Happy Thanksgiving. Hope you eat ….
Happy Thanksgiving. Hope you eat lots of good food, have happy visiting with friends and relatives and may your favorite team win. I was telling someone that celebrating Thanksgiving is kind of hard for me since every day has something to be thankful for. So why have a special day?
Like yesterday, Nov. 16. How much better can it get? First of all it snowed a little during the night and by morning all the trees and bushes were covered with snow. Then there was no wind, so by afternoon everything was still looking so beautiful.
Then I guess I’ll call it “mystery day” as I was aware it was coming, but never knew any of the details. All I knew it had something to do with my driving. Earlier this year, when I went to the clinic for an appointment, I heard a couple of people talking about my driving and I thought I heard something about a driving test or exam.
Then I got a new appointment from the clinic with my new eye exam listed, but nothing about the 16th. It also got confusing when the word hospital came up and not the clinic.
Finally on Tuesday afternoon I was heading out to clean the snow off my car so it would be ready to go in the morning. Someone stopped me and told me I could not drive to the appointment and that Jackie would come and get me. I went back to my room and called Jackie. She had just gotten a call about picking me up. So she did and off we went and as usual, it seems there was construction work. I got checked in and was taken down the hall to a room full of stuff, kind of like our therapy room here. Then to a tiny room where a young lady sat. She started asking lots of questions and had me doing some picture games. Jackie said it kind of appeared to her as an Alzheimer’s test. I did recognize that when I had to draw the hand on the face of a clock.
There were more exams about driving and eye testing almost like an eye exam. Finally, when it was all over, she gave me the results. I’m not sure if I should be glad or insulted. She thought I drove like someone 65. I tried to explain I was just 16 but had 76 years of experience.
The good things didn’t end as Jackie took me to Perkin’s for my favorite, potato pancakes. On the way home we drove through town and I saw the official sign in the Purple Park. Thanks Lions. It looks great and that should make it official.
ÓÓÓÓÓ Driver’s license has always been a fun topic for me. When I was 16 there wasn’t such a thing as the DMV, just any local police official could give me one. I had a cousin in Turtle Lake who could do that, but I never really understood what his title was. The day I went in to get my first permit he just happened to be at his mothers when I came. So I went to Aunt Jennie’s and found him. He said, “You are driving now”, which he should have known since I’d driven to town. He had some forms with him and he said he would just make out the temporary permit and license together and said, “That will be $1.50.” None of my brothers were that lucky. He made them do an actual driving exam.
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Fast forward a few years and I am in the Army assigned to the 652nd Heavy Truck Company. We spent a lot of time in classrooms and one day they explained that later we would be taking our driver’s license exam. The instructor said we would go through several different kinds of exams, just to give us an idea of what to expect. He wasn’t finished when we got called to come for our exams. And he was right. One of the examples he had was the same one we had just reviewed. Can you believe there were guys that failed the written test?
Those were only good for a year and had to be renewed. I was company clerk and it was hard to get away from the orderly room. So our warrant officer in the motor pool offered to fill it out. He listed that I was legal to drive a jeep, weapon’s carrier, 6X6, semi and – get this – a typewriter.
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I almost made it. I ran that story of Snow White, Superman, Pinocchio and Donald in last week’s column. Then Donald came on television and announced he wants to run for President. Didn’t he ever learn that three times and you are out?
He lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by almost three million votes, but somehow won the Electoral College vote 304 over Clinton’s 227.
Four years later he lost the popular vote to Joe Biden by over seven million votes and the Electoral College by 232 to 306 for Biden.
Threes continue to run right along as the national debt increased the third highest amount in United States history during his four year term.
Please America – don’t let it happen again.
