The Annual Autocross Party at Billiards Café in Ayer, planned for February 5th has been postponed.
New Date TBD
Please Email us is you would like to be notified of the new re-schedule date.
Questions? Contact Chris Ryan, NER Autocross Chair: [email protected]
Anker Berge-Sonne’s recent story regarding how he first learned to drive and eventually got his license got me to thinking. In some ways my experience is similar and yet certainly different. I was born way back in late November 1949… so not very long after World War II.
We lived in a nice 3 bedroom house in Johnston, RI. My folks had bought that house with the money they had saved up after my father (a licensed electrician) worked MANY long hours after the Hurricane of 38 pretty much devastated a lot of downtown Providence. My dad worked at the US Rubber plant (later called Uniroyal) and the plant sat right alongside the Woonasquatucket River. When the Hurricane blew up the east coast the storm serge was about 12 feet in the city. There are still markers on some of the downtown buildings showing how high the water rose.
With the US Rubber plant being right along the river… the water came up fast and pretty much took out the manufacturing capacity on ALL of the first floor buildings. For almost a year my dad worked from sun up to sun down, 6 and 7 days a week …repairing the damage. LOTS of overtime… and thus the money to eventually buy a house. One smart purchase my family made was to buy the extra lot next to our house. The lot was maybe 120 feet long and about 60 feet wide. This lot will soon be part of the story.
Cars (and motorcycles) were always a big part of my dad’s interest… and as a boy I would watch him (and help) as he worked either on his bike or his cars. “Hand me that 7/16-inch box wrench” …
“Ok… what’s a box wrench?”. I learned by doing.
Dad followed racing…. Indy, Daytona, anything local like midgets and stock cars at Seekonk and Thompson. In fact, one of my early memories was going to Thompson (I was maybe 11 or 12) on the back of the Harley and ending up near the paddock of the second configuration of that track. We watched real “road racing” and I remember the Ferrari of Mike Gamino (of Providence) go head-to-head with a Jag and an early Corvette. I’m pretty sure this was an SCCA event and I think the Ferrari won.
So, about this time I am in my early teens and the “car bug” had bit. I wanted to learn to drive. We had a Hudson Hornet (anybody remember those beasts ??) that was “surplus to our needs” and was not registered. It sat in that extra lot. Eventually my mom gave me the keys and encouraged me to “drive it back and forth” in the lot. I did this for hours on end. Back and forth… back and forth. (note: I had never heard of the Hudson Hornet prior to posting this article – here is an example of Steve McQueen’s I found online – Luis)
My mom giving me encouragement will come into play in a moment.
After about a year of this (I think I was maybe 15) one day my mom leaves the house while a friend of mine was with me. I get the bright idea to take the Hudson out on the side roads for a little run. Remember this is suburbia… there are houses and people and other cars all around… we are NOT out in the country. My buddy and I are gone no more than 10 minutes…during which time I ALMOST crashed the car. As I am driving back into the yard… I realize my mom is HOME.
@$%&.. caught red handed. Mom has one comment. “Wait till your father gets home and hears about this!” How many times have we ALL heard that expression?
Well, I did not get smacked across the back of my head, but I did get a STERN talking to by my father. Needless to say, … I never took the Hudson out on the road again.
My mother basically taught me how to drive. She had a 64 Dodge Dart convertible with a small V-8 and automatic transmission. I got my learners permit and together we would go out and drive around and she would instruct me. But since I had spent so much time in the Hudson… there really was not a lot to lean.
In high school I went to LaSalle Academy in Providence, an all-boy’s Catholic school… rather strict. I was a sophomore when I turned 16. I took a day out of school and my mother takes me to the driving test. I had one demerit (did not turn on my flashers when pulling out of the slot at the beginning of the test) and passed with flying colors. We got my paper work and Mom takes me to the registry and I get my license. All in the same day.
So, the next morning … as I’m getting ready for school… I ask my mother for a “note” to give to the teacher… saying I was sick yesterday. My mother looks at me and says “you were not sick… I am not giving you a note”. “But mom” I protest… “I’ll get in trouble.” “Well, you should have thought of that beforehand”. Needless to say, I did NOT get a note!
At school, after the first class session, there is an announcement over the PA system. “Mr. Raymond Boyer, please come to the principal’s office”. Now you have to understand that up to this point I had NEVER missed a day of school at LaSalle.
I walk into the office and there is Brother Patrick… the principal. (I will have another run in with this authority figure later in the year… a story for another time).
“Mr. Boyer, you were not in school yesterday. What is your excuse. Do you have a note from home?”
“No Brother, I do not have a note.”
“Why not, you missed school yesterday?”
I paused before I answered, considering my options.
Finally, I just fessed up.
“Well Brother, yesterday was my birthday and I turned 16. I took the day off and my mother drove me to take the driving test, which I passed I might add. After that we went to the Registry and I filled out the paperwork and I got my license. Then my mother took me out for lunch to celebrate me getting my license.”
This is all BS… but hey… I might as well spin this yarn as far as I can and see what happens. In a final act of defiance, rather proudly I say …
“Would you like to see my license?”
Brother Patrick looks at me with a bit of shock and perhaps with just a bit of incredulity. He just stands there looking at me. It seemed like forever, but was probably no more that 10 seconds before he says.
“I have to commend both your mother and you for your honesty in this matter”
“Thank you, Brother,” I reply.
I figure I am home free. Patrick just stands there thinking, perhaps for another 5 seconds. Then the verdict comes down.
“Three Weeks Detention. Report to room 102 every day after class.”
So, for the next 3 weeks I go to room 102 after class and spend those 45 minutes each day with all the other “hooligans” of La Salle Academy.
But at least after detention I got to drive myself home. You see, my dad gave me that old Hudson Hornet as a birthday present.
Contribution by: NER Member Ray Boyer
Additional Info
Ray Boyer is a newer member of the Porsche community. He bought his first P car (a 2011 Carrera 911) in August of 2019 as a present to himself for his 70th. birthday. Raymond joined the New England Porsche club in January of 2021. He is also a member of the SCCA and has been racing Formula Fords for more than 30 years. He does most of the mechanical work on the car himself. He now knows the difference between a 7/16-inch box wrench and a screwdriver.
January 2022 Board Meeting Minutes
The January board meeting was held on January 12th at 6:00 PM via a video conference.
In attendance were:
Robert Jacobsen – President
Kristin Larson – Treasurer
Glenn Champagne\Betty Mae Mosley – VP Administration
Lisa Burke – VP Membership
Erick Aubin – Secretary
Jerome Gangitano –VP Driving Events
Luis Rivera – VP Communications
Stan Corbett – DE Registrar
Not in attendance:
Nick Shanny – Past President
The Board approved the monthly Treasurer’s Report and the December Meeting Minutes. A discussion of club activities, events, and general business followed.
● Incoming Board Member Logistics – New board members, need access to the systems used for event and board meeting logistics, including:
▪ Freedcamp access is needed for Erick, Glenn, and Betty Mae
▪ Email address forwarding in place, Lisa looking for webmail access to the Membership account
▪ National needs updating for Membership reports (Lisa & Robert) as well as NER contacts; Robert submitted President’s Report at the end of December
▪ Porschenet updates are needed for activity chairs, including adding Charlie to the DE contacts. Stan will update the DE site as well as post the 2022 event dates. Luis will review other contact info on the site for updating.
▪ NER Zoom Admin login details will be posted in Freedcamp
▪ Board members to exchange cell phone contact information
● Sponsorship/Advertising – Subcommittee met prior to board meeting and plan to have advertiser deck ready to distribute to past advertisers and sponsors by the end of January. DE welcomes ideas for new sponsors. Autocross, Concours, Ramble have lined up their sponsors for the year, DE in progress. Paul Skinner will be the primary contact for DE. For Autocross, Ramble and Concours, the chairs will be handling directly. Rally to independently solicit sponsors for the time being. Social events to be discussed as the dates are typically not defined this early in the year. All activity chairs must notify Kristin once sponsorships are solidified.
● Administration – 4 events are lined up, including Q Car Care, Collings Museum, Porsche Norwell F1 Grand Prix viewing, SSA Tech Session. We are discussing Notch Brewery tour which lead to a conversation on COVID protocol or restrictions. Board agreed to plan events but monitor public safety measures, including CDC, state, local, and venue requirements as the year progresses. For cars & coffee events, Mark Shane has been named event chair and is working on a covered event at Cambridgeside Galleria. Board agreed to rebrand the events from Cars & Coffee to Porsches and Coffee as there is concern about our ability to police the behavior of non-club participants. A virtual winter warmer and possible tech session were proposed. Board welcomes volunteers from the membership population who would be interested in moderating or participating in virtual panel discussions.
● Gala Reschedule – The Board decided via email in late December to postpone the Gala from January 8th until a later date due to concerns about the recent increase in COVID infections and the possibility of needing to re-institute the use of masks or request attendees show proof of vaccination. In order to maintain event cadence (holding this event before the next season starts) and not overlap with other major annual events such as the Ramble or Summer Party, the Board proposed late March/early April dates with Gillette. Lisa will check if early April dates are available, with March 26th as the fallback option. The use of Communicable disease waivers was suspended July 1st of 2021 by PCA and will not be needed until further notification.
● Driving – DE and Autocross are finalizing 2022 budgets and will be close to the same as last year, with the possibility of additional revenue due to Calabogie and Mont Tremblant events being back on the schedule. Autocross could potentially have additional expenditure for comms equipment but will monitor the situation and notify the Board accordingly. Autocross will host the traditional school early in the season. Ramble is on schedule and has no concerns. There is an offer to help organize the spring rally, Jerome to forward Lisa’s contact information. Concours on track, no issues. Sim Racing continues to have fun.
● Communications – The 2022 content calendar google doc has been shared with the Board. There has been more traffic to the website both in terms of volume and frequency in recent months. Challenges continue in obtaining articles, content, and particularly event reports which are required by PCA national. To address the event report gap, a template has been circulated and posted to Freedcamp with the goal of simplifying the workflow and encouraging event attendees to assist. Discussion about means to upload reports directly will be taken offline by Jerome to contact Maddox.
● Membership – Our PCA Northeast Region currently has 3,383 primary and affiliate members. Anker analyzed email address availability per the December meeting minutes and determined that we do have contact information for almost all primary members and the concern about reaching everyone does not warrant further review. Lisa has yet to absorb all membership activities but will pursue taking on as much of the analysis and reporting capabilities that Anker built as possible as well as begin sending welcome emails to new members upon gaining access to the webmail portal.
The next NER board meeting is scheduled for February 9th at 6:00 PM on Zoom.
The Club’s monthly Board meetings are planned for the second Wednesday of each month and typically begin with a social period at 6:00 PM and the official Board meeting at 6:30 PM – although when it’s a Zoom meeting, the social piece is brief and the meeting begins shortly after 6:00 PM.
Club members may attend any of the monthly Board meetings. Please contact the Club Secretary ([email protected]) in advance of the meeting to confirm your attendance and the meeting time and place.
Whether it’s your first season on the track or you are a seasoned track veteran our 2022 DE Schedule is ready and we hope to see you there!
If you are a first timer or want a refresher, we suggest your attending Ground School :
General Info and DE Days are found here:
2022 DE General Info and Updates
For more info and questions please contact: Stan Corbett, NER Track Chair at [email protected]
I first started driving when I was 13, traveling cross country in my mother’s most disliked car ever: a flat 6-cylinder, rear engine Corvair station wagon. We were on a two-lane road in Nevada heading home to Colorado and my mom was bored with driving in an endless straight line, so she pulled over and told me to drive. Seemed logical to me. It was an exciting experience, especially with semi-trucks passing in the opposite direction at 60+ miles per hour and only a few feet away. All I remember her saying was “go faster, faster, faster.”
Living in western Colorado, I could get my first driver’s license at age 14, but it was limited to operating a motorcycle. I figured this was to benefit parents by eliminating the need to chauffeur kids over long distances, but what a gift to us! It gave us independence, freedom, and adventure! Needless to say, every boy who could got a motorcycle; the local pack of 14- to 16-year-old motorcyclists experienced a great deal of excitement, including many crashes. Our house was at the end of a paved road going out of Grand Junction which turned into a Jeep trail across the desert leading to the then remote, rugged Book Cliffs. Having motorcycles allowed us to spend a lot of time exploring the wilderness and doing what we wanted without parental oversight.
On my 16th birthday I went to the police department to take the automobile driver’s test. My birthday was in early January during a blizzard, but I was determined to get my second license for driving cars legally as soon as possible. I was driving my mother’s beloved Triumph TR-3, which was an especially rare vehicle in western Colorado. The policeman who joined me in the car had seen it, loved the way it looked, and was thrilled to ride in it. He was so thrilled that he made me drive for an hour and a half, on both town and rural roads, through the snow, on standard street tires that didn’t have much traction.
When he finally returned to the police station, he told me a required part of the test was to parallel park in front of the station. I pointed out that a snowplow had created a large berm along the parking spaces; nevertheless, I was directed to parallel park. The policeman cheerfully completed the paperwork and handed me my driving permit. He then tried to open the little passenger door to get out, but found it pressed against the snow so he asked me to pull out of the parking space so he could get out. Of course, the car was stuck, and the tires would only spin. He then had to slide open the little plastic side curtain and yell to a couple of cops that were exiting the police station to push us out of the parking space, which they did. They then gave my testing officer a lot of light-hearted grief and laughed as they told me to drive home as fast as I could before the snow got even deeper!
TR-3 note: It was my mother’s daily driver to carry my two younger brothers and me. As the oldest son, I got the passenger seat and my two younger brothers sat on top of the fuel tank behind the seats. My mother drove up to 6 passengers in the little car (2 in the passenger seat, 2 on the fuel tank behind the seats, and 2 sitting on the trunk), and did get stopped by the police. But when they saw it was not a teenager driving, they let her continue!
-Jeff Johnson
Most of my teen years were spent in Tanzania from 1963 to 1966, from age 14 to 18. As with all teens, these were transformational years for me, and what a great place to spend them. Tanzania had just gained independence. Actually, it was Tanganyika when we moved there; Zanzibar rebelled against their Arab rulers in 1964 and subsequently merged with Tanganyika and was renamed Tanzania.
My family moved there from Denmark because my father had taken a job with the Danish foreign aid agency, which was building a high school in Kibaha, about 25 miles from the capital, Dar-es-Salaam, in cooperation with Sweden, Norway, and Finland. The first year we lived in the Central Highlands in Iringa at a boarding school built by the British, called St. Michael’s and St. George’s School when we arrived, but quickly renamed Mkwawa High School after a chief who in the very late 1800s rebelled against their German colonialists. The rebellion failed, mainly because the magic potion, water, failed to protect the warriors against German bullets, and poor Mkwawa’s skull was kept in Berlin until it very recently was returned to his homeland. The school entirely transformed over the next two years from being extremely British: almost exclusively white students and teachers, and teachers wearing gowns and mortarboards daily, to still an almost exclusively white teacher body, but the student body being almost exclusively native Tanzanian.
At the end of the first two years, the rest of my family moved to Kibaha, 300 miles away. But I stayed on for a term as a boarder because the Scandinavian-built school in Kibaha wasn’t ready to accept students. Kids either really enjoy boarding school or hate it. I loved it. My younger brother went to a different boarding school in Nairobi, Kenya, and hated it. The only thing I wasn’t happy with was that as a white person and the son of a former teacher, the staff went to great lengths to not show any favoritism towards me, on the contrary.
Well, I digress and better start writing about cars. While I was a boarder in Iringa, I turned 16, the age at which I could get my driver’s license. I was able to talk the headmaster’s wife into letting me drive her car, a VW Beetle, around the school grounds, with a big L sign on it. After a couple of weeks, my birthday came up, and since I was now confident in my driving skills, all done at 20 to 30 MPH, to make an appointment for my driving test on my actual birthday. For some reason, the headmaster’s wife’s Beetle wasn’t available, so I had to borrow another teacher’s car, fortunately also a Beetle. Driving tests were conducted by the police, and after I paid the fee, 5 shillings, approximately 80 cents in the US, a cop joined me in the passenger seat, had me drive around the block, and then parallel park. I passed!
To my surprise, the paperwork given to me authorized me to operate any land-based vehicle with wheels, including motorcycles, cars, trucks, and buses. I chose to have the actual license issued for motorcycles and cars. Much to my later regret, but because the truck and bus license required a picture, which I didn’t have. I could, however, use the original paperwork to upgrade my license later, which I didn’t, to my even greater regret.
My parents were blissfully unaware of my shenanigans, and when the term ended and I rejoined my family in Kibaha, I showed my license to them and asked if I could borrow the family car. To my huge surprise, my dad pulled out the keys, handed them to me, and said, “here!”
That 80 cent license got me a Danish driver’s license for almost nothing, and that, in turn, got me a US driver’s license for almost nothing! I did, however, have to take the written test, which the Danes hadn’t required.
The pictures are of my family taking a lunch break under a Baobab tree on one of our many vacation trips (I am the tallest kid), and of the lowest grade of road that we encountered!
I challenge all of you to write a better story about getting your driver’s license. To accept the challenge, write it up in a Word document and send it to [email protected]!
-Anker Berg Sonne