Driving home a point

Now, I am mindful of my own advancing years and the well-established decline in driving skills associated with such advancing years. I willingly embrace any sidelong glances (and occasional rude gesture) inspired by my own driving.

I am reminded of the story about the older gentleman who was sent on an errand by his wife. A little while after he left, she turned on the news to a report of a problem on the freeway. A driver had gotten turned around and was going the wrong way into oncoming traffic and it was creating chaos. Alarmed, she called her husband and said, “Please be careful. There is someone driving the wrong way on the freeway.” He answered: “Someone? Everyone is!”

By the way, and not to go too far astray, but the local news thing, Patch, not too long ago, described a 69-year-old man as elderly. I guess they could not spell decrepit.

Anyway, it is a phenomenon and it is crazy out there.

Maybe during COVID, everyone stayed home and they forgot how to drive. Maybe there is more impatience, more hurry-up in our modern lives. Maybe too many people are looking at their phones or their ridiculously large dashboard screens. Maybe it will all settle down. Anything is possible, I suppose.

Let’s see. I complained about traffic lights last week. I have complained about speeding on Interstate 280 and drivers ignorant of the right of way at an intersection.

All that is missing is something about those kids with their hair and their music. It is official — I have become a grump.

IT STILL MAKES ME CRAZY: A recent story in the online edition of the San Francisco Chronicle, a local newspaper at the north end of the Peninsula, reported on the fullness of the reservoirs managed by the San Francisco water department. The story was fine, but the headline set my teeth on edge: “San Francisco’s brimming reservoirs are a boon for the city and its suburbs after three years of drought.”

This again? We are not the homebound moon that revolves around the San Francisco sun. Indeed, there are more San Francisco water department customers outside San Francisco than within. This dismissive mindset is old and tiresome. Much like me, some might say.

It does little of value to remain locked into notions of a life that might have been true in the 1950s. The description, which I claimed as my own but actually I stole from legendary newsman and PR guy George Murphy, is that San Mateo County is a hotbed of social rest. Funny line. No longer true, but old attitudes die hard and the one of which I am most weary is the attitude of “The City” toward the colonies. Enough already.

AS MUCH AS IT PAINS ME: I hesitate to even acknowledge this, for fear it will encourage rampant self-importance, but let me note that, yes, the Republican Party is the party of Abraham Lincoln. So, I thank the occasionally coherent columnist for making my point about how the Republican Party has gone far afield from its original values.

As he so eloquently said, why bother. Indeed, it is a question I have asked myself the entire time I have spent composing this little chunk of the column. I guess it is because it is rare to see someone so over-burdened with pointless facts that tell us nothing about why the party with which he is loosely affiliated managed to chase away a generation of moderate Republicans. He concluded he could never register as a Democrat. Imagine their disappointment.

ANOTHER MODEST PROPOSAL: As a follow up to last week’s proposal here that Foster City solve its big honking goose dilemma by blaring the Kars for Kids jingle, San Mateo’s Ed Eisenman has suggested that the city allow property owners to put up windmills, which, as we know, can be hazardous to birds. Given the potential fallout from this proposal, I renew my call for good goose recipes.

Mark Simon is a veteran journalist, whose career included 15 years as an executive at SamTrans and Caltrain. He can be reached at marksimon@smdailyjournal.com.