Truth be known, I have been "Motor-Headed" in my life. Raised around the rumble of powerful V8 engines and the roar of motorcycles up and down my street. It was in the '60s, when gasoline wasn't a major financial concern. Sure, it got expensive in the Gas Crisis of the early '70s but for the most part, it flowed like rainwater off the roof -- tempting us to buy everything there was to contain it.
My girlfriend said that I had an unhealthy bond with my '69 Pontiac GTO, because I spoke with it more than I did her. Guys need to feel in control of something, and a relationship is WAY too intimidating. You just have to steer a car, to get where you want to be. She found someone older and more mature -- Volvo Kenneth. "Fine! Well, don't you worry about me, 'cause me and M'Lady are going for a little vacation on the open road."
I would drive from New Jersey to Delaware and back for around six dollars. Man, I loved that car. It was my Freedom Machine, getting me out of my old neighborhood and racing the world past me at the speed of a headlight.
I also had a '69 BSA motorcycle. A canine love of wind in my face almost compensated for the many times I would be roadside, pushing "Sparky" home. I mythologized the thing. "C'mon baby, it's just a hill. You can do it! You can do it! Hey, what's that warm sensation spitting from my carb? SHIT! My BELL BOTTOMS ARE ON FIRE!!" Thank you BSA -- British Small Arms -- for making something else that's trying to kill me. Motorcycles and guns.
Cops and cars, bikers and babes. Everyone zipping around, earning money to buy the next thing that gets them back on the road, to earn money to buy the next thing on the road. If we look at the hours spent at the wheel, we live in our cars and visit our homes are like a summer cottage, popping-in when it's even practical to.
America has been sung to sleep by the Piston's Lullaby. Explosions contained and released, a mechanical surrogate for our mother's heartbeat.
Well, we're awake now!
A vehicle is a device to get us from points A to B. Safety and mileage, a legislated concern.
Manhood was never supposed to be associated with what we're able to purchase. But this is the mindset of Western Man. Our culture assures us that we'll find a mate if we can somehow arrive in something loud and threatening, like the poor male Bower Bird and his goofy mating dance. The automobile has become a Hermit Crab shell. We scurry from one to another. "Hurry, close the door!" Clunk! "Whew, safe at last."
Time's observations have since filled the void left me by this tar-pit of a mindset. Modern war is fought for things, not ideas. The thing America is throwing her youth into like a furnace, is oil. Only liars deny that fact. To kill people for a substance we are capable of replacing is Car-azy.
We're pushing ourselves to extinction over a liquid made up of THE LAST BIG, STUPID ANIMAL TO STOMP THE FACE OF THE EARTH. Maybe one day, roaches will drive around in cars that run on the remains of us, but I doubt it. Their very presence proves that cockroaches actually WANT to survive. (Hummer owners may want to run home and get that irony going for the concept to take hold.)
These days, when all I can see is the gigantic wheel of a monster truck drive by -- deafening Woffer-Blare, I just have to think to myself "I'd still rather have my penis, scuffed up old shoe that it is."
I don't hate the dopey kid perched way up there on his vinyl throne. I WAS him once, as well. But I wised up. Maybe, when his gas card runs out, he will too.
my 17 year-old son's generation will simply have a different sense of what's cool. The sound of the silence of the hybrid will replaces the rumble of MOPAR. Times change, thank God the future will have thousands of electric cabs quietly carting us around the city, the only sound their horns and the chorus of curses in middle eastern accents!
I live in Los Alamos, of course.
When I was a kid in Seattle, we had buses and that's what I took to everything. But then Seattle metastesized into a metropolis, with Microsoft across the lake and suburbs in every direction. To get anywhere in less than several hours, a car was necessary. I lived in a car, going to work, to my son's school, to the store, anywhere.
When I can't drive any more from old age, I will have to move to somewhere else or go into a nursing home like my neighbor did, not because she couldn't have lived in her house, but because she could no longer drive.
I have a wonderful small SUV, a Forester, a really good workhorse, with tinted windows to keep out the relentless New Mexico sun. I long for the old days in Seattle rain, on the bus.
Seemed to run fine. I couldn't smell the French fry exhaust though.
Shame. This could be going easier, you know. We're capable of it.
BUT I don't think the issue should be taken solely with cars... people have to get around. What bugs the hell out of me is all the people with Winnebagoes (Winnebagos?) and boats and what-not doing all this UNNECESSARY petrol consumption. Considering we have less than a 30-year supply of petrol left (Google it), perhaps we should start some rationing and no more unnecessary consumption?
And to "chinohillster" -- I feel your pain. Here in Seattle we have an amazing bus system (we're getting trains too!) yet no one rides them and we have probably the WORST traffic aside from LA. It's a Catch-22. If no one rides the buses (busses?), the powers-that-be won't spend money making more routes, etc. And e'ery time we have a ballot issue for more buses, trains, mass transit,etc. it seems to get cut down because people just don't want to give up their cars.
Thanks Rick for a though-provoking post...
I tend to think I am getting old or maybe it is just sensible. (Isn't that the same thing?)
I travelled all over Philadelphia and suburbs on SEPTA, through blizzards, rainstorms which flooded the sewer systems, broken-down equipment, etc, etc, etc.
When I moved to near Lost Angeles, I LONGED for mass transit that even asymptotically approached that of SEPTA (sometimes affectionately referred to as the 'SEPT-IC System' by Philadelphians).
In the 20 years I've lived in Southern California, I've been on buses SEVEN TIMES (mostly in San Diego, where the transit system is actually fairly decent [especially the San Diego Red Cars], to go to Sea World or the San Diego Zoo) - riding a bus in the Inland Empire, with its far-flung communities is not for the faint-of-heart. I've ridden the Green Line twice (after DRIVING to the Norwalk station)
Lost Angelenos are NOT MASS TRANSIT people - mass transit is viewed for the poor and malodorous (with the exception of the Amtrak to San Diego, or the commuter rail lines) - if you DON'T have your own car - YOU ARE NOTHING AND NOWHERE.
I would GLADLY ride mass transit if it were available - there are NO BUSES from Chino Hills to Brea, where I work. I've ridden mass transit from Boston to Washington, D.C., and would ride it again - but it simply is not available!
Everything in CA is so ridicuously spread out that a car is a necessity just to get to your job. The trains are OK but I won't ride those alone, no matter what time it is.
But I do wish more people would get rid of their gas-guzzling SUV's. If I see one more f***ing Hummer on the road, I'm going to hurl. What the f**k does anyone living in the suburbs need a Hummer for? Absolutely nothing, and its such a waste.
Garrison Keillor without the schmaltz.
We'll no longer be owned by our possessions?
Funny, I don't exactly see the advertisements in my minds eye.
(We're all EQUALLY out of oil. OOMMMM.)
Doesn’t have the same ring as a Corvette ad. Sorry, I wish it did.
But I still have one thing. And I’m ALREADY hearing the ads for it.
(One little blue pill is all you need when times are tough!)