Also a bit of thread drift, more or less. But—idiot drivers.

It's in the late 1960s. My day job is working at Boeing as a production illustrator in the Everett plant (747s) about 25 miles north of Seattle. The work day is done and I'm heading down the on-ramp to the freeway to Seattle when this gink in a red Pontiac Firebird suddenly appears right behind me. He's red-face, beefy, and looks like he's the sort who thinks with his testicles rather than his brain (if any). I can tell this because he's three inches off my rear bumper and he's snarling and pounding the steering wheel because I'm not going fast enough for him, even though I'm accelerating to merge with the flow of traffic at the 70 mph speed limit.

I want to get out of this turkey's way because he looks like trouble, so glancing over my shoulder, I note that there is no one within about two block's distance, so I hit the accelerator and move as quickly as I can across the three lanes to the left lane, in order to get out of this guy's way.

As I make it to the left lane, suddenly there he is, shooting by me on MY left, on the shoulder, and giving me the finger! He pulls over sharply in front of me, nearly clipping my left front fender! Pluperfect imbecile!!

I was driving my new 1968 Toyota Corona sedan. At that moment, I wished I had been driving James Bond's Aston-Martin DB5 with the .30 caliber machine guns mounted under the front fenders. I could have raked this guy's rump pretty good!!

As the freeway passes by Lynnwood, traffic thickens up. I'm holding a steady 70 mph (this was before they lowered the speed limit to 55 as a national gas saving measure) and watching this guy ahead of me as he cuts in and out, changes lanes abruptly without signaling, and generally endangers the multitudes. This guy is a multiple car pile-up looking for a place to happen! And, of course, not a State Patrol cruiser in sight!

I lived in the University District at the time (Wilsonian Apartments) and intended to take the N. E. 50th Street exit as I normally did. As the fates would decree it, the bozo in the red Firebird headed into the same off-ramp. For all of his driving like a maniac and practically running people off the road, he never managed to get more than three or four blocks distance ahead of me as I stayed in my same lane and maintained a steady speed.

At the red light at the end of the off-ramp, he was a whole two cars ahead of me!

Don Firth