Kiwi in the Catbird Seat

By Michael Demarest

In the era of OPEC, non-drivers come into their own

When the bloom was on the roads, the American who would not--or could not--drive a car was dismissed as a sponger or a dimwit, doomed to a life of dependence on alien wheels and, quite likely, celibacy. The nondriver was a rara Avis (though he could not rent one), akin to the kiwi, a bird that cannot fly. In a country that relies so heavily on the auto for its bread and butter and most of its honey, he was seen and often scorned as a kind of self-decreed cripple.

Now, however, in an era when excessive gasoline consumption has become offensive to nostril, pocketbook and national pride, automotive abstinence has become a virtue. The kiwi is in the catbird seat. The man or woman who gets to work by bicycle or shanks' mare trails clouds of self-esteem as palpable as the carbon dioxide fumes he has forsworn. Whether he refuses to buy a car at today's prices or simply will not or cannot take the wheel, he can be said to have heeded official pleas to share the ride (though it is someone else who does the actual sharing). Even friends and neighbors, who consent to pick up his groceries, cleaning and the Sunday paper, can be made to feel that they too are camshafting egregious OPEC.

People no longer hesitate to confess that they simply do not like to drive--an admission that would have been treated as an aberration a few years ago. Some former auto commuters like Pulitzer-Prizewinning Cartoonist Herblock explain that they swore off the gas when they realized that they were incurably bad drivers. "I was just too tense or too relaxed to drive well," says Herblock (real name: Herbert Block), whose cartoons occasionally picture autos as demented beasts. Who could be censured for preferring the luxury of a chauffeured limousine, particularly if someone else is footing the bill? It is still possible to enjoy a ride with a civilized or silent cab driver. Suburban car pools will usually accept a nondriving member, so long as he does not spill his coffee on a seatmate's crossword puzzle.

Many non-drivers hint vaguely at some ghastly automotive da fe in their past. Others have good reason to leave the driving to someone else. Says English Actor Michael Caine: "When I was young I couldn't afford a car, and now that I'm rich I can afford a chauffeur." Richard Harris, the Irish actor, has not driven since the merry day he had a donnybrook with a bus and decided he was a menace at the wheel; he also can afford a chauffeur. Author T.H. White (The Sword in the Stone) used to barrel a Bentley around his minuscule Channel Island home of Alderney until the evening he dropped in--literally--on a fisherman friend; he drove the car right into F.F.'s parlor. Thereafter, he took to toddling.

Charles Jackson, a Manhattan journalist, swore off after wartime accidents in which he hurtled in a Jeep against the wall of a crowded Army orderly room and later slammed a 2 1/2-ton truck through the imposing Sterling Gate at Fort Sill, Okla. ("There wasn't enough left of it to make matchsticks.") Nowadays he rides splendidly in the back seat of the family Buick, while his wife does the driving.

In any case, in metropolitan areas with reasonably efficient mass transit driving to work and parking a car can be onerous and expensive. Despite the general decline of commuting services, the straphanger is seldom as frazzled as the driver, who has been on hold for an hour in a traffic jam. His passenger, on the other hand, has had time to read the paper and admire the view en route.

Non-drivers claim other advantages. Insists Jane Flint, a Washington advertising researcher who actually grew up in Detroit without ever learning to back or brake: "I feel I have more freedom than most of my friends, forever hopping into the car with a fabric swatch in their hands, driving the kids to the dentist when they could just as well have walked, driving back to the market to buy some forgotten item, picking up the kids from the dentist, back downtown again--this goes on all day long." Fortunately, says Flint, her children "don't have arcane tastes--I don't have to take them clear across town for bagpipe lessons."

Nonetheless, in the America of the superhighway and the supermarket, the carless face redoubtable problems. Getting home from a party, for example. "You let people hear you calling a cab," says Herblock, "and they insist on giving you a ride. Then you have to wait while they have another drink. The only way out is to say, 'Sorry, the taxi's already on its way.' "

Another obstacle to non-driving, totally unrelated to automotive proficiency, is check cashing. How can someone prove he is a person if he does not have a driver's license? Columnist Art Buchwald, who at one time gave up driving, has not forgotten his tribulations at supermarkets in Washington: "They first stamp the back of the check with a little line for your height, weight, color of eyes, everything, walk across the store to okay it--and then refuse to accept it unless you produce a driver's license."

Sci-fi Writer Ray Bradbury, who never learned to drive, is one of the few million-dollar earners in Los Angeles who rides buses and bikes. He has no regrets. "It's like sex and a twelve-year-old," Bradbury shrugs. "You don't miss what you've never had."

--By Michael Demarest

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