The end of the road

 A little personal note today to break up the Catfish story.  Old Dog seems to enjoy it, but I haven't heard anything from Beagles on the subject.  Feel free to comment you guys if you are of a mood.

It is my lazy habit to toss mail that needs to be dealt with into a folder to be taken care of whenever.  Whenever turned out to be yesterday and there among the envelopes was my driver's license renewel.  And suddenly i realized my birthday was Monday.  I just had a few days to deal with this. 

And how do I deal with this?  Will I need to take some kind of test?  Vision?  Maybe, seems like I remember taking that in the past.  Written?  Seems like maybe I have also needed to take that in the past.  Road?  Geez, I don't remember taking that since I was eighteen.  But wait, isn't there some age where suddenly you have to start taking that test again on a regular basis? 

I tried to call the place downtown where I always go, but they were closed because of the covid, and so was this place and that place, and lots of busy signals and those calm messages about how they were busy now and call back later.  I just wanted to hear somebody tell me something.

And finally I reached someone.  And yes, at 76 I have reached the age where I will have to start taking the road test on a regular basis.  I will need a car, and I will need insurance, and of course that is not going to happen.  I am at the end of the road.

I remember my dad teaching me to drive, but I think I scared him a bit, and soon I was in one of those embarrasing  driving school cars with the stupid sign above the roof.  I flunked the driving test the first time but passed the second.  The family got a new car and I kind of inherited the old one.  A white 1960 Ford which I named the white tornado after a commercial by Ajax, the foaming cleanser which I drove to work that summer. but always left parked in front to the house when me and my neighborhood pals went drinking.  But I drove it down to college in 65 and got drunk and wrecked it.

Didn't drive again until 1969 when I went down to Herrin for my CO and just had to have a car to get around. and to drive up to Champaign on the weekends to get drunk with my Champaign buddies.  My first car was a Corvair, one of those cars that had a tendancy to flip when they got a flat tire as mind did.  After that I had a 1964 Ford Fairlane which I drove up to Urbana when my work in Herrin was done, by which time it didn't run very well and eventually I sold it to some guy who entered it into the demo derby at the county fair.

When I came back from Texas in 1987 my mother had me drive the car sometimes because she was a little afraid of my dad's driving which had become erratic by then.  And that's the extent of my driving.

My dad loved to drive.  We didn't have a car until I was 8 and we got a pea green 1953 Ford Customline.  He drove it all the time.  For vacation that year we drove around Lake Michigan.  We went with this other couple that the folks used to hang with, and I guess that the other guy expected to do some of the driving but my dad would not give up the wheel.  All our vacations after that involved a lot of driving.  Dad loved being behind the wheel, in command.

So I know it was tough on him when his time came to take the regular tests, how he sweated it.  When we get old they start taking things away from us, and this was one thing he didn't want to give up.  I think maybe he kept driving even after he lost his license.  I remember mom telling me that they had sideswiped a parked car and just kept on going because they would be in big trouble if they got caught.  Like teenagers, they were outlaws.

Not a big deal for me though.  Just five more days until I will no longer be able to legally drive, but I guess I won't mind this thing being taken away from me.