driving
It shouldn’t have taken this long
Yesterday was a banner day. I swapped the old Texas tags on the truck for new California plates. The transition took a long time. It took longer than getting a new driver’s license. It took longer than processing my voter registration. It took longer than securing my Golden Bear state parks pass.
This started in January when I drove to a smog check station. The truck passed, but the tech said he couldn’t find the number on the catalytic converter. I said it was repaired in Texas and had passed smog there for several years. He said that I might need to replace the converter. He wasn’t allowed to issue a smog certificate unless he could see that number or there was a sticker in the door frame from the smog referee.
Wut?
I took the truck to a repair shop and told them the sad story. The owner called me the next day to say that he’d called three reliable suppliers and couldn’t find another converter. The truck was just too old. He said maybe the smog referee could help.
This was the second time someone spoke of this magical wizard, smog referee.
About six weeks later, I drove to a hard-won appointment inside the auto shop classroom complex at Modesto Junior College. One of the instructors was a smog referee. He saw the problem right away: the catalytic converter was installed upside down. He said it needed to be reinstalled right-side up. After making that repair and replacing a pair of hoses, I could get on his dance card again.
That took another month. But as he applied the magical approval sticker inside the door frame, he explained why he was called a referee. I was playing the game right. But they had to call foul on the truck because the converter was upside down. Even though the techs likely did that to better clear the cage that keeps it from getting stolen, doing so also makes it more likely to start a grass fire. That’s also part of the game. People steal converters for the precious metals; other people install unauthorized converters. To be fair to those with antique autos or a repaired converter, especially newcomers like me, they call in a referee.
Victory in hand–or so I thought–I drove straight to the DMV to register. The title was still in Mark’s name. I collected the paperwork to transfer it to my name, but the agent refused. I told her I brought the paperwork on advice of another agent there. She said that agent was wrong. She said that I needed to fix this problem in Texas. I told her that I didn’t have a Texas address anymore, how could I possibly fix this? (That’s fraud prevention 101: States don’t issue vehicle titles to out-of-state residents, and titles don’t get forwarded in the mail.) She lost her temper and left the counter. I stood there, blinking back tears for several minutes while she pretended to do something a few desks away. She wasn’t escalating to a manager. She came back with a sticky note that had the main phone number for the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles. Gobsmacked, I left.
When I got home, I called the number. I would have laughed darkly, but I felt for those Texans who call and wonder whether any live person answers in that bureaucratic maze. I just couldn’t laugh. Eventually, I found my way to a state employee who decided to be the title referee that day. She came up with a Plan A and a Plan B to solve the problem.
A month later, the replacement title arrived via my son and daughter-in-law, who still live in Texas and where I “reside” when I visit.
Back to California DMV for my third time at bat. Just to put the best bow on the experience ever, the Modesto streets department closed nearly every route leading to the DMV yesterday. Only because of my many, many, many visits already did I manage to get into the parking lot from the one remaining back alley street entrance.
The agent who helped me yesterday must’ve seen something in my face. She looked and looked at that title. I tried not to panic. I told her I had to fly back to Texas to cure it–you all weren’t going to register the truck otherwise. She finally stopped looking and started typing.
Sam and I recently started sharing “the best thing that happened today” over dinner. I told him he might think that the best thing that happened today was getting California tags on the truck, which Sam cheered, of course. But actually the best thing was this: the DMV could have assessed five or six months worth of penalties and backdated the registration to December. But the agent quietly waived it all. A small gesture, but lovely nonetheless.
Road trip
It took some time to notice, but both Sam and I agree the pandemic made our lives a little smaller.
Don’t get me wrong. There were things we did, things we neglected, routines we filled, habits we clung to, all that needed to change. And we stopped being busy for busy’s sake (what was that about?)
But ‘opting out’ also sets its own traps. A certain brittleness can settle in. We needed to stretch.
We’ve gone on cycling trips to help with that. Acadia National Park in 2021. Lake Champlain in 2022. But this year, we felt like we needed to nudge in another direction. After we were invited to a wedding in Phoenix, I got out the maps and started studying road trips. After all, Phoenix is just a few hours from California. As a good friend says, it’s just “map math.”
But I wasn’t planning a grand tour. This trip could reconnect us to our family’s origin story. Sam and his brother and sister were all born in Sacramento. Their father was principal tuba of the Sacramento Symphony until it went bankrupt. We lived there until Sam was 5 years old.
A road trip could help Sam see that he was a Californian and still belonged, if he wanted that option. We took the kids to California several times on summer trips. Sam went back to visit once on his own (his godparents live in Stockton) when he was in his 20s. But visiting a place for fun is different than visiting with an eye toward making a life there.
Many of us don’t always feel we have options and sometimes this seems more so for Sam. We planned this trip to explore his options,. The company he works for has a similar facility in Modesto. Touring the Modesto location could help him think about his future in new ways.
We had all the fun we could stay awake for in Phoenix, and headed out the next day. We took a nice, leisurely detour through Joshua Tree National Park (amazing!) and spent the night nearby.
Sam takes a selfie at Joshua Tree National Park, and I do my best photobomb
Then the next day we headed to Modesto, stopping in Fresno. I suggested a stop at an underground garden. I thought it would be a world’s-largest-ball-of-twine-roadside-attraction type of stop, but it turned out to be a national landmark and completely charming.
The next day, we toured the Modesto facility and wouldn’t you know, Sam already knew some of the people working there. They didn’t have any openings right then, but that’s not how Sam thinks things through anyways.
In the month since, though, I’ve heard him say many, many times, “I have options now, Mom.”
Never, ever underestimate the power of a road trip.
See Sam Drive, EV edition
We had to get up early today to meet the man delivering Sam’s new car. He bought a 2018 Chevy Bolt from the Fort Collins, Colo., dealer where my brother-in-law works. Sam was so very patient. When his uncle mentioned they had two Bolts on the lot waiting for their recall work, Sam put $500 down. That was back in December 2021.
Sam has been driving a 2001 Toyota Corolla since he first learned to drive 15 years ago. He also bought that car from his Uncle Matt. We started talking about replacing the Corolla around 2018-19, but Sam moves slowly with these kinds of decisions. He went to the auto show at the State Fair with his brother and sat in a Chevy Bolt. He tentatively decided he would replace his car in 2020. Then the pandemic came and life slowed down so much. It bought him a lot more time to shop for a car, which was good, because Chevy needed time, too, to make those battery repairs.
He didn’t need much coaching through all of this, at least not from me. Matt may have had to work a little harder to make the sale and delivery, I certainly can’t speak for him. The only thing I really weighed in on was getting the car back to Texas. We talked about flying up to get the car and driving back, but once we crunched the numbers, shipping won out. He agreed to do it, since it was cheaper by about a factor of 10.
He still has a bit of a to-do list — insurance, Texas plates, toll tag, etc. I did write that up and put it on the fridge for him, so I suppose that’s coaching. And he’s going to reach out to other EV drivers for wisdom, since this car is several generations more sophisticated than either of the vehicles we currently drive.
Life really is so flipping complicated. I have little idea how I got through things the first time myself, although I do remember a habit in my 20s of calling my parents often and asking adulting questions. I do also prompt my other kids–probably more than they would like–with the preface of ‘let me tell you something I learned the hard way and save you some time/money/heartache.”
Have you ever thought about all the problems you solved in your 20s?
Sam stands behind his new-to-him Chevy Bolt EV
Overheard in the Wolfe House #321
Peggy (driving by local art studio): Oh, look, you can see them preparing for the next class. Those classes can be fun. It will be like being in Mrs. Ruestmann’s class again for you.
Sam (absolutely deadpan): I’m bad at art.
Dream Driving
Some dreams aren’t nightmares, but they leave you feeling unsettled in the morning. For me, the best remedy is to get them out of my head and move on. Recently, we discovered that works for Sam, too.
Like his mother, Sam is not really a morning person, although I’m not sure what a morning person is. We both feel fine when we’ve had enough sleep. However, we don’t feel like we’ve had enough sleep if we have to wake up before first light, even when we go to bed early.
Sam steps into the coffin that his supervisors would later race during Denton’s Day of the Dead festival.
Sam rarely talks about his dreams, unless they are nightmares. But he struggled and complained about that “morning funk” this fall, so a few weeks back, I asked him if he’d had a bad dream and what it was about.
He said it wasn’t really a bad dream, but he didn’t like it. He dreamt he was driving and that, in his dream, when it came time to stop, he somehow wasn’t able to move his foot from the gas pedal to the brake. He worried it could happen in real life.
I didn’t want to tell him it would never happen, because it’s important to tell the people you love the truth. And the truth is, just before a wreck, you are keenly aware how fast things are happening in front of you and how your car isn’t doing what you wish it would.
So I told him I had my own version of that dream, a recurring one. In my dream I am riding in the back seat of a car, careening somewhere fast, when I look up and realize that no one is driving. From the back seat, I struggle first to get my hands on the steering wheel, and then try to get up front to get to the pedals, but I never seem to make it.
Sam laughed and said my dream was really funny. I told him that the reason my dream was funny was because it was both relatable and ridiculous. I asked him if it made him think about his dream differently, and he said, yes, it made his dream kind of funny, too.
Then I asked whether he thought the dreams could be a metaphor for something.
And this is where I am so very, very grateful for Sally Fogarty and the other teachers who were on Sam’s special education team when he was in middle and high school. Sally announced at one of the annual planning meetings that Sam’s speech had come along enough that he would pass the usual tests meant to detect deficiencies. But, she added, we all knew that Sam’s language skills still needed work. She suggested that she administer another diagnostic test and develop a plan that would help him with more abstract language skills–analogies, idioms, metaphors and the like.
A few years later, Sam and I happened to be driving into Fort Worth and a billboard in Spanish caught our eyes. I read the billboard and understood the words, but I didn’t understand what the billboard was saying. I asked Sam, who was also studying Spanish, if he understood the billboard, because I couldn’t. And he said, “Well, that’s because it’s an idiom.” And then he told me what it meant. That was 15 years ago, and it still makes me tear up.
Sam agreed dream driving could just be the general way we feel about how our life is going, and maybe we don’t need to worry that we can’t always steer, and honestly, we don’t want to stop.
Gentlemen, start your engines
Sam has had a lot of car trouble lately. He has been driving a 2001 Toyota Corolla that he bought used 10 years ago.
This little car’s early life was in Corpus Christi, which probably means some hard miles in salt air. (We made sure it wasn’t ever flooded before we bought it.) The plastic parts have gotten so brittle, it’s just a matter of time.
Our first big tap on the shoulder was on the way to State Special Olympics a month ago. We blew a tire. Now, that’s no big deal, as long as you can keep your wits about you as you put that little donut of a wheel on your car along the highway in a strange city long after dark. But after we got two new front tires at the tire shop, the car wouldn’t start. For whatever reason, the bushing to the shifter cable broke while the car was up on the rack. We may have hobbled to the tire shop, but we had to be towed to the dealer for that repair.
Fun times.
On Friday, we got another big tap on the shoulder when Sam headed out to work. Turn the key and nothing, nada, zilch. He’d already changed the battery in January. From the problem in Bryan, I knew it wasn’t the shifter cable. And from my own truck’s problem last month, I knew it wasn’t the starter.
Since we would have had to pay for a tow, it was worth the gamble on replacing the ignition switch. Sam inherited his father’s talent for fixing things and, for whatever reason, I’m a fair troubleshooter. It took a few hours, but we knew we’d identified the problem when we compared the old and new switches. The old one had the telltale signs of an electrical short. And one of its three plastic brackets had broken off, likely setting off the slow chain reaction that jostled its way into oblivion.
I have been coaching Sam for months about planning to buy a new, or new-to-him, vehicle. Some of the plastic parts he’s had to replace on the car don’t have anything to do with its overall reliability, but many others do.
People without reliable transportation risk losing their jobs. Our local transit authority, DCTA, stunningly, has zero bus service to Denton’s industrial park where Sam and thousands of other Denton residents work.
I do not know why this is, but I’ll put that on my to-do list at work. (I’m a reporter for the Denton Record-Chronicle.)
Sam is reluctant to retire his car yet, and I can respect that. It still runs well overall. He hasn’t had a repair that’s cost as much as a new car payment.
After Sam finished replacing the ignition switch, the car cranked its Toyota self. He got a big grin on his face. For about $75 he bought himself more time.
For now.
Outward Bound, the indoor edition
“Because you know, nothing bad ever happens to a writer; everything is material.” – Garrison Keillor quoting Philip Roth.
I learned about stage fright at age 10. I had been taking piano lessons for a year. My memories of that first spring recital are a little foggy, except, just before I sat down to play, I saw my dad slip in the door of the recital hall (someone wheeled a spinet piano into the school cafeteria). And I played my song without stopping.
That’s a victory when you are 10 years old.
After the recital was over, I went home with my dad. I tried to eat dinner, but instead I vomited and went to bed.
I loved playing the piano, though, so I kept up with my lessons. I didn’t play again in public for about five years. When it was time, my new piano teacher was clever. (I didn’t tell Mr. Kaehr about my stage fright. But he apparently knew and he knew how to prepare me.) He had me work up Ernesto Lecuona’s Malaguena – so fun and flashy – to play during the honor society banquet. When I was done, the crowd’s reaction told me that they didn’t expect what they’d just heard. That was incredibly affirming, enough for me to perform, and recover from performing, vomit-free, for several years.
When I headed to college, I majored in music. I could get through the performance of a single solo on a departmental recital all right, but putting together an entire solo recital was another matter. I could channel that adrenaline for 10 minutes, but not an hour or more. After one recital I couldn’t even make it through the reception afterward. Went home, vomited and slept all weekend.
I’ve never thought of myself as a risk-taker, especially compared to my late husband. To Mark’s credit, however, he thought through things. In his mind, he wasn’t taking risks. He was fearless in persevering and adapting. I tried not to be afraid of opportunities, or leaning in when problems showed up.
For example, we recognized we couldn’t get help for Sam if we were shrinking violets. We spoke up, we stood fast, we made plain that we expected delivery of the help he needed. Neither of us would take credit for what Sam has accomplished. However, we would have admitted to sweet-talking, cajoling, persuading, wheedling, and outright pushing the people around him when and where necessary. (And, I’m sure, where others in his life might have said wasn’t necessary.) I learned to channel that swirling adrenaline for the length of special education team meetings.
After Mark died, there was no hedging. All bets were off.
Still, I didn’t recognize being in small claims court this week as an indoor edition of Outward Bound until it was over.
A friend, who’s a lawyer, told me that what I’d just done many lawyers in town have not done: argue my case in front of a jury.
When the jury was out, I did confess to the bailiff that the experience was terrifying.
Sad to say, in the Texas justice system, there apparently is nothing in between refusing an insurance company’s first offer to settle your case and finding yourself in front of a jury — unless you just want to up and say ‘never mind.’
Last year, this happened: 
My insurance company investigated and determined I wasn’t liable. But the truck is so old, I only carry liability. I was on my own with the other guy’s insurance. And, as Mark would say, “just to make this really interesting,” this company has a poor reputation with many people.
Including me. I’d gone to the mattresses once before with this company.
I refused their first offer, which was totally inadequate. They never budged. When I sued in small claims, I expected mediation or arbitration. I hoped for another offer.
Nope. Nothing. Nada.
Their response to my petition was to ask for a jury trial. I think I was supposed to run from the room at some point, but that just never occurred to me.
I was sticking up for myself and my family.
I lost the argument before I could ever start. The insurance company’s attorney called for a pre-trial conference with the judge to make sure I couldn’t tell the jury much of anything at all.
I felt bad for those people. What a waste of their time. They had no idea.
The whole ordeal lasted two hours. It was a terrific education into the Texas justice system that I won’t soon forget.
And, when I finally got home that day, I didn’t vomit.
Random thoughts running Frenchtown Road
Michael woke me today and insisted I run with him. “It’ll be the last time,” he said.
It’s a funny way to celebrate a launching, but that’s what it was. Last year was tough for him. He had started his adult life after graduating TCU in 2013 and then had to move back home last January. I got a front row seat watching what our economy is doing to the 20-somethings. At the end of one of his worst days, I found myself offering a most grown-up salve to his wounds, pointing to the barstool in the kitchen and pouring him a generous shot of Old No. 7.
In the past year that he’s lived here with Sam and me, we often ran together. His normal pace is crazy faster than mine, but he said slowing down to run with me strengthened other muscles. True or not, it was still a nice thing to say and do — slowing a 7:00 mile to run your mom’s 10:00+
Eventually, he righted himself. Today he packed up the car and drove to his new life in Austin. 
I resisted temptation to grab the camera and document the day (this photo is from one of his good days earlier this year), remembering back to Paige’s first day of kindergarten. She was the youngest, but she was feisty and she couldn’t wait to prove she was big like her brothers. When it was her turn to hop out of the car and head to her classroom for the first day of school, she did it with confidence and determination. Who was I to turn into a blubbering idiot about all my babies gone to school and ruin her first day being big for real?
So I just watched her from behind the wheel of the old Dodge Caravan and marveled at the moment.
It was icy cold today, but it was a little like that hot August day 30 years ago I drove my un-air conditioned car across the Nevada desert to Sacramento to start my grown-up life: Michael, being big for real.
See Sam Drive: Tractor Edition
Sam and I re-homed the tractor today, one of many steps away from the farm and toward life in town.
He drove the tractor as I followed him in the pickup, loaded up with nearly all the tractor accoutrements Mark had acquired over the years, down Frenchtown Road for the last time.
Mark taught Sam to drive the tractor when he was a teen. He wanted Sam to learn to drive a car and figured this was a good way to see how he’d manage. Better to mow down a few trees or nick a fence or two in the relative safety of your Texas-sized front yard in that journey of self-discovery.
Sam, Master of the Tractor/Photo by Mark Wolfe
Mark was right. Sam could do it. When he pulled the tractor up under the carport this afternoon and parked it perfectly, Susan exclaimed, “Wow, Sam, you’re a professional!”
Sam wasn’t going to tolerate any tears from me, so I blinked them back behind my sunglasses.
“I made it!” he beamed.
Overheard in the Wolfe House #284
Peggy (noting the rush-hour traffic in the opposite lane): Glad we aren’t going south right now.
Sam: Which can also mean things in your life couldn’t be worse.