed to the circled ad: “Drivers wanted.”

“How much driving experience have you had?”

At first they didn’t believe I had driven a school bus. Neither was from the South. They’d been sent down from Michigan to open the franchise.

Less than my driving though, or my shaky math, it was my gender that gave them pause.

“We’ve never hired a girl before.”

Dave explained that the work required difficult tasks like map reading.

And some of the runs might take me into questionable neighborhoods.

“I know my way around Raleigh,” I assured them. “I’m a good driver.”

When I explained that I needed to work to afford my studies in New York City they were visibly impressed.

No one expected a girl from the South with a Chevy Nova and questionable math skills to be heading to Columbia University.

I got the job.

And it was one of the best jobs I’d ever had.

Kevin found a small blue polo shirt for me, with the Domino’s logo. It was a man’s shirt, of course, but tucked into my jeans, fit reasonably well. I pulled my long ponytail through the back of my red baseball cap, and I was ready to run some pies!

We used our own cars, and each night before our shift we placed a large square aluminum warming unit in the front seat. As soon as the pies were pulled out of the oven, sliced, and boxed, we’d run them out to the car and slide them into the warming box before peeling out of the parking lot.

The box took up most of the front seat and emitted a lot of heat.

The Chevy Nova had no air conditioning.

It was hot most evenings and the breeze from the open windows as I flew down the local streets searching for addresses provided little relief.

We were expected to deliver the pizzas within 30 minutes of the order being placed. To do that, I had to search the address once the pizza was in the oven and chart my route. I carried a map with me, but never had time to consult it once I left the store. Forget about a GPS. It hadn’t even been dreamed of yet.

I confess, I took some liberties with the law on those runs, making illegal u-turns and exceeding the speed limit. I don’t recall ever delivering a pizza late.

Or if I did, the customer didn’t complain.

We weren’t supposed to carry passengers on our runs, but one night Tim Silva showed up outside the store.

We’d known each other in high school. He was handsome and popular, a bit of a class clown. I was surprised and flattered when he asked me out once he learned I was back in town that summer.

We’d been dating for over a month. I was thrilled to see him outside the store that night but couldn’t linger there holding the hot pizzas so had him slide in the back seat of my car.

“Duck down until we’re out of the parking lot,” I told him.

I darted out onto Oberlin Road and turned left on Hillsborough, gunning it to make the light.

Tim’s head popped up from the back seat and he flailed about for a second trying to find something to grab onto.

“Holy shit! Slow down.”

“Can’t.”

I was laughing, but Tim looked terrified.

After I delivered the pizza—on time, of course—I drove more slowly on the way back so we could talk. I let Tim out in front of the Players Retreat, before heading back into the Domino’s parking lot.

He’d come to tell me he didn’t want to see me anymore.

It wasn’t on account of my driving.

And, it wasn’t because he didn’t like me.

He did. And that was the problem.
I wasn’t like the other local girls he dated. I had a destiny, and it didn’t include Raleigh, North Carolina, and maybe not even him.

“I just don’t want to be in a long-distance relationship,” he explained.

“Well, you could come with me,” I suggested.

“That’s just it. I don’t want to leave,” he said. “Becky, you’ve got a plan. You’ve got ambition. I don’t. I just want to get high on the weekend and hang out here.”

Tim was smart. And he came from privilege—his father was in the medical profession. I was surprised he was so easily satisfied.

And disappointed.

But he was right.

After that summer, I never again lived in Raleigh.

I don’t know what happened to Tim. I never saw Dave and Kevin again, either.

I rarely order delivery pizza these days, but when I do, I always wonder about the driver. Do they have “plans”?

Whatever their plans may be, I’m always sure to give them a good tip.

Author at the wheel of her Chevy Nova.

The post Driving for Destiny: Delivering for Domino’s, Part I appeared first on Rebecca Copeland.

My Father’s Daughter, after all: Not Just Another Saab Story, Continued

“Check this out, Daddy,” I said as I eased the car into fifth. “I’ve got overdrive!”

My father looked down at the gear shift between our two seats. He didn’t say anything in response, and I was too busy minding traffic on Capitol Boulevard to look over at his face. I had accelerated beyond the speed limit to push into overdrive.

“This Saab sure is speedier than your old car, isn’t it?”

Daddy nodded. He would turn 90 in another month. He didn’t talk much anymore. We assumed it was because he had grown so hard of hearing. Looking back, we now realize he was struggling with Alzheimer’s Disease.

I had driven to Raleigh, North Carolina from St. Louis, Missouri, where I lived. Normally I would fly down for the holidays to see my parents and avoid the thirteen-hour drive. But this time I drove, specifically to show my father my new car.

A 2006 Saab 9-3 four door in “Chili Red Metallic” with beige Italian leather seats. The power moon roof, which in fact I hardly ever used, was extra. The car was assembled in Sweden with an engine from Germany. I think it was probably the last of the true Saabs. I remember it took me several weeks before the manual shift the dealership ordered for me reached the lot.

“You want a manual?” the car salesman had asked me incredulously. “I’ve never met a girl who could drive shift.”

He went on to announce this rare discovery to all the other salesmen on the lot that afternoon.

I was determined to find a car with a manual transmission. And, I had my heart set on a Saab. It was personal.

My husband and I had separated, and he had driven off in the only decent car we owned, our Toyota 4-Runner. He left me with the Toyota pickup truck. A fun little ride, but he’d used it in his failed tree-cutting business and one half of the back window, smashed in by an errant limb, was covered in plywood. He always took our German Shepherds with him on jobs and the whole cab smelled of wet dog and chainsaw oil. I didn’t mind it that much, but occasionally I had to pick up guests at the airport and the truck was a bit inappropriate for a university professor. Besides, it had an automatic transmission.

I remember when I first met my husband he drove a flashy Toyota Supra. A slick little car with crazy acceleration. But it was an automatic! Who drives an automatic-transmission sports car?

That should have been a sign.

I had missed it—or ignored it—and now here I was twelve years later in a stinky Toyota truck with a broken back window.

I wanted a new car.

And I trained my sights on European engineering for a change. Before I’d met Rick, I had owned a sweet little Honda Civic (five speed, needless to say). I sold it to buy the Toyota 4-Runner that he wanted.

I was ready now for something different.

I remembered the fun I had had driving my father’s Saab in high school. I wanted that happiness back again.

I set my heart on a Saab.

“You’re getting a Saab?” My friend took a long, slow sip of her coffee, her brow darkening. “I’ll try to be on hand when you need a ride to the repair shop,” she continued. “Cause you’re going to be a regular.”

She was half serious. Saab had a reputation for breaking down. I remember watching my father on weekends working on his red, two-door 1967 Saab 93 with its two-stroke, three-cylinder engine. But that was years ago. Saabs had changed. At least, that’s what I’d read in recent automotive magazines.

I drove my Saab back and forth to North Carolina any number of times. It was still in excellent condition when I sold it in 2018.

I didn’t want to.

But I needed to make way for an AWD car to carry me up the mountain roads to my recently purchased house on Three Top. The Saab was a trooper and usually got me where I needed to go when the weather was good. I worried about the steep climb in the snow, though. And so the Saab went to a stylish young couple who lived down the street, and I bought a Subaru Crosstrek with a six-speed manual shift.

The change was a step down in luxury.

My Saab may have looked like a run-of-the mill sedan, but it drove like an Audi—smooth and quiet.

It was my pleasure to take my father out in my brand-new luxury Saab.

I showed him how to move the seat back. I pushed a hidden button, and a cup holder automatically glided out from the central console. Too bad he hadn’t brough a mug of coffee.

“Maybe some Johnny Cash?” I asked, sliding a disk into the CD player.

Daddy didn’t answer. He stared intently at the lights on the dashboard and the controls on the leather-braided steering wheel.

No need for a manual choke in my fancy, computer-monitored ride.

We drove all the way down Capitol Boulevard in silence, listening to Johnny.

When I pulled the car back into the narrow parking lot in front of his condo and took the key out of the ignition—which was oddly placed in the wood-paneled console between our seats—Daddy smiled.

“You’ve got a good car, Becky.”

That was all I needed to hear.

The post My Father’s Daughter, after all: Not Just Another Saab Story, Continued appeared first on Rebecca Copeland.

My Freedom Wig: A Teenage Bus Driver and her Time-Cutting Tricks

“We call that our ‘Freedom Wig,” Janice said as she pulled the cap over my head. A fluffy crown of tight brown curls sprung out around my face.

She handed me a hand mirror and had me check my reflection in the brightly lit mirror behind me. A few long strands of my auburn hair straggled down along my neck. Janice pushed them up under the cap.

“There,” Janice sounded a triumphant note. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know….”

“You look good, girl!”

“I’m not sure it looks natural.”

“Oh no, it becomes you.”

That’s not exactly what I meant. It looked like I had an afro.

I had gone to the Crabtree Valley Mall to buy shoes but had wandered into the wig store on a lark.

Maybe a wig was just what I needed.

It was hard to get up early enough in the morning to wash my hair before I had to start my 7-a.m. bus route. If I didn’t wash my hair at least every three days, it looked flat and stringy, and I’d spend the day feeling like I had an old mop dripping down my back.

There was nothing worse for a teenage girl.

On days when I couldn’t drag myself out of bed early enough to wash and dry my hair, I’d put it in a braid or wrap it in a scarf. I’d gotten pretty creative with the latter, heading off to school looking like a fortune teller.

Still, I needed something new. If I had a wig, I could tuck the stringy stuff up under a fashionable coiffure and buy myself time until the weekend. I could pamper myself then with a leisurely shower, shampoo and condition my long hair, and then let it air dry.

But an afro?

I had thought I’d get a short and sassy wig, a Sassoon hairdo like Twiggy used to sport. Or maybe something a bit more edgy, like Liza Minnelli in “Cabaret.”

I didn’t see anything like that in the store, though. A quick scan of the display cases revealed that all the wigs seemed to be for African American women.

I’ll just make a quiet exit, I told myself, but Janice had stopped me.

When I explained that I didn’t think the wigs were right for me, she pulled the Freedom wig out and set it on my head.

“This isn’t an afro,” Janice corrected. “It’s a ‘Freedom’ wig. See, the curls are looser, freer. Any woman can rock a Freedom wig. It doesn’t’ matter what color you are!”

I must have looked less than convinced.

“It’s perfect on you,” Janice drew her face alongside mine and we exchanged glances in the mirror. Her skin was much darker than mine, but I noticed that she had freckles, too. Just like me. I could have been wrong, but was she wearing a Freedom wig, too?

“Foxy Brown!” she said, referring to the beautiful Pam Grier. “You look like her.”

Janice was a good saleswoman.

I bought the wig. It even came with its own little Styrofoam head, just like the one my mother had for her wig. Maybe that’s the real reason I decided to buy a wig, because she had one, too.

She kept the Styrofoam head on her dresser. My younger brother and I took a Bic pen one afternoon when we were bored and drew in eyes and a mouth. Later we added a goatee, just for fun.

“You’ve got an afro!?”

My brother doubled over with laughter when I came down to breakfast the next morning.

“It’s a Freedom wig,” I corrected.

Mother looked skeptical but kept quiet.

The kids in my neighborhood didn’t say much when I opened the bus door to let them in. I think they were still half asleep.

I drove them across town, as I did every school day. Busing was the centerpiece of the desegregation legislation in the state. I drove the kids from my suburban neighborhood—where all the split-level houses looked like they might have been copied from the set of the Brady Bunch—to Ligon Junior High School, in what was known (to whites) as Raleigh’s “inner city.”

Ligon had been built in 1953 to serve all African Americans in the Raleigh City School System. Named for the prominent religious, educational, and community leader, John W. Ligon (1869-1925), the junior-senior high school had a proud legacy of excellence. Then, in 1971, in answer to the calls to desegregate, it was turned into a junior high school and students were bused there from all over Wake County.

After I dropped my first route at Ligon, I’d start my second, picking up the children who lived near the school. I’d return with them to my neighborhood, letting them out at York Elementary School, the same school I had attended only a few years earlier.

The little children shrieked when I opened the door to let them on bus.

“What happened to your hair?” one little girl asked.

“Is that a wig?” another chimed in.

“No, no, this is MY hair,” I teased.

When she didn’t believe me, I let her give the wig a tug. She was seated behind me by then. I stealthily held the front of the wig in place while she pulled. The wig didn’t budge. Her friend gave a try as well and I pretended to scream in pain.

“Ouch, ouch, that hurts!”

They were convinced.

But not for long.

Soon the children knew I was wearing a wig, and they didn’t seem to care.

I didn’t wear it every day. Maybe once a week. And when I did, the children would clamor and laugh as they stepped onto the bus.

Wearing my Freedom Wig with Becky Street (left) and Carey McGinnity (right)

“Driver Becky’s wearing her Freedom wig!”

They were so little.

I wonder what their parents thought, sending them off to a school over ten miles away in a white neighborhood with a white bus driver wearing a “Freedom wig.”

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Student School Bus Drivers: A League of Cool

We school bus drivers were in a league of our own.

Literally.

Other students at Jesse O. Sanderson High School joined clubs and teams: the debate team, the drama club, the chess club. And then there were the cliques: the jocks, the freaks, the cheerleaders.

If you drove a school bus, you were in the bus drivers club.

We were a special group. We came together from all across the school and drew our numbers from among the jocks, the freaks, and the … well, maybe not from the cheerleaders.

School Bus Drivers 1974, high school yearbook

It wasn’t as if we hung out together or met up for special sessions or parties. Often, we’d see one another sauntering across the parking lot to or from our buses. But for the most part, we just went about our business like the individuals we were.

I started driving because of Loretta Humphrey, because I thought she looked so cool behind the wheel of her 1955 Chevy. After I joined the bus drivers league in 1972, my best friends, Molly and Carey signed up for the 1974 school year.

We each drove different routes, of course, and only occasionally saw each other on the road—honking or nodding when we did—but occasionally we’d drive our bus to one another’s house after finishing our routes.

School bus gathering, after the route

I doubt the neighbors were pleased to have 2-3 giant yellow buses outside their houses. But they never complained. And we never stayed long.

None of us made much money. I can’t remember what the take home was, but minimum wage at the time was $1.45 an hour. The best part of the job was having transportation to school. And being in control.

And, being cool.

We all missed homeroom and first period classes because of our routes, and we were released from our last class fifteen minutes early.

We’d duly climb into our mammoth machines and pull out of the parking lot one right after the other, some heading to the same schools to pick up the middle schoolers and cart them back to their neighborhoods.

Now adays when I tell people I drove a school bus—as a high school student—they are astonished.

“That’s so dangerous!”

Maybe it was dangerous. But it wasn’t uncommon.

In the 1940s, due to the loss of “manpower” during the war, students commonly drove school buses. The practice continued afterwards as well to meet the sharp increase in school enrollments due to the postwar population boom. At one time, more than twenty states allowed students under 18 to drive school buses. Wyoming even allowed students as young as fifteen behind the wheel.

In 1966 Congress amended the Fair Labor Standards Act prohibiting people under the age of 18 from driving school buses. North Carolina, South Carolina, and a few other states protested, since almost 80% of their school bus driving labor force was made up of 16- and 17-year-olds. These states were allowed to continue the practice until 1988.

According to an article in the News and Observer by T. Keung Hui, when the U.S. Labor Department finally ended the exemption, it cost North Carolina more than 3,500 bus drivers.

I know statistically the number of moving violations and accidents was higher among younger bus drivers. Aside from the Cadillac I hit on my first day driving, I didn’t have any accidents and neither did any of my friends or any of the student drivers in my cohort.

My younger brother drove a school bus when he got his license, and he was a safe driver, too.

I am glad I lived at a time when students could be trusted with this assignment. Still, if I had a child in school, I’d probably be uncomfortable with a student driver…unless it was me!

Read more about student bus drivers at:
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article278074987.html#storylink=cpy

https://www.edweek.org/education/use-of-students-as-school-bus-drivers-declining/1985/02

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The 1955 Chevy School Bus, the late-model Cadillac, and my Fledgling Run

“You’re taking the turn too wide,” David Purser shouted, rising up out of his seat and leaning over me. For a minute, I thought he was going to grab the steering wheel.

I was turning right onto Wake Forest Road from Six Forks, there by the K-Mart, on my way to Ligon Junior High. This was the school bus route I’d been assigned, and it was my fledging run. I was nervous.

David Purser had been assigned to ride with me for the first week. He was a year ahead of me at school and an experienced bus driver. He made it clear he didn’t care much for his assignment, or me.

We attended the same church, his mother had even been my Sunday School teacher. I wasn’t sure what I’d ever done to earn his disgust but I got the impression he thought girls weren’t good drivers.

“I’ve got it,” I said more to myself than to him, as I wheeled the lumbering 1955 Chevy school bus around the turn.

“Slow down!”

I was heading towards a late model Cadillac facing me in the turning lane, waiting for the green arrow to turn on to Six Forks. I could see the driver and front seat passenger. Their eyes grew wider and wider the closer I approached.

Crunch!

I clipped the left side of the Caddy’s front bumper. Just barely.

“I told you!” David hissed. “Get out of the intersection and pull over up there.”

I did as instructed, my stomach tightening in knots.

“Put your signal on! Didn’t you learn anything?”

I could feel the blood draining from my head. I eased the bus to the curb, fighting the urge to throw up.

I swung the door open. David and I piled out of the bright orange bus. Meanwhile the Cadillac pulled into the K-Mart parking lot and drove towards us, coming to a stop on the other side of the sidewalk.

“A Cadillac,” David snorted. “You had to hit a Cadillac.”

The Cadillac occupants were dressed like they were headed to church or something. The man stepped out of the car while the woman remained in the passenger seat.

He walked to the front and examined the bumper, rubbing his finger along the shiny chrome.

“I don’t see any damage,” he said.

I knelt down to get a better look. In truth, I didn’t see any either.

“I’m so sorry, sir.”

“You scared the dickens out of me,” the woman said, as she stepped from the car and walked towards us. She wore a loose, sleeveless dress in a cheery chartreuse.

David stood scowling, the lenses of his thick glasses reflecting the bright afternoon sun. He crossed his arms, pressing his thick lips together as if to keep from spitting. Purser was a good name for him.

“I’m so sorry. This is my first run. I just didn’t estimate the distance right.”

“I told her to stop,” David interjected defensively.

“Your first run?”

“Yes, I just got my school bus driver’s certification. I’m supposed to pick up kids at Ligon.”

“How old are you, honey?” the woman asked.

“Seventeen.”
“I was seventeen once,” the man smiled.

He and the woman exchanged glances.

“Really, there’s no harm to the car. You gave us a good scare, but I reckon you’re scared, too.”

More like petrified.

I nodded, my eyes welling with tears.

“We’ll just let it go then,” the man said.

I looked up at him with amazed relief. I stuck out my hand to shake his, but he pulled me into his arms instead for a hug. The woman grabbed me next, wrapping me in a warm embrace. She smelled of baby powder.

“Just be more careful the next time,” the man said as he climbed back into his Cadillac.

“Oh, I will, I surely will!” I said, waving to them as they backed away.

“You got off lucky,” David said as I turned to walk back to the bus. He sounded disappointed.

“I still have to report this to Coach Lehning.”

The rest of the week with David Purser in my bus was tense. He either barked directions or sat in the seat by the door in sullen silence.

I did my best to be careful.

I never had another accident, and I went through three different buses over the course of my high school bus driver career. After the 1955 Chevy, I upgraded to a 1957, also a manual shift with a temperamental choke, and then my last year, all the drivers scored brand new 1974 Fords with automatic transmissions.

I guess if I had to hit something that first day, hitting a Cadillac at least made for a better story.

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Learning to Drive Stick: Not Just another Saab Story

“Ease off the clutch.” My father spoke calmly from the passenger seat, but I was nervous.

We were on a steep incline and there was a car behind me, a teenage boy in a muscle car. I could see him in the rearview mirror gesturing angrily.

The light was green, I was still sitting there, afraid I’d pop the clutch, or worse, roll backwards.

“Here pull up on the handbrake.” The handbrake was between the bucket seats. Daddy yanked it up with a squeak.

“You’re not going anywhere, now ease off the clutch with your left foot and gently press the accelerator with your right.”

The boy behind me began to honk.

As I slowly let off the clutch and pressed the gas, my father released the handbrake. The car lurched forward.

“Clutch!”

The car jolted up the hill.

“Now second.”

The boy screeched his car around mine and shouted as he passed, “Learn to drive!”

I knew how to drive. I had gotten my license a few months earlier. Now I was learning how to drive a stick.

Daddy was keen to teach me.

He grew up driving manual transmissions. In fact, as a young man, he drove flatbed lumber trucks piled high with logs around winding West Virginia roads. He had a lot of stories about spills and jackknifes. When we passed a log truck—or really any kind of truck on the highway—he always had a story to tell about the make and model. He’d wave to the drivers and they’d nod in return. Or flash their lights.

It was a special league—the league of truck drivers.

“Learning a manual shift will make you a better driver,” he said. “And if you can learn to drive this Saab, you can drive anything.”

I wanted to drive anything. I wanted to drive a school bus. Almost all the buses were manual shift, and if you couldn’t drive stick, you couldn’t join the school bus drivers league. And the bus drivers’ league was cool.

Joining was a goal of mine.

But Daddy’s Saab was a challenge.

He had a red, two-door 1967 Saab 93. He had to pre-mix the oil—a special kind of Castrol—the same kind you used in a lawnmower. In fact, Daddy’s Saab was not much more than a lawnmower with windows. Even so, he loved it. Most Saturdays I could find him in the car port of our Oak Park house, under the hood at work on the two-stroke, three-cylinder engine. The Saab was not fast, by any means. But it was a hoot to drive, once you learned the gear ratios.

It wasn’t easy, though. The car had four on the tree, which was unusual then, as well as a manual throttle that you had to fiddle with when the engine was cold.

“Go back. I want you to practice on the hill again,” my father instructed.

I was excited that he was allowing me to drive the car, his prized possession.

Daddy had bought the car secondhand for my mother. At the time, she was commuting to work, and he liked the car because it was good on gas. But she just couldn’t drive it. The car made her madder than a wet hen, always stalling and sputtering when she tried to change gears.

As much as she hated the car, she did credit it with saving her life once.

She stalled at an intersection. And just as she was cursing her luck—to a chorus of honking from the cars behind her—a large tractor trailer plowed through the intersection, completely ignoring the traffic signal. If the Saab had not stalled, my mother would have been right in the path of the light-running truck, instead of frustratingly trying to get out of first gear on the green light. She likely would have been killed.

Mother refused to drive the Saab after that.

Daddy kept the Saab for himself and bought my mother a small Datsun station wagon. Needless to say, it was automatic shift.

Some of the auto repairs on the Saab exceeded even Daddy’s abilities. He discovered an auto mechanic named Tim Nine, who specialized in Saabs and other exotic imports. His shop was in Franklin, NC, some distance from our place in west Raleigh. Daddy made frequent trips there even so. He and Tim soon became fast friends. At one point Daddy bought a wrecked Saab from Tim and hauled it to our house, where he parked it in the backyard under a stand of pine trees. He cannibalized the car for parts whenever he needed to tune up his Saab.

The more I drove the Saab, the better able I became at easing out of first gear—even when stopped on a steep incline. The rest was magic.

People would pull up beside me at a traffic light and shout, “What kind of Volkswagen IS that?”

“It’s not,” I’d say, and wave as I glided smoothly away when the light turned green.

Being able to drive stick was an impressive credential.

I could drive the old clunker trucks that Daddy bought to use on his mountain land.

I could confound pimply-faced boys at valet parking stands, many of whom could not manage to park my car. I heard manual-transmission cars were also rarely stolen.

And, I was able to get that job driving a school bus.

So many benefits for a few weeks of embarrassment stalling out at intersections.

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Cool Girls and Schools: Learning from Loretta

Loretta Humphrey opened the door to the school bus. She held one high-heeled foot on the brake and the other on the clutch as she leaned out over her seat to push the door crank with her right hand.
Loretta Humphrey was tiny.

Her bell-bottom jeans swooped down over high platform shoes, elongating her legs. When she sauntered down the hallway between classes, she looked like the female version of Rod Stewart or Steve Winwood only cooler. Much cooler.

Loretta had chestnut brown hair that hung across her shoulders in curls. Every now and then she’d sweep a stray tendril back with fingers bejeweled in rings. Her deep brown eyes were lined with black kohl.

She was my idol.

We’d both been passengers on the school bus, not but a year ago, when her brother Jimmy was the driver. Not that we shared a seat or anything. She always sat in back with her best friend Mary Stevens.

They were both cool.

Mary had raven black hair and bangs that covered a brow as fair as bone china. Her round cheeks were cherubic and naturally pink. Mary’s black eyeliner was even thicker than Loretta’s and by the end of classes had smeared into panda-like patches. Even so, I thought she was beautiful.

Mary had a buckskinned jacket with fringes on the arms that shimmered and swayed every time she moved. She and Loretta went to concerts at Dorton Arena and the Raleigh Memorial Auditorium down on Fayetteville Street all by themselves without parents sitting discreetly a row or two behind. On the bus they would talk loudly about their adventures.

“Jimi Hendrix looked right at me when I screamed his name,” Mary announced.

“Are you experienced?” Loretta screeched from the back of the bus.

The boys snickered.

“Get back home, Loretta,” the bravest in the bunch sung out as he turned around and leered.

Loretta rolled her eyes. Her glare was enough to make the boys shut up and face forward.

Loretta had that kind of power.

I ran into her once at the Oak Park Pharmacy. Debbie Perkins and I were sitting on the high stools at the soda counter eating a grill cheese sandwich and drinking the sweetest ice tea imaginable. Loretta sat down next to us and turned to me.

“Didn’t I see you at the pool in Glen Forest last week?” she asked.

“Probably, we go all the time.”

“You really put Randy Biggs in his place!”

She had seen me square off against the neighborhood bully when he kept calling a younger kid “fatso.”

“The next time he gives you any grief, let me know. We girls have to stick together.”

Loretta was cool and nice.

When she turned sixteen, Loretta took over Jimmy’s bus route, and I sat in the back of the bus with Debbie Perkins and Becky Street. We thought we were cool, too. But there was no touching Loretta.

She always had a transistor radio with her tuned to 88.1 WKNC—the station run by students at NC State—playing the latest rock-n-roll.

Loretta kept a pack of cigarettes on the dash and when the last kid stepped off the bus at Sanderson High School, she’d light up as she drove off to the parking lot.

After her route, she’d park the school bus in her front yard under the tall pines that nearly concealed the family’s modest ranch-style house off Highway 70 West.

I’d stare at the bus every Sunday when my parents drove my brother and me to and from church. I don’t think Loretta went to church.

I wanted to drive a school bus, too.

I wanted to be like Loretta. Fearless in her lumbering school bus and beautiful in her black eyeliner.

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