HERE IS THE RIGHT PLACE [SUN, 3-22-26]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—HERE IS THE RIGHT PLACE [SUN, 3-22-26]

 

Bill Linneman, distinguished professor emeritus of English at ILSU, wrote a column in which he announced that he was giving up driving. “I live in a retirement community,” he said, “and they have a bus that takes me anywhere I need to go. It’s much more fun and relaxing to watch the sights and scenes instead of the town instead of trying to avoid wild and stupid drivers. That’s the reason I’m giving up driving. Also, I failed the exam.”

What if I fail the driving exam? What shall I do if I can’t drive? That is always a looming problem as we age in this gasoline-driven America,

My late beloved friend, Bob Butts, drove a whole lot of cars a whole lot of miles over a whole lot of topography, even though he never passed a driver’s license exam, until he was 70.

He grew up in Mississippi. As a teen, he was riding around one day with a friend who said, “Hey, you want to go get your license?” “Sure,” said Bob, even though he couldn’t drive, since his family didn’t have a car.

But he went to the BMV, and he took the test. He failed. But the examiner must have checked the wrong box on the form. A couple of weeks later Bob received a license in the mail. He did not return it.

After that he lived in several different states, all of which have different laws for getting driver’s licenses, and renewing them, and he hit all of them just right, like hitting all the lights just as they turn green. All the states assumed that the one before it knew what it was doing and kept renewing his license. He did not have to take another license exam until he was 70.

My father lost almost all his sight in an industrial accident when he was 35. He had been driving since he was 12. He was a car guy, an excellent amateur mechanic, a perfect fit for the burgeoning automobile society of America. He was the most independent-minded man I have ever known, and suddenly he couldn’t drive. It changed him. He was no longer able to get out and about, so he withdrew into himself.

I think that driving a car is a spiritual thing. At least, God is involved. God invented cars to help kids separate from their parents, according to Anne Lamott.

That’s the problem, isn’t it? Cars allow us to go some place else, and we thus assume that some place else is a good place to be. And it is, because God is there. But God is also right here. We don’t have to go some place else. Perhaps the end of traveling in cars can be the start of traveling in the soul.

I think a key to carlessness comes from something Henry David Thoreau of Walden Pond said. When asked if he had traveled much, he said, “I have traveled a great deal…in Concord.”

Travel is good, but wherever you are, that place has all you need. Here is the right place to be.

John Robert McFarland