My mother (she was a saint) taught me to drive my folk's 1956 Buick Roadmaster. I remember it had gun sights on the front fenders. I would line up the center line of the road through the left gun sight. We lived in San Carlos so Mom took me "across the tracks" to learn on the wider industrial roads. My first husband taught me to drive a manual shift when we bought a 1961 VW Bug. We were living in SF at the time. He went with me to teach me to drive the stick shift. I thought I was doing pretty well until I turned up one of the steeper streets in town. The first stop sign I came to on the hill, my husband pulled on the handbrake and switched places with me. He drove home and told me I could take the car out alone and figure it out by myself. Eventually I did, but not before backing into some gentleman on 18th St.--again at a stop sign near the top of hill. The man came to my window and said, "I knew you were going to do that." And I said, "So did I, but I didn't know what to do." He was nice enough to explain to me that I needed to use the handbrake while feathering the clutch. Oh. Dorothy