Other Work VII
This is a piece in progress. Let me tell you right now that this is not a story about the goodness of mass transit. Today I was thinking about typical bad experiences that we humans all experience and I came up with: Driving on freeways; Renewing a driver’s license, Going to any post office except the one in El Granada which is always a good experience; Suffering through security at the airport; Waiting to board the plane at the airport, and so on. This is the very short list, if you have something to add to make it longer, please email me, I am anxious to hear from you.
(Photo: Me & my Malibu,circa 1966.)
Here’s the story-in-progress
Title: I don’t think we’ll miss cars when they’re gone
There’s this Kia commercial, and the driver of the S. Korean car can’t match the gas pump with the gas time. He’s driving back & forth, ’round and ’round. A catchy song that speaks for the silent video says something like: “I can’t seem to get things right.” Then the voice-over tells us the Kia needs so little gas, you’ll forget where the gas tank is.
Well, I have news for you Mr. Kia: I forget where the gas tank is and I do not own a Kia.
I am the other half-driver of a thirsty Lexus. And not matching the pump with the gas tank is a common frustration, causing tension—and, sometimes, huge arguments.
Are you with me?
For me to say we won’t miss cars when they’re gone is unbelievable. I am a life-long driver, one of those lucky California girls who got a car at 17, when Detroit teased us with a parade of beautifully designed cars, the kind that made you look twice. Mine was a yellow Malibu with a black vinyl top. Please don’t give me a bad time… okay? If you lived in San Francisco and went to Lowell, Lincoln or Washington, that’s the way it was, most everybody had a car or knew someone who did.
I drove everywhere. I lived in San Francisco and knew the easy way to get anywhere [I still do.] I drove to Lake Tahoe; I drove to the Russian River, drove to the Marin Town & Country Club. I drove, drove, drove.
[My only serious deviation from driving myself everywhere was after I moved to Half Moon Bay. I had a job in San Francisco, and I rode the Greyhound bus to work. The nice, portly man who drove the bus lived around the corner and parked the big silver Greyhound in front of his home across the street from El Granada school. I picked up the bus a few blocks away near the El Granada Liquors store. It was a very long day.]
In the early 1970s when the oil crisis erupted, he Coastside was the best place to be. There hadn’t been a housing boom; there was a big inventory of cute, Ocean Shore Railroad era-cottages– and, as I recall, short lines waiting at the few gas stations in town– but nothing like the endless lines encountered “over the hill.”
But, truth be told, the driving experience of my youth does not equate to the driving experience decades later. The roads are frequently crowded with cars, there are horrific accidents, the roads are either not being repaired, are not kept in mint condition–or they are being repaired constantly possibly causing health problems for some drivers.
We all know that cars, their beauty in design and functionality, formed a significant part of the US economy.
Weeks have passed since the story interested me–and here is some news. I sold my hunter green 1993 J30 Infiniti, the car I have owned the longest. Until then we were a two-car family and the pair of cars barely fit into the garage. Burt had to get out of the passenger side before I drove into the garage. Too much of a squeeze.
We have one car now and you’d think that it would drive me crazy not to have my own just in case I want to escape. But now that I’ve done it, it doesn’t matter. I don’t care.
Driving on the roads in San Mateo County is unpleasant. The same in San Francisco. Where does all the money go set aside for road repair, anyway? There are times that the ride is so bumpy I feel like throwing up, and it’s happened on one occasion on Highway 280 near the 380 interchange
These days while driving I find myself thinking of the early 1900s when the pioneer drivers were so anxious to see the surrounding countryside they took all kinds of risks. I’ve seen photos of the primitive roads, not only bumping but the concrete doesn’t match, not in color, but in thickness so suddenly the tires are in mid-air waiting to bond with the next piece of roadway.
Probably the biggest problem is just too many people on the highways. When I started driving in the 1960s, San Francisco was still a small city. Today it is a very large city with no parking.
During the 1990s boom in Silicon Valley so many people had moved here that the highways were clogged at all hours–like New York City. Busy all 24 hours.
What kind of life is that? I don’t want to spend hours on the roads trying to get from one place to another.
I can’t help but wonder, why, with all these brainy futurists and engineers and computer gurus, why there are no plans for dealing with today’s driving problems. Surely, some genius who can think in three or four or five dimensions has the great idea that will dig us out of what is only becoming worse, and the source, I’m certain, of serious health problems.