Ranch Kids Learning to Drive....at age SIX!

The free range kids on the Currier Ranch had to learn to drive vehicles at a very early age in order to help with the work on the Ranch.  We loved this!  Our driving experiences started very early....

I remember that, at approximately six years of age, I went with my dad to feed hay to a large field full of cattle wintering at the Red Ranch north of Grand Junction.  The hay was loaded onto the bed of one of the smaller trucks, and I was put in the driver's seat, kneeling on the seat with my little hands firmly clasping the big round steering wheel.  My dad put the truck into the lowest gear and released the clutch so that the truck began to move forward.  I was instructed to steer the truck straight down the field to the end and then turn the key to off when I was almost at the fence posts at the end.  My dad then climbed onto the truck bed and began forking hay off to the hungry cows that swarmed after the truck.  When the truck reached the end, I dutifully turned the key to off thus stopping the slowly moving truck.  My dad climbed back into the cab beside me, restarted the engine, turned the truck around to go the other direction, and we repeated the drive down to the other end, and so on until all the hay was distributed to the cattle.

Later, when our little legs were long enough to reach the clutch and brake pedals, we were taught how to release both pedals ourselves so that the truck would go forward.  We learned how to step on the brake and clutch at the end of the field to stop the truck, but not shut it down.  The next progression in driving on the Ranch was to be trusted to make the turn at the end and continue to drive the other direction.  All of we older kids learned these lessons and became quite adept at driving at a young age.

The biggest issue the dads had with our learning the brake and clutch synchronizations was that for a few trips down the field, the lurching upon release of the clutch and the sudden stops while learning the brake often resulted in the dad or dads being unceremoniously tossed off the back of the truck generally hollering "Great Scott, Marcia (or Carol or Tom or....)!  Take it easy!"

We learned shifting gears on manual transmission vehicles by the time we were 10 or 12 years old.  We also learned to drive the variety of tractors used on the Ranch.  These were more complicated machines with dual brakes and strange clutches with speed determined by a hand lever on some of the tractors.  I remember that one of us occasionally didn't turn in time and got the tractor stuck in a bog or didn't stop in time and mowed down a gate post, but for the most part, our help was appreciated and necessary, and our mistakes were quickly forgiven, but laughed about over the next family meal.  I think the girls got off easier than the boys when a driving incident caused a time consuming work stoppage.

Later, the older three of us learned to drive the small truck (a 1950's one-ton truck) and the two bigger ones (one circa 1937 to haul cattle and one circa 1955, also to haul cattle and sometimes a large water tank).  Those had their own peculiarities, because they had some kind of split gear system that allowed the truck to have twice as many gear ratios and involved some fancy footwork on the gas peddle and clutch to shift up or down.  My brothers eventually learned to also drive a semi-truck that was used to haul larger numbers of cattle. 

There was generally an older car around the Ranch in which the budding drivers, who were getting close to the age for a real driver's license, could practice driving on the Ranch property.  we learned to parallel park between hay bales and were all skilled with manual shifting.  We loved careening around the mown hay fields and the private Ranch roads.  Gas was very inexpensive then!!

I recall one driving job that I found so embarrassing that I wished for a disguise so no one that I knew might recognize me.  In the early winter, as previously described, the cattle, horses, cats, dogs, chickens et al were moved to the lower ranches until spring.  I was tasked with driving a pickup truck, loaded with crates of chickens and burlap bags of farm cats, from the high Ranch to the Red Ranch north of Grand Junction.  All was well until I reached Grand Junction town proper, where at every stop light the chickens would all squawk at top volume and the cats would howl in indignant disgust at their situation!  I begged never to have that task again!!  Now I see it from the distance of time as hilariously funny and rather inconsequential in the scheme of my life!

One of my brothers had a horrifying experience while driving a truck load of big bulls from one ranch to another.  He was driving down the peninsula road to Collbran from the Ranch and was headed down the steep grade into the town of Collbran when his brakes went out.  The sharp turn at the bottom of the grade made it impossible to do anything but go straight.  Straight, though, meant careening over an embankment and trying to avoid the general store at the other side of a parking lot.  The truck rolled, the bulls flew out, the store was missed, and the brother was mostly unscathed.  All of the bulls lived, however, one was never quite right in the head after that and was eventually sold for meat.  Quite a scare for everyone!

Our ability to drive probably saved the Ranch from having to hire an additional man and certainly gave us confidence and skill far in advance of our town friends.