TIM BELFORD

The year I went to driving school

I'm not a great driver.

I'm not a danger on the road but I have to admit I'm no Gilles Villeneuve either.

I'd like to think it's because I don't really like to drive. I'd much prefer the passenger side of any vehicle.

That way I'm free to enjoy the scenery, do my crossword puzzle, or read the road map

The Love of my Life swears it's because it's the only place I sleep soundly.

And to be honest, once the engine starts to hum, I've never met a car seat yet that isn't conducive to forty, or in my case, a hundred and forty winks.

In reality though, it's probably because I learned to drive on a fire-engine red Massey Ferguson tractor and then graduated to a two-and-a-half-ton truck before I ever sat behind the wheel of a car.

I started when I was fourteen and my teacher was a farmer for whom I worked as a youngster during the summers and holidays.

George Ellis was a bachelor. He was in his sixties. And years of working in the orchard had left him the same shade of brown as a dried walnut.

He also had the unusual habit of wearing a white shirt and tie to work.

Now to be fair, the tie was never undone but merely loosened and slipped over his head each morning.

As a result there was little or no material left on the knot just a satiny sheen.

As for the shirts, they were indeed white but in most instances the sleeves had been cut off just above the elbow.

Combined with a set of bib overalls, the effect was one of shabby gentility.

Anyway, the first time I drove the tractor was when we were pulling stumps.

Rather than get down off the tractor and wrap the stump with a chain and then climb back up, he somehow thought it would be a good idea if he worked the chain and I drove.

Now when he asked if I had ever driven I replied, like any 14-year-old, "sure!" gilding the lily by adding "lots of times."

So there I was, sitting precariously on the metal, form-fitting seat of a snorting monster with only the vaguest of idea of what to do next.

When George finished hooking the chain around the stump he said, "Okay, take it away." and I did.

I gave her the gas and lifted my foot off the clutch like I had a tack in it.

The tractor shot forward and upward like a mountain lion leaping at a deer.

The chain snapped, whipping past George's left ear and wrapped itself around a nearby peach tree like an argentine bolo.

As for the tractor and Michael Schumacher, we managed to cover about thirty feet running down three saplings and two lunch buckets in the process.

Needless to say, George changed his mind about the whole process deciding it was probably better to climb up and down than risk the threat of decapitation with each stump.

But he did take pity on me. He spent the rest of that summer teaching me to drive the tractor and then the truck.

And by summer's end I was bouncing around the farm like the Dukes of Hazard.