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Photo by Muffy Aldrich
The Modern Guide to The Thing Before Preppy
Muffy Aldrich
Muffy Aldrich, Editor of Salt Water New England: The Modern Guide to The Thing Before Preppy, and a 12th Generation New Englander. Since 2010.
- Original Photographs.
- Timeless, Preppy Clothing.
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It should be a boat, but first you must learn to row if the engine gives up. Second a car but it helps if it’s a manual, keeps young drivers from showing off. No one wants to stall out at a green light. More importantly Happy New Year and Best Wishes to you and all of your readers!! Health and Happiness to all in 2024.
ReplyDeleteRight. The first vehicle you drive should be a mini-bike. You build it without adult supervision. Do so with your friends in the neighborhood when you are ten years old. Power it with an old lawnmower motor.
ReplyDeleteI think this rule could lead to some un-prep results. For example, if the first vehicle one learns to drive is an ATV or a dirt bike, that doesn't seem preppy. On the other hand, if one's first driving experience is a golf cart [on a golf course, not tooling around a massive planned community in Florida] or a moped in Bermuda.....
ReplyDeletePerhaps a corollary preppy rule should be that the first thing one learns to drive is powered by a sail.
What about horses? Or a lawn mower?
ReplyDeleteI learned how to sail before I learned how to drive a car, but you don't "drive" a sailboat. Does that count?
ReplyDeleteyes
DeleteMost states classify bicycles as "vehicles." So, there you go.
ReplyDeleteI must confess, I drove my parents 1957 Thunderbird, as my first driving experience! That was in 1971! Ah, the halcyon days! Thanks once again!
ReplyDeleteAgreed. We spent countless hours on our boat growing up. My siblings and I took turns steering my father's 42' Chris Craft Commander (we even saw a dead body floating in the East River once). I think I must 11 or 12 when I first steered it.
ReplyDeleteGood points all. My earliest were rowing a home-built pram and canoeing with a friend and his Maine Guide father, then sailing and a Boston Whaler, then a neighbor's unlicensed 1929 Ford Model A farm pickup through the woods and fields on their property, then our WWII Army surplus Jeep used for plowing in winter, then a 1930 Ford Model A Tudor my brother and I bought when I was fifteen.
ReplyDeleteThe value of learning to handle a canoe can't be overstated, and as long as the kids have life jackets on the stakes are usually pretty low.
DeletePerhaps the lesson is to learn to do the hard thing first: canoes and sailboats before outboards, outboards before inboards, manuals before automatics, horses before ATVs, cursive before MS Word.
The shortcuts have their places, but they aren't always the best learning tools.
My vehicle was my father’s Farmall cub tractor, first boat was 17 foot outboard. I learned to drive both before I was ten.
ReplyDeleteI agree about "un-prep results". My first motorized vehicle was a motorcycle I rode in the woods behind our house. The car I learned to drive was an un-prep 1967 GTO with a four speed.
ReplyDeleteA ‘69 GTO took me and two preps from New Jersey (!) on probably the best road trip I ever made: I’ve done not a huge amount of road trips, but I’ve done my share. This one took us from Upper Saddle River to Chicago in 12 hours. And we stopped for a relaxing breakfast; eggs, home fries, bacon, the whole nine yards, at the Delaware Water Gap. Dis-connect the odometer. Hold the tach at 4K. Pedal to the metal.
ReplyDeleteIn the mid 70s, my father gave us kids a 17' wooden Thompson with a 75 HP Evinrude outboard. We had so much fun in that little boat on the 10 mile lake...waterskiing, jumping off cliffs and off the rope swing, stopping at the local dockside restaurants or just having picnics floating around. There were many other young teens just turned loose with boats...including some very high powered ski nautiques. It was a little world that was everything to us. Everyone had Hobiecats and Force5 sailboats too. Most of us worked summer jobs in the camps or parks.
ReplyDelete