It was a nice spring day in the early 90s, I know that much for (almost) sure. Joe and I were spending the weekend, or maybe just the day, with our dad and he'd taken us to the Village of East Davenport, where he was playing baseball (or more likely catch) with our uncle at Lindsay Park. We'd gotten bored and asked if we could go sit in Dad's pick up.
We were both pretty young; Joe was probably only 5 or 6, making me only 9 or 10. Dad had a red S10 pickup from the mid-80s. It had a long vinyl bench seat and behind the seat was at least two years worth of Dad's garbage; mainly empty packages of chocolate covered peanuts and Diet Mountain Dew bottles. He's a carpenter so everything had a thin layer of dirt. It was a clutch and the way I remember it, Joe started playing with stick shift (maybe it was me, I don't really remember this part).
As a person who has owned a stick for most of my car-owning life, I've tried to figure out what happened next several times.
Dad had parked the car on a hill. It was facing downhill. I guess the truck was in gear when Dad had parked it, and Joe (or me, again, I don't really remember who was the instigator) must have put the car into neutral and we started moving down the hill (coming down into the river valley, so it was a fairly steep hill for Iowa). I remember being incredibly terrified and trying to figure out how we'd explain this to our Mom later in the day (I'm not sure she ever found out). I remember having no idea what was going on or how to stop it, except for trying to move the stick shift around some more.
And then I remember our uncle running from the ball field, across the street, and opening the drivers' side door of the truck and slamming on the parking brake.
I filed "parking brake" away for all future emergencies. And I decided not to wait in cars with my brother when I was bored.
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