They Shoot Horses

It is Sunday afternoon. I am pulling out of the Saint James-Beth Ahabah parking lot onto an alley between Franklin and Grace Streets. At the intersection with Ryland Street, I look left to check for traffic and I see what appears to be a police car coming down the street. I am wondering whether it is one of the old white Richmond police cars or the new black ones. I soon discover that it is a Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) police car. I wait for it to pass and then turn right on Ryland. I find myself wondering about the jurisdiction of the VCU police. The police car turns left on Franklin Street and I do the same, making sure that I don’t do anything that resembles a traffic violation. Just before Harrison Street, the police car pulls over and seems to park. I pass him and make a picture-perfect right onto Harrison.

As I drive south on Harrison I sense that the police car is again behind me. And, its lights are flashing. Since I have been driving perfectly, I know it is not me it is after; so I slow down to let it pass. It slows down too, and it is getting clear that it is me it is flashing. I pull over and park. It parks about two car lengths behind me. Then, nothing. About two minutes pass and I am thinking maybe I am wrong. It’s not me it is after. I get out of my car and walk toward the police car to find out what is going on. And then I hear what I have heard hundreds of times before on TV and in the movies—“Sir, get back in your car.”

Soon, a young police officer appears at my window (at my age, almost everybody looks young). I roll down my window. “Do you know why I pulled you over?” This is getting to be more and more a police melodrama. He tells me—“Your registration is expired and you are overdue on your inspection.” He’s gotta be kidding. Nobody is stupid enough to let both those things happen. He asks for my driver’s license and goes back to his car.

I start searching my glove box. I find many pink inspection receipts. 2005, 2008, 2010, several with dates I cannot read. I look up at the inspection sticker on the windshield. It reads 10/2013. And it dawns on me that this 2014. The registration I find ends June 30, 2013. Guess what? It is me that is stupid enough to let both these things happen. But, I don’t remember getting a renewal notice from the DMV. If I had I would have renewed on line. The officer is back.

He asks me to sign two (2) citations. He explains to me that my signature is not an admission of guilt. He explains that if I want to pay these without challenge there is a phone number to call. He also explains that I can go to court to challenge the tickets. He speculates that the registration is six months late so a judge probably won’t let me off. But, he says, the inspection is only two months late and maybe a judge will be lenient. He is talking a lot. Maybe he wants to be my friend. When he finally leaves the side of my car, I am feeling guilty for having ruined his Sunday afternoon by forcing him to write me two tickets.

On Monday I go to the DMV. Seventy something bucks for a two year registration. (Maybe this will encourage my 2004 Camry to last that long). Then off to Allen Tire for the inspection. They call me back. “Your battery is marginal. You also need your cooling system flushed. It is going to be sub-freezing tomorrow so you better get these done.” I reluctantly agree. Later I pick up my car--$336.65. As I am driving home, I notice that my check-engine light has gone on. I am seeing more and more money flowing out of the bank. Don’t they know that me and the maveness are on fixed incomes?

And, I am daydreaming. I bet my great grandfather never had these problems. Of course, I never knew my great grandfather. All I know about him is that he died in the Russian Empire before 1912 (That’s when my grandfather came to this country). I don’t know what he did for a living. I don’t know if he ever saw a car. So, as happens in reverie, I invent an imaginary great grandfather who just happened to live in Richmond, Virginia. He happened to own a horse, which he used to get him around town. He never had to register his horse every year to keep it on the roads. He never had to get it inspected for safety. He had to feed it and take care of it. And when it got old and its arthritic knees kept it from even walking, he could take it out to Henrico and shoot it in the head to put it out of its misery. As for me, I have no horse. I have that 2004 Camry that is eating away at my limited resources. But I have some Facebook friends, probably living in Henrico, who are gun toters. Just one bullet in the head and 2004 Camry would be out of its misery. And me? I would have new-car payments.

How Guilty Should I Feel?

"What is good for General Motors is good for America" - GM Chairman and CEO, Charlie Wilson, 1955

Reader, the maveness and I make the last payment on our car number one this month. As is our usual practice when this happens, we are retiring car number two, moving car number one into the number two position and buying a new car number one. So, we have been looking at cars for a few weeks and finally decided to buy a Toyota. This is not a surprise because our current car number one is also a Toyota. What I do find interesting, especially with the economic plight facing our domestic car manufacturers, is that we didn’t consider buying an American car for more than about three seconds. We just assume that GM, Ford and Chrysler do not make a car that is better than the Japanese.

This is not the way it used to be. Our first car, nearly forty years ago, was a Chevy Nova. We liked it fine. When our family started growing, we replaced the Nova with a big Impala wagon. (I sure loved that car). We really didn’t think about buying foreign cars. Aside from simply assuming that American was best, we also had to deal with the fact that my father-in-law would have disowned us if we had bought Japanese and my mother would have gone ballistic if we bought German.

Then, at some point and for some reason, we bought a Ford Taurus. Both I and the maveness hated that car. It turned us off to Ford totally. When the maveness went back to work and we needed a second car we chose a Nissan (or were they still called Datsun back then?) After that it was Toyota and Subaru and Toyota and now Toyota again.

But that was before. Shouldn’t now be different? Didn’t the CEOs of GM, Ford and Chrysler fly into Washington to get their share of the mighty federal buck? Didn’t they promise us that if they didn’t get the money they would be floating belly up in the Detroit River in weeks? Don’t I owe it to all those Detroit executives to buy American so they can continue to live in the style to which they have become accustomed? Don’t I owe it to the members of the United Auto Workers who are really sweating their jobs? Don’t I owe it to the residents of the Detroit metro area who just went through the worst football season ever? If one or more of those “Big Three” goes under, the city could become a ghost town. So what if their cars aren’t as good as the Japanese; don’t I have some patriotic duty to buy them anyhow?

What is the appropriate atonement for the sin of buying Japanese? Should we be required to wear a big scarlet “J” on all our stuff? I mean, people will already know we have bought Japanese just by looking at those letters—T, O, Y, O, T, A—on the car. Should we get a bumper sticker that reads “We wanted to buy a Cadillac for $54,000 but the Devil made us get this cheap thing?”

I know, precious reader, that I should not be joking about these things. Our economy is tanking. Many thousands of Americans have lost their jobs. Many thousands more will probably lose theirs too. If GM or Ford or Chrysler go under, a whole lot more will become formally employed. That is tragic, not funny. But should I feel guilty that we did what we thought was in our best interest?

I know that many businesses in this country are badly hurt or even dying because of something they had no control over. But, I can’t help feeling that GM, Ford and Chrysler decision makers have a lot to do with how poorly their companies are doing. They’ve had decades to deal with the growing competition from Japan, Germany and, more recently, Korea. They have made many corporate decisions that might have helped them in the short run. Certainly, the executives have all been well compensated. But their short sightedness kept them from planning and developing the cars that would have kept them on top. While Toyota and Honda and Nissan and Kia and others were producing and selling cars that people wanted, GM and Ford and Chrysler were producing the vehicles they wanted to make and were spending tons on advertising to try to convince American drivers that these were the cars they should want.

There are certain corporations in this country that are so big and fill a niche that is so essential to our national economy that we are unwilling to allow them to be subject to the normal rules of a free market. So, in the last several months we have pumped billions of dollars of our money into these corporations to make sure they survive (even when their own stupid or greedy decisions caused their economic downfall). Although the sub-prime fiasco has caused many Americans to lose their homes, and a lot more, nobody thought they needed a bailout. “Losing your home? Tough, you never should have bought something you couldn’t afford.” But, did we ever say to any bank, “You guys screwed up now face the consequences.” No! They are too important.

The free market should be the one place in our society where “survival of the fittest” governs things. Instead, we have borrowed hundreds of billions of dollars from our grandchildren to rescue corporations that are unfit to survive. It makes little sense to this maven. But what can we do? Saving unfit corporations has become a tradition in the US of A. How many years has it been since Tom Paxton penned these words?

I am changing my name to Chrysler
I am headed for that great receiving line
So when they hand a million grand out
I'll be standing with my hand out
Yes sir I'll get mine.