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By 1898, American motorists had formed about fifty clubs across the
country. In 1902, the biggest and most enduring of these clubs was
founded - the American Automobile Association.
In 1900, the nation's total hard-road surface was under 40,000 miles.
The first mile of concrete roadway was laid in 1908, at which time
Kansas had 273 miles of macadam and gravel roads; Delaware had 66;
Nebraska, 23; and Oklahoma had none.
In 1906, the Stanley Steamer clocked an unheard of speed of 127.6
miles an hour on the sands of Ormond Beach, Florida.
On June 27, 1980, a time when the great international question of the
day was whether or not fifty-three American hostages held in Iran by
terrorists would get out alive, the top U.S. official in the hostages
had plans to get out. Maryland's Motor Vehicle Bureau received a
letter from Tehran, asking that the official's driver's license be
renewed before it expired. He perhaps dreamed of driving freely down
a New England highway when he was released and didn't want expiration
of his driver's license to come between him and his dream.
A New Jersey couple tried to swap their fourteen-month-old son for a
'77 Corvette. When the police arrived, the couple were just attaching
their license plates on the car for which they had traded their son.
The infant was found crawling happily on the floor of the showroom.
According to the United States Census Bureau, we spent $856 million
to wash our cars in 1982. This was not to smooth dents in fenders or
even to touch up paint jobs; it was just to run through the neighbor-
hood car wash. Now something new has come on the scene for a soiled
car: it is called "detailing." These shops started in California and
are spreading across the country. They wash the car, massage it with
lotions and creams, blow-dry it, and wipe it gently with chamois for
a mere $145 for the eight-hour beauty treatment.
Mrs. Selma Ghelberg applied for and received a personalized license
plate in Mount Vernon, New York. Her son had established "No Name" as
his CB "handle," and Mrs. Ghelberg therefore asked for a NO NAME tag.
Mrs. Ghelberg immediately began to receive dunning notices for unpaid
parking and speeding tickets. She had always obeyed the law and had
never received a ticket, so she took the notices in and explained her
situation at the police station. The police were very skeptical, but
since Mrs. Ghelberg was so adamant about her innocence, they agreed
to investigate.
The investigation revealed that when a policeman wrote a ticket with
the offender's name entered illegibly, the clerk punched "No Name"
into the computer. The computer in Albany automatically sent a
response that NO NAME was registered to Mrs. Ghelberg, and the police
issued her another ticket. The irony of this dilemma was that our
poor Mrs. Ghelberg worked for the New York State Department of Motor
Vehicles!
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