Only On Sundays

Jan and Dean scored a big AM hit in 1964 with THE LITTLE OLD LADY FROM PASADENA. The song was based on the myth of Pasadena car salesmen pitching an old clunker as driven by an elderly widow only to go to church. The legend was based on truth, since in the 60s the LA suburb was home to thousands of widows, whose husbands had succumbed to the gauntlet of the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression and World War II at an early age. Johnny Carson popularized these 'little old ladies in white sneakers' on THE TONIGHT SHOW and this week a 93 year-old Florida grandmother retired her license to drive a 1964 Mercury Comet Caliente with 576,000 miles on the odometer. According to the BBC the Mrs. Veitch's affair with her car outlasted three marriages and announced to Fox News that the nonagenarian planned to sell her beloved vehicle rather than bequeath the classic V6 to her family. "They're not going to get it. They couldn't take care of it like I did. When I buy gas, I write down the mileage, the date and how many miles per gallon I got. I've never been a destructive person and I've just taken care of everything, except my husbands." She is thinking about selling it to Jay Leno, Carson's heir to THE TONIGHT SHOW. He is a car buff. Jay once picked me up hitchhiking on Comm Ave in a convertible Mercedes and drove me to BC. He has always been a good guy in my book. 576,000 miles is about twenty trips around the equator. Magellan's first circumnavigation of the globe took three years. And he failed to complete the voyage. The again he wasn't a Little Old Lady from Pasadena. ps Irv Gordon holds the Guinness Book of World Records with 1.69 million miles on his 1966 Volvo P1800.