When Grandmama gets behind the wheel—look out, South Alabama
As published in Southern Living
Some years ago, my grandmother Edwina (“Win” to her friends) bought a new silver car. Her cars are always the same color; always christened “Silver Bullet”; and always sport her infamous license plate, “GWTWIN” (Gone With the Win). Curious, I phoned to ask what brand she’d bought.
“You know I don’t know those things,” she declared. “I just told them to send me a silver one.”
The car that replaced her Ford was a silver DeVille, which she evidently mistook for a gussied up Taurus. Upon learning that her new ride was actually a Cadillac, Grandmother was mortified that she’d bought a vehicle that, in her mind, only presidents, potentates, and pop stars should drive.
Immediately, she began a campaign of subterfuge in an attempt to regain her automotive modesty, first by stealing my cousin’s trailer-hitch cover (a rubber mallard head) and then shoving it down over her Caddy’s proud hood ornament. Suitably disguised, her “Quackallac” was now free to travel the byways of South Alabama without pretension.
The duck even monitored my grandmother’s speeding.
Edwina routinely drives at a speed equal to her age-which polite grandsons don’t mention in major magazines. Let’s just say it’s over any legal limit here in America. “I know I’m going too fast,” she declares, “when that duck turns around and looks at me.”
Curious to find out just what speed produced the glassy-eyed stare of a fake mallard, I took the Quackallac for a spin on the bypass one afternoon last summer. The duck looked straight ahead at 55, 65, and 75 m.p.h. Finally, at 83 m.p.h., wind friction caused the head to turn around.
That evening, I confronted Grandmother with my discovery. Instead of shock, she replied, “If you go much faster, you can blow his head right off!”
Speeding is just one of Grandmother Edwina’s driving quirks. Sidewalk parking, off-road shortcuts, and causing general motoring mayhem have earned her quite a reputation in her hometown of Andalusia, Alabama.
In 1996, my Uncle Mark, a local attorney, was standing on the town square with an important client from Montgomery. Suddenly, from around the corner, screeched a huge silver car—bedecked with a rubber duck—headed against the one-way square traffic. The police pulled out behind the woman and cranked on the siren and lights. The driver put the hammer down and lost the cop in a cloud of dust.
“My God!” gasped the client, “Who was that crazy woman?”
“I have no idea,” replied my uncle.
Moments later, the police cruiser pulled up alongside the two men. “Mark,” said the polide chief, “Will you please tell your mama that next time we pull out after her, she needs to stop?”
Most officers now know Grandmother’s schedule and do their best to clear a path for her. Woe be unto the rookie that pulls her over. (She recently called up the mother of a new recruit who had the audacity to ticket her.)
My wife doubted the veracity of this oft-told family lore until a recent trip to South Alabama took us through the one-light town of McKenzie, where we were stopped by the local P.D. for going 40 m.p.h. in a 35 m.p.h zone. As with all great Alabama police monologues, this one opened with,
“Son, what’s your hurry?”
When I replied that we were going to see my grandmother, Win Murphy, the constable shrugged.
“Oh, go on,” he sighed, “She blew through here twice last week. I’ll just put it on her tab.”
