HOMETOWN

My mother drove until she was in her early 90s, an age-defying feat that made me happy until it made me scared.

I witnessed things on successive visits that caused concern. After Mom dropped me off early one morning at the Southern Pines train station to catch Amtrak’s Silver Star to New York, from the platform I noticed she lingered a long time in the parking space before leaving.

When I was in town the next time, she took more than an hour to return with a bag of groceries from Bo’s (the former A&P and now an arcade), arriving as I was calling the store to see if someone had any knowledge of her whereabouts. Mom claimed nothing was out of the ordinary, but it seemed likely she had gotten lost making the 1 1/2-mile trip home from Bo’s, a route she knew like the back of her hand.

Not too long after that incident, one of my sisters drew the unpleasant task of telling Mom it wasn’t safe for her to be behind the wheel anymore — even on the very short in-town trips that had become the extent of her driving — and that we were taking away the car keys for her safety and that of others. As our mother stewed about the blow to her independence, we children deliberated about where to hide the keys.

In 1982, two years after becoming a widow, Mom had upgraded from an aging Mustang to a gray Honda Civic, her first new car since our family splurged on a 1969 Ford Fairlane from Jackson Motors. She drove that Civic for a decade and a half, trading it in not long before her 75th birthday to purchase a new 1997 Honda Civic.

Mom’s second Civic, “cyclone blue metallic” in color, provided reliable transportation around Moore County and on occasional trips to visit my sister Sadie in High Point, which she was comfortable making until age 87. Once my mother stopped highway driving, I would take the Honda for an engine-exercising spin when I was home, driving north on U.S. 1, getting it up to 65 or 70 miles per hour before turning around in Dunrovin and heading back south.

More than once when taking Mom’s car to get the oil changed, I had someone ask if I was interested in selling it, so clean was the body and so low was the mileage.

I’m so glad I never entertained those offers. In 2018, a year after my mother went to live in an assisted-living facility, my nephew John and his son, Tristen, picked up the Civic, which had only 35,000 miles on the odometer. Tristen has driven “Old Blue,” as his dad calls the car, since getting his driver’s license in 2019.

Tristen is a muscular, 22-year-old college student who was an all-conference defensive lineman in high school, but he fits in the small sedan — and it has been a great fit for him. 

“I’m very blessed that my car is still working perfectly fine and giving me the transportation I need,” said Tristen, who has doubled the mileage on his great-grandmother’s former vehicle since it became his. “The only things I’ve done is gotten new tires, a new radiator and new fuel injectors. My dad talks about getting me a bigger car, but honestly I don’t need it. I enjoy my car, and I’d rather keep driving it until I can’t.”

Only 5 percent of the cars on the road today were manufactured in the late 1990s. The oldest car among Tristen’s friends is a 2012 model. He just drove the 28-year-old car on its longest journey, 400 miles to Pennsylvania and back, to attend a friend’s wedding.

“Just a couple of tanks of gas and no problems whatsoever,” Tristen reported. “I don’t have plans for another trip like that anytime soon, but if I need to, I’ll have even more faith that it’ll make it.”

I have friends with Hondas that have more than 250,000 miles. Mom’s former car might be in the family for a while, and that is fine with its second owner. “I think,” Tristen said, “I will always be an old-car guy.”