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.