The secret I haven’t told most readers is that I am on my feet again, and that is not a reference to my recent confinement. As a matter of fact, I’m not down in the front seat any more. The car has been sold and my driver’s license is now just a souvenir of the good old days, mainly for the safety of others as well as my own.

I haven’t decided which taxi service will get my business, but it will perhaps depend on which employs a buxom blond driver, as the old saying is gentlemen prefer blondes. My first experience driving an auto dates back to 1906 when no one had ever seen three cars parked on Center Street at the same time. I didn’t own the car, but a friend of mine let me take the wheel at Haverhill on the way home from a drive and George Trumbo phoned ahead to tell that the car had passed his farm in a cloud of dust going 100 miles an hour. That car, with a top like a surray only had two cylinders and if it made 12 miles an hour it was only going down hill. There are three readers in town today who can tell about driving a car in 1906- Dr. W.F. Marting, Al Murdock and Eddie O’Neill.

Those were the days when the law was that a driver of a horse vehicle had the right of way and if his horse showed signs of fright when the auto approached, the driver of the horseless carriage had to stop and help the frightened horse pass the auto.

Believe me, it is depressed feeling to know that you are a has-been "Barney Oldfield" after having won a citation in 1918 driving an army truck for uncle Sam but that’s the way the cookie crumbles when you become a full-fledged senior citizen.