A Wild Ride Behind the Wheel of the Ultimate Macho-Mobile
First Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now me.
Arnold drives a Hummer (also known as a Humvee). I drove a Hummer (also known as a Humvee).
It’s billed as the ultimate four-wheel-drive, all-terrain, more-macho-than-thou, High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle. It came of age during Operation Desert Storm.
Even before Desert Storm, Arnold wanted one. The maker, A.M. General Corp. of South Bend, Ind., was busy churning out Hummers for military customers.
Arnold persisted: “I’ll be back.” After Saddam was routed (we thought), Arnold became the proud owner of the first non-military Hummer.
Now A.M. General is testing the consumer market, including a splash at the 9th Annual San Diego International Auto Show, under way at the Convention Center through Sunday.
Which explains why I was invited to a hilly-gully part of Otay Mesa to test drive a Hummer.
“Have you had much off-road driving experience?” says an A.M. public relations person.
“Only the quarter-mile I just drove from Highway 905 to get here,” says I.
Not to worry, I’m told, the Hummer has power steering and an automatic transmission. Certain laws of physics are said to make it almost impossible to roll a low-but-wide Hummer.
The Hummer reminded me of Tim Tyler’s Junglemobile from the movie serials of the 1950s.
The Hummer has been demilitarized a bit to make it street legal and consumer friendly. More external lights, AM-FM radio, two-door or four-door, steel hardtop or convertible, sticker price: $40,000 to $55,000.
The hardtop, I’m told, might remind one of the GMC Suburban (known locally as the Betty Broderick combat vehicle), only tougher, more torque and panache.
Under heavy tutelage from A.M.’s manager of marketing and sales for the Hummer, I manage to maneuver up and down and around various ruts and steep hills in the Otay Mesa outback.
It’s enough to make the average male feel Arnold-like. Time comes to terminate my test drive.
“ Hasta la vista , baby,” I tell the A.M. people.
Law Students Heard It First
Most of us were shocked to learn of the eleventh-hour duel between a federal appeals court and the U.S. Supreme Court over Robert Alton Harris.
But not a class of first-year law students at the University of San Diego.
Two weeks earlier, they received what proved to be a preview of the battle for legal supremacy that raged in the final hours before Harris went to the gas chamber.
Presenting the preview was Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who had come to USD to deliver a lecture and decided to drop in on a class.
Although not mentioning the Harris case, O’Connor told the students that the “worst part” of her job is dealing with death penalty cases, in part because of last-minute stays issued by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
O’Connor, who is assigned to provide the initial review of 9th Circuit petitions, cited a recent death case in Arizona that required a 3 a.m. conference of all nine justices to overturn a stay.
“We are up through the night with some of these cases about four or five times a month,” she told the students. “It just doesn’t work very well.”
In the Harris case, the 9th Circuit issued four stays in six hours, each overturned by the high court. Finally an exasperated O’Connor issued a no mas order at 5:45 a.m., and Harris was put to death 20 minutes later.
At USD, O’Connor pleaded with students to help the justice system find a way to avoid these unseemly last-minute judicial fights, possibly by imposing a limit:
“When you study federal habeas (requests for stays), try to figure out how we can improve it.”
One Word Said It All
The largest headline for the Robert Alton Harris execution was in the San Francisco Examiner, six columns across the front page, 120-point type: EXECUTED.
Also on the front page: a first-person account by execution witness Steve Baker, the San Diego cop whose son was one of Harris’ victims:
“There were no hissing sounds or clouds of gas or anything like that. The only sounds I heard were the reporters flipping the pages as they scribbled notes. It was otherwise very silent in that room.”
