The Old Coot ‘Hearts’ New York

Us New Yorkers are a funny bunch. The taxes are high, among the highest in the nation, the regulations are excessive (a nanny state run wild), the Albany crowd that governs is rife with thieves and just about everything you enjoy doing is illegal. Even your poor dog is regulated. Let him run free for a minute and you’ll find out. You most definitely are prohibited from sipping a can of cold beer on a stifling hot afternoon, during a 30-minute ride home after working all day at a construction site, yet it’s okay to stop at a tavern, down a quick one and then drive home. If you do the math, the car-sipper drives with 1/2 the blood alcohol level as the bar-stopper. It’s illegal for your 13-year-old to ride a bike without a helmet, yet It’s okay if he climbs a tree or plays soccer or swings around on a set of monkey bars. 

New York legislators are inconsistent, they have a knee jerk reaction to a tragedy, pass a law to cover the situation and pat themselves on the back for their accomplishment, thinking their constituency is too stupid to solve their own problems.   

But still, we love being New Yorkers. It might be messed up, but it’s ours. Old coots like me especially love it; there is so much to complain about, but the state does have many cool things: the big city, good roads, nice parks, the wine country, beautiful lakes and the Adirondacks. 

Even so, it’s all under the thumb of a mean-spirited bureaucracy. Take the auto inspection process. Your car is a year old with 3,000 miles on the odometer and you failed to notice the inspection sticker expired last week. You only now noticed it because when you went to get in there was a ticket under your wiper blade. They used to warn you. If you got it inspected within 24 hours you were off the hook. There wasn’t a specific regulation then; the cops and local judges could use discretion. But now it’s a money thing. That crew in Albany can’t get enough, so you get a ticket. 

It gets worse, this inspection process. You grab the ticket and head to the garage to get it taken care of. The first thing the mechanic does is scrape off the expired sticker. He has to! It’s the law! You’re not worried; it’s a new car; it will pass and you’ll get a new sticker. MAYBE NOT! The lights work, the tire tread depth is good, wipers, brakes and all the safety equipment checks out. Then he plugs into your on-board computer and connects your car to Albany. If one of the emission devices is out of whack, your car will fail. No sticker for you! (As Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi would say).

Now what do you do? You plead, “Can you give me a temporary sticker so I can drive home and come back tomorrow when the part comes in?” The poor mechanic has to say, “Sorry, I can’t.” So, you find a puddle and splash some mud down the side of your windshield and hope for the best, hope you don’t get another ticket for driving an uninspected car. 

Of course, I know all this by learning it the hard way. I’m driving around with a piece of black electrical tape covering the check engine light in my 18-year-old roadster. This worked okay last year. I disconnected the battery and the light went out. A few weeks later I had it inspected. Joe Sellers of Hilltop Motors did the inspection. He’s kept me road worthy for decades. As he was connecting the car to the computer in Albany I told him what I’d done. He got a funny look on his face and said the computer would still send the code that turned the light on to the big bullies in Albany. He probably wouldn’t be able to give me a sticker. Just then the computer beeped and approved my vehicle. I was lucky; the code wasn’t one of the ones that earn you a failing grade. It probably came from a loose gas cap or something benign. 

But, now the light’s glow is hidden behind a new piece of black tape. I’m dreading the countdown to this year’s inspection. It’s just one of those New York things. I “Heart” New York, but not as much as I did 50 years ago. 

Comments? Complaints? Send to mlessler7@gmail.com.