In 1946, I turned 20 years old, and it was time to get my driver’s license renewed.
I went to the licensing office and presented my old license to the clerk. I was told, “You are only 20 and you must have your parents’ permission to get a driver’s license.”
Four years earlier, in 1942 when I was 16, my father and I had gone to the office and obtained a license for me. Since then, I’d been drafted into the military, went through Navy boot camp, traveled around the country to the various parts of electronics school, shipped halfway around the world to Bikini Atoll where I witnessed atomic bomb tests, then up to Pearl Harbor where our ship was on call to help any ship at sea that needed it. (Going at flank speed — maximum speed — past Waikiki Beach with all the lights on was an exhilarating experience.)
My father had not given his permission for me to do all that — but now I must get my daddy’s permission to get my license renewed. I was so angry, I left the office without retrieving my old license.
