From the summit of Marine Street and 4th in Santa Monica, it's a steep drop straight into the ocean and Mae Laborde, 93, is gunning down the hill in a canary yellow 1977 Oldsmobile the size of the Love Boat.
I'm Mae's passenger, and I don't know if I should watch.
The road is narrow enough as it is, but there's a truck coming up the hill, and a car just blew a stop sign in front of us on 3rd Street. I can't tell whether, at 4 feet 10 inches tall, Mae is looking over or under the top of the steering wheel.
"Oh, I hate that," Mae says, calmly braking behind the car that has just cut her off and threading a needle to squirt past the truck. "I sure wish I had the time to write down his license number. He didn't even stop."
I had gone to see Mae right after an appointment with my eye doctor. The vision is starting to go, and I figured if anyone could advise me on negotiating L.A.'s roadways in my graying years, it would be Mae, who got her driver's license in 1926.
"Oh, honey, I still drive three freeways," she told me.
In my last pass through L.A., I lived on the Venice-Santa Monica border, and Mae was my neighbor. The first time I saw her yellow car go by, I thought it was a runaway, because I couldn't see a driver. As it drew closer, I could see a little tuft of white hair, and then a set of eyes, as if a cricket were driving a tank.
The Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale has a hood the length of a shuffleboard court and, given Mae's line of vision over the distant grille, her focal point had to be roughly six blocks up the road. But she handled the car like a champ, and she was no light foot either.
Even after I moved away, Mae stayed in touch, reporting virtually every single development in her life.
She was selling her homegrown tomatoes to Michael's restaurant. She was in a Sears commercial. She was on a TV program on KCET. She won a gumbo cooking contest and was flown to New Orleans. She was on the Santa Monica College advisory board. She was on the radio with Mr. KABC. She went dancing at Pepperdine. Her tamale pie recipe was featured in the L.A. Times. She graduated from the Santa Monica Citizens Police Academy. She got an ovation at the Pageant of the Masters in Laguna for not missing a show in 48 years.
I always feel like a slug when I talk to Mae, who has twice my years and three times my drive. I don't know a better time than Thanksgiving week to tell you about her, because no one is more thankful to wake up each day and hit the gas.
