They’re Going Like 60 at 90--but Safely

Clifford Holliday of Gardena does so much daily driving that he has bought a smaller car, to cut down on the gas cost.

Ruth Jostyn of Hollywood doesn’t mind freeway driving--in fact, she prefers it to being on surface streets.

Hazel Gutwein of Pasadena has to use a cane while walking, but put her behind the wheel of her car and she keeps up with everybody else without any trouble.

What these people have in common is that they are senior citizens, and then some, and are still driving. Holliday is 89, Jostyn is 90 and Gutwein is 94.

“I can drive as well now as when I was 25,” Holliday said. “Better, in fact. I’m not as daring or adventuresome as I was then, not as impatient.”

Jostyn said she doesn’t at all mind driving the freeways to Irvine to see her granddaughter, and back: “It’s about an hour each way, and I just try to make sure I avoid the rush hours.”

Gutwein said that while on freeways, “I get in one lane and I stay there.”

Not that there isn’t an occasional concession to age. Concession yes, sometimes, but timidity about driving, no.

Both Jostyn and Gutwein said that because of their small stature now, they sit on cushions while at the wheel. “And my license restricts me to being on the road between sunrise and sunset,” Gutwein said.

But they and many others of similar ages cling to their right to drive because of an obvious reason: Mobility. “You lose your wheels and you have to rely on buses and friends,” Holliday said. “Either that or you walk.” In California, there is no age limit to driving, as long as a person can pass the Department of Motor Vehicles test.

Gutwein said she has been driving since 1924, when she lived in Madison, Wis.

“I came here from Chicago in 1931,” she recalled. “My car was an Essex, and driving in those days was simple. There were no freeways, only surface streets. Driving was more of a pleasure.

“Today everybody is in such a hurry. You see them jumping from one lane to another.”

Until recently, Gutwein had been driving a large Chevy, “but my family talked me into getting a smaller car, so parallel parking would be easier for me.”

Gutwein said she is a very safe driver: “My last accident was so long ago, I can’t recall it. And I don’t get tickets either. I pay attention to the speed limits, and I take care in making my turns.”

If and when the day comes when she can’t drive anymore, she said, she will miss it: “I like to be able to go to my church and the bank and the doctor and the market whenever I want to.”

Jostyn said the reason she finds freeways actually easier to drive than surface streets is that there are no traffic signals. “On the streets, you think it is your turn to go through, and off to the side somebody comes whizzing by.”

Jostyn said she wears glasses for nighttime driving, but not for the days--”in the daytime I use them only for reading.”

Jostyn, whose late husband, Jay, performed on the former radio show “Mr. District Attorney,” said she still drives a 1969 Chevrolet Impala, which she bought new and keeps in mint condition.

“I first started driving in Emporia, Kan., when I was only 12,” she said. “You didn’t need a license then. My father bought a low-slung Hupmobile, because he figured that if it flipped, I would be less likely to be hurt.

“When I came to Los Angeles in 1919, I drove a Studebaker. Things were so nice in those days, because when you were headed anyplace, you went through all the little towns. You took everything more slowly, and everything was more pleasant.”

There was one drawback: “My car wasn’t enclosed, so if it rained, I had to snap on the side curtains.”

Jostyn’s current advice, especially to elderly wives, is: “Don’t let your husband chauffeur you all the time. Too many people stop driving when they get old, particularly the wives. They should keep up on their own driving. Or some day they may wind up riding the buses.”

Quality of Life

Werner Illing, 75, of Mount Olympus, who said he drives every day, made an argument for oldsters continuing at the wheel: “In Los Angeles especially, if you don’t drive, your quality of life is cut in half.”

Holliday is Western regional representative in charge of the Los Angeles office of the National Council of Senior Citizens.

“I don’t mind driving any more than I do walking,” he said. “Some younger people think there should be a cutoff age. My answer to that is only in some cases, but not when a person is physically sound, has good eyesight and hearing, and still has good reflexes.

“I drive to work downtown every day. And sometimes I drive to Sacramento, and back.”

Everything, of course, is quite a change from 1918, when Holliday came to Los Angeles from Canada and tooled around in a Cleveland:

“There wasn’t as much car density. The city streets were mostly two-lane, and the rural ones were gravel or dirt.

“The speed limits here were primarily 25 m.p.h. in inhabited areas, and I don’t recall that there was any limit on the outskirts. If the average car made 45 m.p.h., that was considered pretty good.

“You always carried a box of tools on the back seat, in addition having a tire jack aboard, because you were forever having problems with the ignition, or the gas line, or bolts breaking off.”

Holliday recalled that there was a gas station on just about every corner, and that as the attendants pumped the gas by hand, it was visible in a glass container atop each pump. “And there were a lot of gas wars. You could buy 12 gallons for a dollar.”

Prices have changed a bit since then, as anyone around from those days can attest. But keep motoring if you can, Holliday urges.

For many, where there’s a wheel, there’s a way.