Country Drivers

FOUND WHILE DRIVING

In America, starting a car and going out onto a road can be a harrowing experience; at other times, it can be irritating; sometimes it’s just plain entertaining. In any event, the common motorist is likely -- or liable -- to run into all sorts of drivers on the road (no pun intended). In Louisa County, Virginia, an abundance of these types exist, even in a county with such a small population. These drivers fall into some easily recognizable categories. There are the Clueless, the Meanderers, the Musicians, and the Cools, as well as the Putt-Putts and the Tourists. Some of these types probably contribute to the growing concern over incidents of road rage; others are simply evidence that not all gene pools contain genetic material destined for the inside of the human cranial cavity. One such type of the latter group is the Clueless driver.

The Clueless driver, as the name implies, hasn’t a clue as to where she is going or how to let other drivers know where she is going. Take Edith Clueless, for example. Edith is driving along Route 208, just outside of town, at the prescribed speed of 25 MPH. As she nears the entrance to the Louisa Health Care Center, she comes to a complete stop in the right lane; then she begins to turn left into the nursing home at an exact, ninety-degree angle. It is at that point that she turns on her left turn signal.

“Why is that person blowing his horn at me?” she wonders in shocked surprise as she watches a large pickup truck zoom off down the highway, its driver shaking an arm in the air.

Meanwhile, somewhere in the middle of Mineral, Abner Clueless is slowly proceeding along Main Street; before the post office, he slows to almost a complete stop, but does turn on his left turn signal; then he starts up again and proceeds to the next side street, turning on his directional signal again. Once more, he starts going straight again, this time finally turning left into the post-office lot, neglecting to signal this time. After all, he probably figures that he’s used that particular lever attached to the steering column twice before, so anyone behind him (if he has even looked in his rear-view mirror) should be able to figure out which way he was planning to go.

Somewhere near Trevilians, Martha Clueless has just made a left onto 613, slamming on the brakes just before exiting Route 33 and using no turn signal at all. She, too, wonders why that rude man had screamed such vile things about her and her mother. Like the Clueless drivers can cause anger and even accidents, the Meanderers can do the same things.

Meanderers are those drivers who must not have been able to walk in a straight line down high-school hallways, because they can’t drive in a straight line down a road, either. They wander from the white line on the side of the road to the double line in the middle, frequently touching both lines with the tires of their vehicles. We can observe Nelson Meanderer as he maneuvers his 1976 Oldsmobile along Route 22, halfway between Boswells Tavern and Trevilians. When the right wheels pass the white line and hit gravel, he knows it’s time to turn the wheel slightly to the left and get over onto the middle of the road, a somewhat disconcerting sight to Tom Driver, who is coming from the opposite direction. Nelson admires Tom’s deft driving ability as Tom maneuvers his Toyota Corolla along the right ditch until he’s passed Nelson and can pull back onto the highway again.

Meanwhile, somewhere between Gordonsville and Barboursville, Margaret Meanderer is weaving her way back and forth between the lines, her hands clenched tightly in the 10 and 2 positions on the wheel, as she peers myopically through the space between the top of the steering wheel and the top of the dashboard. On the other end of the county, Leander Meanderer is wandering from one side of the road to the other as he fiddles with the tracks on the latest CD by Bad Daddy and the Gangsta Thuggies, wondering absently what the motorist coming the other way was waving his fist out of the window for. While both the Clueless and the Meanderer are apt to cause accidents because of their bad driving, the Tourists are apt to just cause anger in anyone who is following behind them.

Tourists are those drivers, usually farming fellows above the age of forty, who tend to drive into town once or maybe twice a month, usually in trucks that sport license plates that say “Farm Use Only” on them. These “tourists” have heads on swivels because they need to be able to drive by looking to the left and right, but rarely straight ahead.

Take Abner Tourist. Someone driving behind Abner can observe Abner’s head, silhouetted in the cab of his 1973 Ford pickup, as he drives slowly along the main street in Louisa, alternately looking to his left and then to his right. We can almost hear him saying to himself,

“Dang, that thar gas station closed up again!” followed quickly by “Yep, Pettit closed down, too,” followed even more closely by “Ferebee done got sold; wonder when they done that!” all at a speed of six miles an hour.

Meanwhile, out on 669, halfway toward Blue Ridge Shores, Milton Tourist keeps slowing down in his 1968 Chevrolet farm truck as he takes in the scenery and admires the latest additions to Silas Peckam’s cow pasture. Six miles away, in Mineral, Dicky Don Tourist has acquired an entire train of automobiles and trucks behind him as he proceeds along 522, looking to his right and left to see what stores have closed up and how many flowers have been left in the memorial cemetery. Of course, these Tourists are not likely to cause any accidents, since their average speed is usually around twenty miles an hour, although the possibility does exist that some impatient driver behind them, eager to get the ice cream home before it reverts back to just plain cream, might try to pass in a no-passing zone and cause a tragic, head-on collision with a car coming the other way, whose driver had no idea that one of the cars was going to jump the tracks and leave the Tourist train. Another type found on the road, although not likely to cause anger or accidents, is the Musician.

This type can be observed using his vehicle as a part of a band, usually the drums. We can see Homer Musician, who is proceeding at the high rate of speed along a winding stretch of Route 605, banging merrily away on his steering wheel as he beats along with the hip-hop music coming from his tape player. Coming the other way, Wilbur Musician has both hands off the wheel to drum on his dashboard during an especially exciting drum solo vibrating out of his trunk’s 400,000 amp speaker. Did I say these types are not likely to cause accidents? Sorry, I was wrong; Wilbur and Homer are now on their way to the Great Drum Heaven in the Sky; both cars are total wrecks, although Wilbur’s amp is still making boom-boom-thump sounds inside the smoking trunk.

Passing the smoldering remains of Wilbur and Homer’s last concerts, Waldo Musician drives his parents’ Volvo with his knee, since he needs both hands to play air-guitar to Lynyrd Skynrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama.”

“Dang, some people jest can’t drive!” he mutters as he quickly takes his left hand off the air-strings to pull his car back onto the road. Meanwhile, somewhere else in the county, we can find the Cool drivers.

Look, there’s one now, just passing McDonald’s in Louisa. In his tiny little red car, made in some third-world country, with its huge chrome custom rims, Leonardo Cool passes slowly by the burger franchise, his head resting on the driver’s side door, while his right hand is nonchalantly draped over the steering wheel. This is considered “cool.” You see, Cool drivers are out on the road for that one, single purpose: to be observed by others, both drivers and pedestrians, drifting along the road in their customized Yugos and Honda Civics; the cars’ blue-book values usually average about $200; the custom rims and sound systems, which can usually be heard ten to twelve miles away on a still night, average around a thousand bucks. As stated before, not all drivers were born with fully functioning brains.

Heading for another exciting night to hang out in some parking lot in Richmond, we can observe Antonio Cool zooming along I-64, the vibrating waves coming from his trunk and rear-deck speakers blowing bits of litter off the road. Meanwhile, another motorist is wondering about the strange posture of Frankie Cool, whose head is tilted toward the middle of the front seat of his shiny black 1982 Ford Pinto. “How can he drive with his head in front of the rear-view mirror...and why’s he leaning all the way to the right?” the motorist wonders. What he doesn’t realize is that it doesn’t matter; Frankie is cool, that’s all. Finally, there is the driver that makes many others wish they were driving a tank or a bulldozer; these are the Putt-Putts.

Putt-Putts are, as the name suggests, motorists who drive at no more than thrity miles an hour, and that would be on roads with 55MPH-speed limits. In most cases, these Putt-Putts, who are, 9 times out of 10, invariably women, rarely go more than 15 miles per hour. They can usually be seen peering fearfully and cautiously, between the top of the steering wheel and the top of the dashboard, like Margaret Meanderer, who is, by now, approaching Barboursville at exactly 39 miles per hour.

Take Elvira Putt-Putt, for instance. Elvira doesn’t like to drive, but since her husband Elmer had his cataract surgery and can’t drive, she summons up her country courage and makes the dangerous trip from Mineral to Louisa to shop at Food Lion. She doesn’t like to drive in the morning, when there may still be dew on the road, and late afternoon signals the coming on of night, so she likes to make a bi-weekly trip to the grocery store around mid-afternoon. We can see Elvira’s white 1989 Chrysler New Yorker leading the line of sixty-seven cars that have just exited the high-school lot at 3:30. These students will get home sometime around six that evening.

Meanwhile, Esther Putt-Putt is slowly making her way into town along 646, careful not to go faster than fifteen, especially around those dangerous curves. To be sure she’s being a safe driver, she gives the brake pedal a tap every two or three seconds. She, too, wonders why the man behind her is flashing his headlights and blowing his horn. Pulling over slowly into a driveway entrance, she frowns as he zooms past, and wonders why “that man was saying something about a ditch.”

Of course, some Putt-Putts rarely appear on the highway. Like Thelma Putt-Putt. Thelma refuses to risk her life on the road, out where all those crazy people who go over 35 miles an hour are; why, if there is rain, or snow, or fog, or mist, or dust on the highway, you won’t see Thelma putt-putting her 1988 Buick sedan on the road, no siree!

Doubtless, there are other kinds of drivers out there who inspire various emotions. There are the Nascar-Wannabees, the Blind Idiots, and the Makeup Mollies, among others. As I said at the beginning, life on the highways of America can be a harrowing experience. Be careful out there!