The Spoon That Started A Car

I grew up in a family headed up by a single mother who supported us with a rank & file job at the IRS and a child support check from my dad in the now meager sum of $150 a month ($50 for each of us three kids till we turned 18). Most of the locals around Ogden, Utah (our hometown, Roy, was about 8 miles south of Ogden) put in their time at the IRS. I worked the 4 p.m. to 1 a.m. shift there during the 1981 tax season when Heidi was a baby. John has great memories of rubber band battles with his coworkers while he worked his way through college in the old file room there.

My mother, Verda; brother, Kevin; sister, Jill and I didn't have money for much of anything beyond the most basic of necessities. We had just one family car, a 1972 Chevrolet Impala. Back then, you were either a Ford, Chevy or Chrysler family and we were definitely of the Chevy persuasion. We didn't go a lot of places like families do now. Most of our outings, like going grocery shopping, to the movies or library, or to visit aunts and cousins, we all did together. We went out to eat no more than every two weeks on Mom's paydays. We didn't go too fancy most of the time either. Our favorite eating establishments were places like Arctic Circle

in Roy or to Dee's on the corner of Washington and 36th street in Ogden. A bigger event called for Sizzler on Wall Avenue or to Utah Noodle Parlor on Washington Boulevard. Aside from our family outings, we all did our best to arrange for rides and carpools or we walked or rode our bike places.

Kevin and I were happy to share a thick-framed orange 10-speed bike through most of our childhoods. The two of us pretty much wore the thing out from years of heavy use. We were both pros at fixing or replacing leaky tubes and keeping the chain oiled, moving seats and handlebars up and down at very young ages. We'd get our tire repair supplies from the Western Auto store about a mile or so east on the main street leading to our house, 5600 South. We'd use a bucket of water to find the bubbles indicating the location of the punctures in our inner tubes and patch or replace them as needed.

Once Kevin turned 16, a neighbor of ours, Jack Higginson, who's wife carpooled with Mom, felt pity on us and gave Kevin a used, once white, Buick Skylark. I can't remember what year it was but it looked like it had already lost a demolition derby -- not half as nice as this one in this photo.

One of Jack's own teenage daughters, didn't like wearing her glasses and had been in numerous wrecks while driving it. She nor any of his other stylishly cool daughters wanted to be seen driving a car with rusted dents on both sides as well as the front and rear ends. They called it a bucket. We didn't care what it looked like. It ran.

Toward the end of the1974-75 school year at Roy High School, I was a 15 years old sophomore and Kevin was a senior. My friend, Cheryl Smith and I didn't want to attend the senior award assembly, so instead we went to sit in the Skylark and just visit. While sitting there, I happened to pick up one of our kitchen spoons I had left in the car that morning when I finished a yogurt I was eating on the drive to school. (I still eat yogurt on my way to work now -- but with plastic spoons…the yogurt tastes better now too.) Without really thinking, I put the handle of the spoon into the ignition and gave it a turn. To my dismay, the engine started. Cheryl and I were amazed and not quite sure what to do. The car starting like that with the handle of a spoon had to be seen as sort of sign or gift to us. We felt like we had to take advantage of this great and unexpected opportunity. So, without really thinking the situation through, I put the car in reverse and just started driving.

First of all, we found, as usual, the car was empty. We knew we needed gas; but, of course, we had always been told that you needed to turn a car off before you started pumping gas. That proved to a dilemma. What if the spoon wouldn't work again? Well, we risked our life and pumped all 2 gallons, at a total of less than 70 cents, with the engine running. Soon after we left the gas station however, wouldn't you know it, we spotted a police cruiser. I realize now in my old age that every small town police department always keeps at least one cruiser close to high schools looking for truants (which I suppose we were at that time). I quickly improvised a technique that, since that time, has proven handy each time, so far, with success. I made a few turns in a subdivision, keeping just far enough ahead of the cop, so he couldn't see my quick and random turns and then parked in a driveway deep within the neighborhood. Cheryl and I both ducked and stayed down for several minutes. We figure even if the cop made all the same turns we did, he might not notice the car in the driveway or, even if he did, he might think that I was just someone just who had just happened to have been very casually driving home a few minutes earlier -- not the truth, that we were 15 year old truants out on a joy ride. It worked. But at this point, being the good kids we were, we decided to get back to the school as quickly as possible. I remember feeling great relief when we finally made it back to the gymnasium and watched the last of the senior awards being given out. It was lessons learned from little experiences like this, flirting on the edges of minor rebellion that, by and large, kept me on a pretty straight path through my teenage years. And, with this lesson learned, at least Kevin got two or three more days worth of gas in his car.