Richard Overton is the oldest living U.S. military veteran in the world, but don’t think having a DOB of 1906 on his driver’s license means he can’t still enjoy the rumble of a great American V8, because Overton still drives his late 1970s Ford truck. Like a boss.
I’m sure some people find the idea of a 110-year-old person driving a car rather frightening, especially after you read stories of people 30 years Overton’s junior getting into nasty avoidable accidents.
Instead, I’m just going to marvel at this centenarian’s lifelong love for cars. In the short National Geographic documentary, Overton, of Austin, Texas, mentions automobiles a number of times, recalling the first time he ever knew someone who actually owned a car, way back when he was picking cotton for 50 cents a day:
I remember when a man got his first Ford... And we heard that he was gonna get a car. We didn’t know what a car was. We’d heard about it, but we never would come to town much.
Overton says his first car was also a Ford: an old hand-crank Model T, to be exact. Fast forward many decades later to when this documentary was filmed, and he still drives a Ford, but this time a late ‘70s Ford F-100 Custom pickup.
It may seem a bit odd for a man his age to still be on the road, but in the documentary, Overton says that when he goes to the Department of Motor Vehicles to get his license renewed, he has no issues passing the tests, saying: “Everything they give me now I pass it.”
The World War II veteran goes on, saying: “I feel good going on driving... I like to drive myself, ‘cause other drivers, they drive crazy.” Based on the footage, it looks like he’s surprisingly decent at driving his 91-year-old friend to church and out grocery shopping.
Overton says he’s not a big fan of buying new things just for the sake of it, citing his truck as an example:
I’ve got a truck out there and it runs just like I want it. So I just keep it.
That’s my philosophy, too. I just need to work on the whole “runs just like I want it” part.