BS: Live Long - Make No Left Turns

Subject: BS: Live Long - Make No Left Turns
From: katlaughing
Date: 29 Sep 07 - 05:42 PM

My daughter just sent me this by email:

This is a wonderful piece by Michael Gartner, editor of newspapers large and small and president of NBC News. In 1997, he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. It is well worth reading, and a few good chuckles are guaranteed.

    My father never drove a car. Well, that's not quite right. I should say I never saw him drive a car.
    He quit driving in 1927, when he was 25 years old, and the last car he drove was a 1926 Whippet.

    "In those days," he told me when he was in his 90s, "to drive a car you had to do things with your hands, and do things with your feet, and look every which way, and I decided you could walk through life and enjoy it or drive through life and miss it."

    At which point my mother, a sometimes salty Irishwoman, chimed in:
"Oh, bull----!" she said. "He hit a horse."

    "Well," my father said, "there was that, too."

    So my brother and I grew up in a household without a car. The neighbors all had cars -- the Kollingses next door had a green 1941 Dodge, the VanLaninghams across the street a gray 1936 Plymouth, the Hopsons two doors down a black 1941 Ford -- but we had none.

    My father, a newspaperman in Des Moines, would take the streetcar to work and, often as not, walk the 3 miles home. If he took the streetcar home, my mother and brother and I would walk the three blocks to the streetcar stop, meet him and walk home together.

    My brother, David, was born in 1935, and I was born in 1938, and
sometimes, at dinner, we'd ask how come all the neighbors had cars but
we had none. "No one in the family drives," my mother would explain,
and that was that.

    But, sometimes, my father would say, "But as soon as one of you boys turns 16, we'll get one." It was as if he wasn't sure which one of us would turn 16 first.

    But, sure enough , my brother turned 16 before I did, so in 1951 my parents bought a used 1950 Chevrolet from a friend who ran the parts department at a Chevy dealership downtown.

    It was a four-door, white model, stick shift, fender skirts, loaded with everything, and, since my parents didn't drive, it more or less became my brother's car.

    Having a car but not being able to drive didn't bother my father, but it didn't make sense to my mother.

    So in 1952, when she was 43 years old, she asked a friend to teach her to drive. She learned in a nearby cemetery, the place where I learned to drive the following year and where, a generation later, I took my two sons to practice driving. The cemetery probably was my father's idea. "Who can your mother hurt in the cemetery?" I remember him saying more than once.

    For the next 45 years or so, until she was 90, my mother was the driver in the family. Neither she nor my father had any sense of direction, but he loaded up on maps -- though they seldom left the city limits -- and appointed himself navigator. It seemed to work.

    Still, they both continued to walk a lot. My My mother was a devout Catholic, and my father an equally devout agnostic, an arrangement that didn't seem to bother either of them through their 75 years of marriage.

    (Yes, 75 years, and they were deeply in love the entire time.)

    He retired when he was 70, and nearly every morning for the next 20 years or so, he would walk with her the mile to St. Augustin's Church. She would walk down and sit in the front pew, and he would wait in the back until he saw which of the parish's two priests was on duty that morning. If it was the pastor, my father then would go out and take a 2-mile walk, meeting my mother at the end of the service and walking her home.

    If it was the assistant pastor, he'd take just a 1-mile walk and then head back to the church. He called the priests "Father Fast" and
"Father Slow."

    After he retired, my father almost always accompanied my mother
whenever she drove anywhere, even if he had no reason to go along. If
she were going to the beauty parlor, he'd sit in the car and read, or
go take a stroll or, if it was summer, have her keep the engine running so he could listen to the Cubs game on the radio. In the evening, then, when I'd stop by, he'd explain: "The Cubs lost again. The millionaire on second base made a bad throw to the millionaire on first base, so the multimillionaire on third base scored."

    If she were going to the grocery store, he would go along to carry the bags out -- and to make sure she loaded up on ice cream. As I said, he was always the navigator, and once, when he was 95 and she was 88 and still driving, he said to me, "Do you want to know the secret of a long life?"

    "I guess so," I said, knowing it probably would be something bizarre.

    "No left turns," he said.

    "What?" I asked.

    "No left turns," he repeated. "Several years ago, your mother and I read an article that said most accidents that old people are in happen when they turn left in front of oncoming traffic.

    As you get older, your eyesight worsens, and you can lose your depth perception, it said. So your mother and I decided never again to make a left turn."

    "What?" I said again.

    "No left turns," he said. "Think about it. Three rights are the same as a left, and that's a lot safer. So we always make three rights."

    "You're kidding!" I said, and I turned to my mother for support "No," She said, "your father is right. We make three rights. It works." But then she added: "Except when your father loses count."

    I was driving at the time, and I almost drove off the road as I started laughing.

    "Loses count?" I asked.

    "Yes," my father admitted, "that sometimes happens. But it's not a
problem. You just make seven rights, and you're okay again."

    I couldn't resist. "Do you ever go for 11?" I asked.

    "No," he said " If we miss it at seven, we just come home and call it a bad day. Besides, nothing in life is so important it can't be put off another day or another week."

    My mother was never in an accident, but one evening she handed me her car keys and said she had decided to quit driving. That was in 1999, when she was 90.

    She lived four more years, until 2003. My father died the next year, at 102.

    They both died in the bungalow they had moved into in 1937 and bought a few years later for $3,000. (Sixty years later, my brother and I paid $8,000 to have a shower put in the tiny bathroom -- the house had never had one. My father would have died then and there if he knew the shower cost nearly three times what he paid for the house.)

    He continued to walk daily -- he had me get him a treadmill when he was 101 because he was afraid he'd fall on the icy sidewalks but wanted to keep exercising -- and he was of sound mind and sound body until the moment he died.

    One September afternoon in 2004, he and my son went with me when I had to give a talk in a neighboring town, and it was clear to all three of us that he was wearing out, though we had the usual wide-ranging conversation about politics and newspapers and things in the news.

    A few weeks earlier, he had told my son, "You know, Mike, the first hundred years are a lot easier than the second hundred." At one point in our drive that Saturday, he said, "You know, I'm probably not going to live much longer."

    "You're probably right," I said.

    "Why would you say that?" He countered, somewhat irritated.

    "Because you're 102 years old," I said.

    "Yes," he said, "you're right." He stayed in bed all the next day.

    That night, I suggested to my son and daughter that we sit up with him through the night.

    He appreciated it, he said, though at one point, apparently seeing us look gloomy, he said:

    "I would like to make an announcement. No one in this room is dead yet."

    An hour or so later, he spoke his last words:

    "I want you to know," he said, clearly and lucidly, "that I am in no pain. I am very comfortable. And I have had as happy a life as anyone on this earth could ever have."

    A short time later, he died.

    I miss him a lot, and I think about him a lot. I've wondered now and then how it was that my family and I were so lucky that he lived so long.

Subject: RE: BS: Live Long - Make No Left Turns
From: Ebbie
Date: 29 Sep 07 - 06:00 PM

I read this somewhere else and from time to time I cogitate on the three turns being as good as a left. For some reason I can't get my mind around it.

Say I want to go three miles - or three blocks, for that matter - up the street. My destination is on the left hand side.

OK. When I get into its vicinity I turn right, turn right again and then turn right again.

Now I'm back where I started, except that I have to cross the street to get to the other side.

Is crossing a street safer than making a left turn?

Bemusedly,

Ebbie

Subject: RE: BS: Live Long - Make No Left Turns
From: TRUBRIT
Date: 29 Sep 07 - 06:07 PM

This is a gorgous story -- that anyone of us should die so peacefully and live so long....

Subject: RE: BS: Live Long - Make No Left Turns
From: M.Ted
Date: 29 Sep 07 - 07:47 PM

Ebbie,

There is an important point left out of this description--You have to drive a block past the street you would have to turn left on to make the first right--then two more rights, and theoretically, at least, you'll be heading in the direction you want, on the street you would have turned left on--

However, this is all based on the idea that all the streets in the world intersect at right angles and are out like a grid, as they are in midwestern towns like DesMoines, Iowa. If you tried that cute little trick in say, Philadelphia, where even allegedly parallel streets can intersect, you could end up in a whole other state. Probably New Jersey.

Subject: RE: BS: Live Long - Make No Left Turns
From: jacqui.c
Date: 29 Sep 07 - 07:53 PM

What a wonderful story. I love people.

Subject: RE: BS: Live Long - Make No Left Turns
From: Ebbie
Date: 29 Sep 07 - 11:19 PM

You'd still have to cross though, M'sieu.

Subject: RE: BS: Live Long - Make No Left Turns
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 30 Sep 07 - 12:18 AM

UPS plans the order in which stops are made on delivery routes so that their drivers make as few left turns as possible. I don't know if it helps UPS drivers live longer, but it saves diesel fuel that would be wasted idling in intersections while waiting to turn left.

Subject: RE: BS: Live Long - Make No Left Turns
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 Sep 07 - 12:54 AM

That's a great story, Kat. It's quite something to live to 102. I figure I will make it to around 70, if I was to take a guess...but you never know for sure.

Subject: RE: BS: Live Long - Make No Left Turns
From: Ebbie
Date: 30 Sep 07 - 01:09 AM

My family on both sides tend to live a long time. My father was proud of his sturdy stock. And then one day I perceived a different slant on it and I said to my brother, If it's true that we each live until we have learned the things we need to learn I think we'd better stop bragging about it.

I had an aunt who was just plain mean (in the American sense of cruel and thoughtless); she lived to be 104.

Subject: RE: BS: Live Long - Make No Left Turns
From: katlaughing
Date: 30 Sep 07 - 01:12 AM

Thanks, folks.

Yeah, Ebbie, you'd still have to cross, the intersection, but not make a left turn.:-)

I remember my dad telling me, when I first learned to drive, to avoid left turns as much as possible; my mom, told me, too. They both lived into their mid-80s.

Night Owl's mom is 97 and her aunt is 95. Neither of them have ever driven, though, so not sure what left hand turns have to do with their longevity.**bg**

Subject: RE: BS: Live Long - Make No Left Turns
From: Mo the caller
Date: 30 Sep 07 - 08:14 AM

Of course, it wouldn't work in UK. It's right turns that are dangerous here. And most roads wind about all over the place. Or are dead ends.

Subject: RE: BS: Live Long - Make No Left Turns
From: DMcG
Date: 30 Sep 07 - 08:38 AM

I do know someone in the UK who hates turning right so much that she does plan all her journeys to only take left turns unless it is absolutely unavoidable. She would far rather travel an extra mile or two (for each turn!) than turn right.

Subject: RE: BS: Live Long - Make No Left Turns
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 30 Sep 07 - 08:55 AM

Yep, my daughter too. She's become an expert navigator because of it, and never had a shunt in 20 years driving.

Me? I don't have that much patience, and have excellent depth perception. Still, who knows, maybe in a few years?

Don T.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Live Long - Make No Left Turns
From: Alba
Date: 30 Sep 07 - 09:52 AM

Totally cool wee story Kat.
Thanks for sharing it with us all.
( it just might be a good idea to remove Left Turn Indicators from Cars :>)
Happy Sun Day All,
Jude

Subject: RE: BS: Live Long - Make No Left Turns
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 01 Oct 07 - 03:50 AM

Allowing for the driving on the left in the UK, I used to ride my bicycle in the same fashion - never making turns across oncoming traffic if I could avoid it. So I travelled a few miles further than strictly necessary, but I was never knocked off my bike.

Interestingly, I saw three cars yesterday, that all had mashed wings, all on the same side and probably all the result of pulling into traffic turning right.

LTS