I'm a Good Driver. It's Those Other People Who Ruin It for Everybody

This story originally appeared in the December 1973 issue of Car and Driver.

"Good God Almighty! What's that nut think he's doing?!" (Head extended out of window,eyeballs bulging, neck purple with rage.) "Ya nut, what the hell y' think yer doin'?"

My Old Man wrestled with the wheel of his beloved Olds as he glared through the windshield at his age-old traditional enemy, the other driver.

"Didja see that fathead!? Naturally, another one of them insane Illinois drivers. They oughta ban them guys from the road!"

At the age of five, huddled in the back seat, I was already being soundly indoctrinated into one of the great American myths, specifically the belief held by American drivers that all drivers from neighboring states are crazy and those from a specific neighboring state are lethal. And I mean, they really believe it. In most places it's not even a matter of opinion. It is simple incontrovertible fact.

I say this is an "American" thing only because I'm not dead certain about other countries. Do Swiss drivers maintain that putting a Frenchman behind the wheel is like giving an orangutan a loaded .45 to play with? Do Yugoslavians cower when a Bulgarian comes careening over the horizon? I can only suspect it may be true. But I can speak with some authority about American drivers, since I have been one practically from birth.

In the Indiana world where I was spawned, driving is the major if not the only sport of millions. It is no accident that the Indy 500 happens in Indianapolis and not East Brunswick, New Jersey. When you grow up in Indiana you just naturally grow up knowing drivers, in the same way that kids in Wyoming tend to know about horses. It's just a fact of geography. Now all this is just a prelude, a statement of personal qualifications if you will, to some basic observations I just have to make about my fellow American wheelmen. Let's face it, this is one hell of a big country. If we were any place else in the world, and let's say our continent had been discovered and settleda bout the time the first cave man started to lose his webbed feet, this vast chunk of real estate would probably be at least seven or eight different nations. Instead, we have this vast land, three thousand miles across and maybe two thousand miles deep, bravely pretending that it is one people.