LIVING AND DOING IN 1962
by Bryce Martin

Here I was with my first traffic ticket and scheduled court appearance, after five years of driving and countless miles traveled. It was just a few weeks ago when the odds caught up with me. An oscillating red light (dimmed some by the light of day) and the sound of a siren coming from a California Highway Patrol car near Red Rock Canyon clamored for my attention. I was driving just a few miles over the speed limit, according to the officer, but enough for a speeding violation citation. As noted on my copy, I was to appear before the judge in Johannesburg on such and such a date. That part rather threw me� Johannesburg. I mean it was not even a place you encountered along the highway. It was off the highway, kind of out of the way. However, since that was the closest settlement to the violation, I guessed that it made sense to attend court there.

At age 19, I considered myself to be an experienced driver, and my 1958 Chevrolet Biscayne was my fifth car; all of them stick shifts and two-doors except for this one, and all of them Chevies.

My first car was a dark green 1951 Chevrolet Deluxe two-door. The total cost for it in late 1957 was $312.50. It was equipped with a standard, column shift (�three on the tree�), fender skirts, and a sun visor. Next came a hand-me-down �54 Bel-Air, a light blue and white two-tone and clean as a pin; a �55 standard post 210 series, light green, two-door; and a custom-painted dark blue �53 hardtop with a converted floor shift.

The neglected undercarriage of the Biscayne creaked and groaned, especially when I slowed to corner one of Trona�s small streets. At one certain corner where an old man was usually sitting outside on his porch, I heard, �Hey, Flintstone,� when I cornered past. I did not know if he was commenting on how I resembled Fred Flintstone or how my creaking car sounded like some stone-wheeled vehicle from the television series.

I was 14 years-old and a freshman in high school when I was presented with the �51 Chevy for my very own. I enlisted an older cousin, Bill Cagle, to help me smooth out my shifting and to analyze my overall handling of the vehicle. We used a gravel road, one between two paved roads running in the same direction, near the Old Crow distillery site. He seemed to think I was taking it all too seriously and advised me to just relax more and I would be okay. It dawned on me that was the type of advice I would likely get from anyone older, and that I was on my own with the machine and Galena would have to suffer the consequences along with myself.

As it turned out, I did not do too badly, a couple of dings and nothing major or catastrophic over the delicate next few weeks. I was issued a restricted license, of course, one that you can receive in Kansas at age 14. I was only supposed to drive the car on agriculture errands, and certain other occasions, and not at all after six p.m. I drove it to school and back each day and on all occasions and at any time. I figured the more practice, the better. I have yet to run my first agricultural errand. If I had to wait on that, I would have never gotten behind a wheel.

I was so excited about the car; I just had to give my grandmother a ride. �No, no, no, Bryce, boy, you go on with it. I�m too old for that, � she said, good-naturedly. I politely insisted and finally talked her into it. �Just around the block or two, � I said. Returning in front of the house, she said, �Goody.� I was glad I took her for that ride, short though it was. It was the only time. She died not long after.

Just a few short months later in the summer of 1958, I drove, with my grandfather in his 1957 medium green Chevy, all the way to Trona from Galena for a two-week vacation. It was not that we would drive nothing but a Chevy. I remembered a roomy-as-a-house 1939 Packard. We stopped in Albuquerque where my grandfather called Virgil Duley from a roadside pay phone. Virgil was a young man who had lived across the street from us in the Spring Grove region of Galena. He had worked at the local Feezell�s Market, and the experience had somehow landed him a job as a grocery store manager off Route 66 in Albuquerque. We gave Virgil directions as to where we were located and waited while he arrived.

Albuquerque was about eight hundred miles from Galena and the unofficial midpoint to Trona.

Once in Trona, it was oven hot. Searles Valley, where most of the inhabitants work in one of two chemical plants, is just a short distance removed from Death Valley proper. My grandfather would sleep outside at night in either his car or his son�s, Walter. The cold air from the cooler in the house gave him respiratory problems. It did for me, too. The only type of air conditioning we were acclimated to was an open window. I was not about to sleep outside, so I suffered through some minor sore throat irritation and upper throat discomfort.

I attended the Foursquare Church in the evenings with Walter�s wife, Annabelle, and the boys. (Annabelle and Walter are both from Galena). Uncle Walter, like the other men in our Martin family, did not go to church. The Trona house of worship reminded me of my Assembly of God Church in Galena on Main Street. At the Trona church, I met a local girl, Bonnie Alter, who captured my attention. We were later to keep in touch with letters.

Near the end of the vacation, I drove us across more desert and down the El Cajon Pass among trees and grass to the city of Rialto, near San Bernardino, where my grandfather had a visit planned with a nephew, George M. Shaw. The two sat around George�s kitchen table and talked all afternoon. I drove us back to Trona the next morning.

When it was time to leave Searles Valley and reroute back to Galena, I drove to Barstow where we stopped to eat. I left the restaurant first, while my grandfather stayed to pay the tab. Outside, I was twirling the car keys when a pair of Marine M.P.�s wearing white armbands and wanting to see my identification approached me. I showed them my driver�s license, but they were not interested in that. Finally, my grandfather arrived. He listened and seemed to understand what they were asking. �He does not have a service card, he�s just fourteen,� he told them. That satisfied them and they drove away. �They wanted to see your military identification. They thought you were at least eighteen.�

I remembered all that while getting dressed and getting ready to drive to my first ever court appearance. I had fifty-five dollars in cash. I had no real idea what the fine might be, or if I was to receive a fine at all, but I did not think it would be any amount near fifty-five dollars. Oh, well, I had better place it all in my wallet, in case I have car trouble or some type of emergency.

I had already talked to some of my co-workers at Stauffer about the ticket. I was told that the judge would have a copy of my driving record, all previous citations and so forth. When I reminded that it was my first time in court, and that I had no previous citations, they all said the same thing: Then, he will go easy on you.

In court, the judge read the charges and asked how I pled.

�Guilty, your honor,� I said. I was not so sure, though, that he actually had a copy of my driving record or was aware that I had no prior violations. I felt it in my best interests to let him know.

I was quick to add, �This is my first time in court, my first ticket, your honor.�

�So, this is your first ticket,� he repeated, looking down at some papers and then focusing back on me. �That will be fifty-three dollars or three days in jail.�

I was a little stunned. I was angry at how he seemed to relish his words, and the severity of the punishment. If he was trying to prove a point of some kind, it was only that he came across as a jerk. The point being that life offers jerks galore and this is just one of many I will confront. I would have told him that, too, if he would have asked.

I left happy in the fact I had started the trip from my relatives� house with a full tank of gas. What had I learned from all of it? Something that I already knew: If you do not put yourself in such circumstances, you will not be subject to the particular whims of that fate -- something along those lines.

You do not necessarily live and learn; you live and do. I made that up for the moment and decided that would be my motto, at least until I thought of another one.