My trusty car knifed its way southward through six hours of relentlessly bad weather today. Once in traffic school (yes, I've been a couple times), a truck driver impressed upon me the foolishness of driving parallel to a big rig on the interstate. They lose tread, caps and other large pieces of gear much more often than cars do, as evidenced by the truck detritis lining every highway in the nation.
He said that if you happen to be unlucky enough to be next to a truck when this happens you could easily die. I thought of that, in a different context, when Alan Pakula, the man who directed the only feature film* I ever wrote (co-wrote, actually, with my buddy Howard Kohn), was killed by a piece of freeway junk (metal) that pierced his skull some years back.
The thing about freeway hazards is that they don't respect whether you are a millionaire or a pauper, whether you are a famous movie director or just another dumb schmuck, whether you just fell in love or are crying bitter tears of lost love as you speed down the highways of this nation.
I wonder how many of us realize yet what a primitive age we live in? An age so partially formed that we are still using petroleum products in our vehicles, even as previous uses (linoleum floors, etc.) have been set aside as too expensive. We burn toxic petrochemical vapors as we speed down the highways of this country.
Politicians, weaklings that they are, still fear that their fortunes will rise or fall along with the price of oil, or more specifically, how much we consumers have to pay at the gas pump to get our steel and plastic boxes well-enough fed to go the next two, three, or four hundred miles.
So what do we pay here in the middle of the richest empire on earth? Almost nothing, frankly, a mere $2.50 a gallon along the west coast, give or take a dime or a nickel. My dad used to keep detailed records of every fillup he paid for in the glove compartment of his car. He also noted the cost, the amount in gallons, and then (as the fun part) computed the MPG.
This was one of the things about my father that fascinated me the most, and resonated deeply. For years, I did the same as I saw him do, but then other distractions caused me to abandon his family tradition. Four years almost to the day he died, I bought my first new car at a dealership, and guess what I found myself doing soon after?
You got it. I wrote down the date, cost, volume and MPG of every tankfull of gas I purchased.
If I'd never driven a car anywhere but here in America, I might fall for the crap that a few cents up or down per gallon at the gas station matters one whit. But I've bought gas in Malaysia, Spain, and Tahiti (the last for my motorcycle), and let me tell you, we at the center of the (current) universe have it as good as it gets.
That's why I plan to take as many road trips as I can in coming years, driving here and there, seeing the Western States while they can be reached via what we in America consider a "family vacation."
I remember the AAA guide my family used some 40 years ago to drive from Michigan to Florida. At that time, a little bit of history was included along with the maps. Within a couple years, I was driving the same route with my college friends, but this time, my guidebook was Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Dubois and Jack Newman's A Prophetic Minority.
But *that* is quite another story...
-30-
* Rollover (1981)
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