[Leica] a serious question

[dlridings at gmail.com (Daniel Ridings)]

On Sat, Sep 27, 2008 at 10:58 AM, Frank Dernie
<Frank.Dernie@btinternet.com> wrote:
> the vast majority of
> people who can afford these cars would be scared rigid long before they had
> reached anything like their chassis limit whereas even my Mum can do the
> "full throttle down the straight for a while" routine. From a purist point
> of view I am unable to admire these things.
> Frank

:-) My grandmother was no purist. She was a tough old lady who, as a
Catholic, divorced a gambler in the 40'ies, leaving her to raise a
Catholic (many kids) family and take care of her aging father all on
her own.

Taking care of her aging father led her to owning and running two
nursing homes (about 40 or 50 patients in each) and administering a
staff to boot. She worked around the clock. Took in mental patients
from Alton State Hospital that she took a liking to and gave them jobs
cooking or cleaning. Let them house up in a crook and crany of the old
brick building from which Abraham Lincoln once held a speech. Worked
around the clock, I said that, be she did double time around the
clock.

I moved in with her (yes, she took care of all the grand-children when
needed too, she died leaving 104 children, grandchildren, great
grandchildren and greatgreat grandchildren) when the family moved back
to the US from Japan and I didn't want to do a 6 month stint in
Oklahoma before my father was debriefed and declared clean.

She told me, in her sly way, meaning I shouldn't pass the info on to
my mother or uncles, what she did at 2 am when she finished a work
day.

She'd go out into her huge, heavy Lincoln Continental (with suicide
doors) and head out west of Greenville on 159. There's a stretch out
there in the woods and cornfields that runs straight as an arrow for
about 10 miles.

She'd floor it. She'd keep it floored for 10 miles.

Then she would turn around and drive back at leisurely pace, with all
of the day's stress out of her system, and go to bed (only to rise
again at 6 am).

They day she realized that she'd have to give up her Lincoln was the
day she got old. She made the decision herself, but she always missed
that flat-out speed experience.

She died in her high ninties, just a couple of years after her
maternal aunt. The ladies in our family are toughies.

But she wasn't a purist :-)

Daniel