Alfa Story

[Tom Hardy <trh-arch@domain.elided>]

This story would work with any brand of vehicle, but it happened to have 
actually happened with an Alfa, so I remember it vividly.

I caught my Alfa fever from my father exactly 43 years after he bought 
his brand new Giulietta Sprint. I'm only on my second Alfa and haven't 
had time to acquire a great story of my own but I've always enjoyed this 
story my pop tells me about his car:

He had just bought his Alfa in 1957, and was enjoying driving it quickly 
on what were then reasonably unencumbered roads in northern California. 
At that time, the speed limit, unless posted, was whatever was "safe and 
prudent given the road and weather conditions". So Dad was doing about 
95 down around Morgan Hill when he was pulled over by a local cop who 
asked him how fast he was going.

"Yes Officer, I know exactly how fast I was going--about 95", said Dad. 
The cop then wrote him up a ticket, which my dad decided to contest, 
feeling that he was traveling at a speed safe and prudent given his 
vehicle and the conditions on the road.

In order to contest the ticket he had to take the day off work and drive 
back down to Morgan Hill, which had a tiny courthouse in those days and 
an old cowboy judge, but my dad was feeling like defending his 
principles and was looking forward to enlightening the judge on the 
sophisticated suspension, wondrous braking, and superior handling of the 
Alfa Romeo

So he got to the courthouse and the proceedings began. The judge started 
in with a long lecture about "them durn little foreign sportscars", and 
summed up his rant by saying "if God intended man to fly, he would have 
given them wings! Now, Sir, what is it you do for a living?"  (I need to 
mention at this point that my father made his living as a pilot).

Dad surrendered instantly and just said "where do I pay the fine, your 
Honor?"


--
tom hardy
san francisco
67 Giulia Sprint GT Veloce
78 GIOS Torino
son of 57 Giulietta Sprint owner
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