Insight: Rules of the Road

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Growing up, I always wondered why my mother didn’t want to drive.

Ed Pierce's mother was driving a 1962 Chevrolet Impala
exactly like this one when she hit a concrete pole head-on that
was dividing entrance and exit lanes in a bank parking lot. 
COURTESY PHOTO

My father drove us everywhere and he offered to teach her numerous times. For a while when I was about 10, she was enthusiastic about it. That is, until on a certain Friday night in 1964, she drove our family in my father’s 1962 teal-colored Chevrolet Impala to the drive-through bank in Pittsford, New York where my father could cash his paycheck.

We had made that same trip many times since that bank had opened just a few years before. As my mother approached the side entrance, she turned on her left turn blinker, checked the oncoming traffic and started to pull into the bank’s parking lot. But we suddenly came to an abrupt stop when she hit a newly installed concrete pole intended to divide traffic between entering and exiting turning lanes.

This was before the advent of seat belts so my brother and I who were sitting in the back seat tumbled forward when we hit the concrete pole. My father was in the front seat next to my mother and he immediately jumped out of the car to inspect the damage to the Impala.

The hood was crumpled and there was radiator fluid pooling underneath the car and running out into the street. The drive-through banking teller witnessed the accident and immediately called the police.

A policeman arrived and he helped my father push the car out of the bank parking lot entrance and into a parking spot. The officer spoke with my mother in a calm and reassuring manner and asked if she was injured. She was not.

My father asked the officer if he could drive my mother and us home. He stayed behind with the car and looked for a telephone to call his nephew Pete, who had his auto mechanic shop in a neighboring town.

Later that evening, Pete dropped my father off at our house. They had towed the Impala to his repair shop and the two of them had replaced the radiator. My father said Pete was going to work on the hood on Saturday so he could have the car back to drive to work on Monday morning.

In the meantime, my mother was a nervous wreck. She kept asking why the bank would install the concrete divider pole and not alert the public about it. She insisted that the accident wasn’t her fault and that before she even had time to react, the concrete pole was there and even at a turning speed of 10 mph, she would not have been able to avoid colliding with it.

She talked briefly about suing the bank for placing the pole there and my father pointed out to her that it was indeed the bank’s property, and that we were under no obligation to turn in there.

She cried a lot and said she was never going to drive again after that experience.

But my father would always ask when we got in the car to go anywhere if my mother wanted to drive that day. She always refused and said he knew why.

It became almost a running joke whenever we were turning in somewhere when driving to “look out for concrete poles.” As my mother was really high strung and keenly sensitive to criticism, joking about the accident or her driving just served to make her even more steadfast in her refusal to get her driver’s license.

In 1966, my father traded in the 1962 Chevrolet Impala for a 1966 Ford Galaxie 500 and my mother wouldn’t even get into the new car unless she was assured that she wouldn’t have to drive.

Years later she moved with my father to Florida and began work as a home health aide. She needed a car to get around and so at the age of 55, she practiced for a while and then tested and received her driver’s license.

In 2001, when we were visiting our hometown in New York for a wedding, I let her drive the rental car and we drove through Pittsford and past the bank parking lot.

I pointed out the exact location where in 1964 she had struck the concrete lane divider pole. At first, she didn’t want to look, but I showed her that it was no longer there and had been removed.

She almost couldn’t believe it and told me that the accident was the reason why she didn’t want to drive for many years afterward.

As she got older, my mother tried to retire at 65 but never liked sitting around being idle. She took a position as a case manager for a social worker and would visit nursing homes to see patients.

She drove everywhere right up until being diagnosed with macular degeneration in both of her eyes at the age of 84 and forced to forego driving until she passed away at 95 in 2018.

A few years ago, my wife Nancy and I were on vacation in New York, and we drove past that bank parking lot. I mentioned the accident and Nancy said, “you’re not going to talk about that again, are you?” <

Andy Young: Laundry Room Drama

By Andy Young

Sometimes the simplest things can cheer me up, like birds chirping early on a spring morning, the delighted gurgling of a smiling infant, or a blazing orange sunset.

But occasionally such mood enhancers are more than pleasant. They’re necessary.

One such situation began last Wednesday. I left for work at 5 a.m. and returned home, exhausted, 13 hours later. Needing to maximize my remaining hours of consciousness efficiently, I hastily threw in a load of laundry before preparing to start dinner. Piling a heap of dirty clothes into the washer, I poured in some liquid detergent, started the wash cycle, and … heard an ominous sound: silence.

Trying not to overreact, I did some quick troubleshooting. First, I checked the fuse box, but no circuit breaker was off kilter. Then I pulled the machine’s plug out of the wall outlet it had been occupying and plugged it into the one directly above it. Nothing changed.

Now it was time to panic. My ancient washing machine was full of dirty clothes, but apparently kaput. I didn’t know if I had enough quarters to go to a laundromat. Or, for that matter, if laundromats still even take quarters. I desperately tried to think of where I could find someone who’d come fix my washer, which day I could take off from work so I’d be there when the repair people showed up, and, most troubling, where I could find the money to replace a non-functioning, presumably expensive vital appliance if said repair people told me it had officially kicked the bucket. My blood pressure was skyrocketing.

Resigning myself to the traumatic days that lay ahead, I started searching for someone who does house calls for sick appliances. The robotic voice that answered my first phone call informed me that the number I had dialed had been disconnected. Strike one. The answering service at the second place advised me that they were closed until the following Monday. Strike two. The earliest appointment available with the third place was the following Wednesday. Strike three.

Out of sheer desperation I called the number listed for Sears, even though I knew they’d closed their last remaining Maine store two years ago.

Someone’s still using their name to repair appliances, though, because after getting the standard automated greeting (“For refrigerator repairs, press one; for dryer repairs, press two,” etc.) and pressing the appropriate button on my phone, I got through to an actual human being.

Reading from a script which expressed his thanks for my calling him and his sympathy for my current difficulties, he transferred me to another actual person, this one a female with an accent I couldn’t quite identify.

After greeting me with the very same expression of gratitude/sympathy her colleague had, she asked if I had checked the fuse box for any flipped circuit breakers. I confirmed that I had, and that I had also unplugged the machine and tried a different outlet, without success.

Then she proposed trying another appliance in the outlet to see if it worked. Lo and behold, the electric razor I plugged in didn’t turn on. Then she gently suggested I check the fuse box again.

Sure enough, circuit breaker number seven, which was unlabeled, was slightly out of alignment. I flipped it forward, flipped it back, and…voila! My washing machine was working again.

Like I said, sometimes the simplest things can cheer me up. Like birds chirping early on a spring morning, the delighted gurgling of a smiling infant, a blazing orange sunset, or a lightly accented voice telling me I don’t need a new washing machine. <