It’s been about 30 years since I could drive. My eyesight, never great, took a sudden nosedive. I was on the highway in my Toyota Tercel when I couldn’t read the exit signs and barely made it home.
The tests went on and on. I recall getting a spinal tap at the Lahey Clinic in Massachusetts. “Don’t move,” the doctor said as she inserted a thin needle into my back, tapping me like a maple tree. I froze. The doctor took a phone call from her husband, who was also a famous eye surgeon. As I dripped cerebrospinal fluid, they discussed how to prepare the chicken for their dinner that evening. The lab results were inconclusive.
“Almost 50 percent of low vision cases go undiagnosed,” the doctor said a week later. “We don’t know what caused your sudden optic chiasm. Could be genetic. We only know it isn’t recoverable.”
Three decades later, I’m still “hard of seeing.” Thanks to cataracts, it’s a little worse. People six feet away are faceless. I can’t read the print in books, newspapers, menus, or microwave dinners. I’ve been known to bend down to pet a pair of underwear, mistaking it for the cat. Basically, something 20 feet away looks 200 feet away with my good eye while wearing glasses, and 600 feet away with the bad eye. That ain’t so bad, unless you’re at the wheel of a two-ton killing machine going 60 mph.
There are mechanical devices designed to keep low-vision people driving. I tested tiny telescopes glued to my eyeglasses. I could read a license plate far in the distance, but I couldn’t see the car in front of me. To save the planet, I took myself off the road. Now I wonder, who else can’t see where they’re driving, but can’t afford to quit?
“Losing the ability to drive in New Hampshire is like a death sentence,” someone told me. But I have an official non-driver’s license from the DMV. A license NOT to drive is a funny concept. Last year I had myself officially declared “legally blind,” another funny idea. No one knows what it means, but I have a certificate. In New Hampshire–and this is a fact– you get a free magnifying glass and a free fishing license. That’s it. I also get about $300 off my property tax. Not exactly a windfall.
I have relied in the past, largely, on friends and family. “What does a blind man want most in a girlfriend?”— the old joke goes. Punchline: a driver’s license.
I gave over 300 history talks from Lowell, MA to Portland, ME in recent years, mostly around the Granite State for NH Humanities. But the strain of distances and deadlines was too much for my driving companions. Last year, two gentlemen from the Milford Historical Society picked me up and drove me home after my lecture, a distance of over 125 total miles for me, twice as many for them. A friend from Dover chauffeured me, my books, and AV equipment to present a lecture in Berlin, NH. That was six hours on the road. It was too much to ask. So my itinerant lecture days are over.
The answer, in part, has been to follow in the footsteps of 19th-century historian Charles Brewster and go almost nowhere. In 50 years as a Portsmouth writer, Brewster claimed, his twice-daily trek from his house to his downtown office (he always went home for lunch) was equal to a 24,000-mile hike around the Earth. Brewster did, as writer Franz Kafka later espoused, let the world come to him. With the internet, we all tour the planet without taking a step. We live in an age of miracles.
I probably shouldn’t be on a bicycle, considering the legal blindness thing, but there aren’t a lot of options. I’m 1.7 miles from Market Basket, two miles from downtown. With a front basket, backpack, and saddlebags, I can carry a week’s worth of groceries. Thanks to global warming, I can often manage to bike for food at least 10 months out of the year.
The streets around here are dangerous. The more the city tries to make them safer for bikers–with dedicated lanes, weird plastic bollards, and painted arrows–the more deadly they get for a low-vision rider. So, probably against the rules, when outside the city center. I often bike on the sidewalk. For the record, I rarely encounter a pedestrian coming or going. The real danger is potholes. Two of them tried to kill me, but I survived.
Nobody who drives can truly imagine life without a car. There was, briefly, a Coast bus that stopped a few blocks from my house. It was a godsend. I could get to Trader Joe’s or downtown in six minutes at a senior discount of 75 cents. One day, as an experiment, I caught the bus to Chipotle, bought a burrito, and made the return trip home. Elapsed time: 45 minutes. Beat that with your Mercedes. The bus used to arrive hourly, but when federal funds faded, my neighborhood got axed. The closest stop is now a mile away and I’m a year older.
Fact: There is no reliable, affordable, accessible system for the elderly, poor, disabled, or anyone without a car to get around town. You can get to Boston on a shuttle, butt you cant get to the dentist. Trust me, I’ve tried. And those who claim otherwise haven’t tested their theory. The region is too small. The resources, despite well-intentioned nonprofits and volunteers, are not available.
Uber is iffy. One driver told me there are only 18 people serving the entire Seacoast. If you want to get home from an eye doctor appointment at 5pm on a Friday, good luck. Every six minutes my cell phone app said, “No driver available.” I spent a frigid hour, alone in a dark parking lot in Kittery last winter waiting for a taxi.
Our Seacoast transportation situation, aging residents will soon discover, is bleak. As a long-time nondriver, my advice is to marry someone much younger, have lots of kids, make lots of friends, be wealthy, shop online, be kind to your neighbors, stay in tip-top shape, never get sick, and forget about getting anywhere at the last minute.
Is there an upside? Always. I’m alive thanks to the Care Van system at Wentworth-Douglas Hospital. Expert drivers picked me up precisely on time in all weather during the worst of times. A few close friends are always there when called. A guy named TJ is building what, so far, has been a dependable local service called Rudy’s Taxi.
My friend Bill picks up a new Tesla this week. He’s my age. I was headed to his house in Massachusetts when my eyesight crashed 30 years ago. He says he will be driving up soon to show off his new car—without touching the steering wheel. Maybe, in our golden years, we’ll all have robot drivers to make up for the jet packs that never arrived. Meanwhile, kiss your driver’s license and stop cursing the traffic. You don’t know how lucky you are.
© 2026 by J Dennis Robinson, all rights reserved.
Childhood Memories of the Appledore Island Hotel, Part 2