Better Off_ Flipping the Switch on Technology - Eric Brende [94]
So he drove his buggy into town, parked by a tree, and went inside the Registry of Motor Vehicles. The lady at the counter gave him a fistful of reading materials and told him to take them home and study them. He did this.
He began to peruse the booklet the clerk said he must learn cover-to-cover to pass the written test. It was about thirty pages of densely packed road sign pictures, statistics, regulation distances, speeds, and times, and a confusing and seemingly overlapping hodgepodge of driving rules.
He finally stood up, squinched his nose in disgust, and solemnly proclaimed to his kibitzing family, “Too Much Responsibility!”, and with a flick of the wrist tossed the pamphlet into the woodstove. I could almost picture the worry lines on his face smoothing over to the pleasant crackling sound of that burning booklet.
Maybe our fears were misplaced.
I admit Mary and I may have needed a reminder of what we and other members of our society had taken on behind the wheel. The responsibility has crept up gradually over a nine-decade cultural metamorphosis, almost imperceptible to those engaged in it. We began with clunky little Model Ts that barely outstripped horse travel, and we ended with a freeway commute in eight lanes of traffic—often still barely outstripping horse travel. I remember picking up a book called The Western Way of Death, written by a British researcher who had measured the stress of driving on motorists. The minute you turn the key, your adrenaline levels rise alarmingly, even if you feel relaxed. Since the only way this stress chemical can be used is through exercise—biologically it serves the “fight or flight” response, impossible for someone strapped in a moving vehicle—over time it leads to fat deposits that line and block the coronary arteries. The worst pollutants the car produces are inside the body. Even as it clogs the arteries around us, it blocks those within. The car is a kind of universal coagulant.
Before we got around to an actual decision, though, a sheriff’s deputy, all polite and smiles, appeared out of the blue to inform us that he had seen us in our car with the out-of-state license plate. Would we please update the registration to conform with our present place of residence?
Mary had bought the car in New Hampshire and had kept it registered there, where her parents lived. New Hampshire is one of the few states that does not require car insurance. That, I will confess, was the reason Mary registered it there. Massachusetts, her true former home, required insurance and the rates were sky-high.
The state where we presently lived also required insurance. We stopped by an Allstate Insurance office to see what local rates were.
We walked out of the office in shock. It would cost us a thousand dollars for the first year to begin insuring a previously uninsured vehicle. We didn’t have that kind of money.
Our transportation dilemma thus resolved of itself. It was like a case of acne that disappeared for lack of money to buy candy.
The sale of the Escort brought $2,150. With this, we approached the local blacksmith and horse trainer, a soft-spoken man with massive forearms like the smithies of yore. He had a horse for sale, a young mare that he assured us was gentle and did not spook in traffic. At three years old, she was on the small side and easily managed. She could pull a cultivator in the garden or a small implement in the field. He brought her out from the stable, and she stood before us holding her front legs together coquettishly. The blacksmith’s son, a wide-eyed twelve-year-old blond, peered through the dangling leather straps as I dickered with his dad on the price. The horse didn’t have a name, so after leading her off the premises, we gave