THE RUSTY-MOBILE

It’s a 1991 Honda CRX that my mother Rusty drove for the last years of her life, and it was languishing in my driveway.

My Thanksgiving gift was turning over the Rusty-mobile to my daughter Elizabeth, 19, a super horserider at Hollins University in the tradition of my parents and grandparents – her great-grandfather won the Kentucky Derby in 1911 and her paternal grandfather rode in the British Grand National seven times, coming in third in 1937 on Dorothy Paget’s Kilstar.

Her maternal grandfather, Henri Jelliss, as a jockey from Belgium whose father was champion jockey there 14 straight years, won the English triple crown and was trainer for Lord Astor, Marquis Queenbury, and the king of England.

Rusty, my mother, brought us to America after my father took an assignment to accompany 43 horses on the first trans-Atlantic flight by owner Paul Mellon.

My mother first got a 1953 Chevrolet that she did not like. Then she found the H.B. Lantzsch Volkswagen dealership at Fairfax Circle near Washington, D.C., and from thereon drove Volkswagen beatles, until the final one rusted out and she bought the 1991 Honda CRX, which she drove until she died a year ago.

My mother was a cautious driver but  had a heavy foot on the gas peddle, which is to say she sped. No 55-mile-per-hour speed limit deterred her from driving 70 miles-per-hour, except the last Volkswagen she drove vibrated over 55, which made her take the foot off the gas.

Not the Honda CRX, a four-speed shift that easily hit 80-miles-an-hour in third gear. One day, when Rusty was driving to her chiropractor in Leesburg, 16 miles from home, she got pulled over by a Virginia state trooper who clocked her at 80 miles-per-hour in a 55 miles-per hour zone. She was a diminutive red-headed lady and the police officer looked at her driver’s license that told him she was 80 years old and asked her if she knew why he had stopped her.

“Was I speeding, officer?” was my mother’s response. “Well, yes, I would say so,” the trooper told her.

“Well, I’m terribly sorry, I just bought this car, and my Volkswagen used to vibrate when I went over 55, but this car doesn’t, so I’m terribly sorry,” she told the trooper. He handed back her license, urged her to back off the gas peddle in the CRX, did not give her a ticket, and off she went to Dr. Sampson, her chiropractor.

It was a pure delight to see my daughter Elizabeth drive away with her stepfather, Larry Belkin, in the Rusty-mobile on Thanksgiving Day. She’s a wonderful rider, as was her grandmother, the first woman to ride exercise at the Middleburg, Virginia, training center in 1957, and a fitting recipient of the last car her grandmother drove. Rusty will be her angel as she drives the highways and byways.