Cars and Freedom
The collapse of General Motors this week has me reflecting on the American car culture and it’s influence in my life. Is it dead? What do cars mean to us, and how will that change? The automobile is so ubiquitous that we scarcely consider the affect it’s had beyond mere transportation. Over the past century, cars have changed where and how we live. They gave birth to suburbs and killed cities. Physical mobility fueled social mobility, enabling the growth of a powerful middle class. And this in turn created a potent and accessible image of the American Dream. Cars altered how we relate to one-another as drive-thrus and lonely commutes isolated us. And yet cars have become a profound symbol of freedom, deeply ingrained in our sense of self. One could be forgiven in thinking the Declaration of Independence promised, “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Open Roads.” Whatever the eventual fate of the automakers themselves, the fate of our relationship to cars is absolutely going to change. The new freedom will have to have bounds, which of course is a vexing oxymoron. This goes for General Motors and their short-term greed as much as it goes for people like me who have a long-standing love affair with gas-guzzlers and the great highway.
I first watched the world roll by from inside our fab ’67 Mercury station wagon. It had wood panel sides, the last vestiges of tail fins, and these cool hideaway rumble seats in the way back. This was my zone and as far back as I can remember, I was happy on the move. At ten, I’d sit for hours in my sister’s orange ’72 Volvo clunker, the garage door in front of me a movie screen of imagined landscapes. As my teen years came on, my impatience to drive grew excruciating. At home I made a show of crossing off days on my custom-made “cruise countdown” calendar. Meanwhile I was out bombing back roads in my buddy’s ’75 Monte Carlo. By the time I got my license, I’d been driving two years and had logged all the blacktop in the known universe. I can’t say what song was playing when I lost my virginity, but I can tell you that the Romantics’ “What I Like About You” was blasting the first time I drove alone legally.
My car was a 1970 Buick Sklylark. Originally my Dad’s, it became the teenager mobile as each of us hit 16. My older brother and sister had to compete for it, but I was far enough behind to have it all to myself. When I took it over I pimped it out, 80’s redneck style. I jacked it up and put on fat mag wheels and a rumbling duel exhaust. I built a console with a stereo, cup holders, and covered it in brown shag rug. I screwed a glass beer tap handle onto the gear shifter. Yeah, dude. I was all that, rolling into the gas station every few miles with loose pocket change. For the prom I borrowed my neighbor’s ’63 Caddy. My sister’s graduation present was one week with her cherry red convertible ’69 Firebird. I sucked the nectar from every leaded-gas mile.
Have mullet, will travel. Ready for the prom.
I wasn’t alone. Bruce Springsteen’s lyrics played an important early role in validating my wanderlust. It’s been joked that he can’t sing a song without mentioning cars. But he was speaking my language. “Well the night’s busting open these two lanes will take us anywhere. We got one last chance to make it real to trade in these wings on some wheels…”
Motorhead Mentors: Springsteen, Cassady
And so it wasn’t long before I found myself in motor mecca: Los Angeles. It was the mid-80’s and classic cars were still everywhere, not yet collector’s items. I picked up another Sklylark, a ’64, from a little old lady. Out west I found a whole new world to explore: deserts, redwoods, the Sierras, the twisting coastal highways. Wide open, made for cars. The freeways were peaceful to me in the middle of the night, flowing, never-ending, and I made a hobby of driving them till dawn. It was here, in a college lit class, where I met another guru of the gas pedal: Neil Cassady. His exploits behind the wheel were enshrined in Jack Kerouac’s “On The Road,” (and later as driver of the Merry Prankster’s bus). The fitful adventures of the Beats raised the art of driving to a mystical level for me. I ventured forth as the heir apparent of the hobo-poet church of the open road.
I’ve crisscrossed the country enough times that I’ve lost count, been through most of the lower 48 and Alaska, and slept under the stars in many of them. I’ve had an oddball collection of vehicles, four-wheeled and two. I feel fortunate to have done it in the era before cell phones, before debit cards, and long before GPS. But most of all, I’m glad to have experienced travel in the era before guilt.
As my consciousness of ecology has grown over the past decade, my concept of wastefulness has sharpened. I think twice about how I use things like paper, plastic, and electricity, but I also scrutinize my use of gasoline. A nagging voice has been riding shotgun for a few years now, judging every mile I drive. Hey, are we on an essential errand here or just selfishly joyriding? He reminds me that if I take the scenic route home I’m a planet-hater. For every drop of gas burned for my pleasure, there’s a drop of ice melting under a polar bear’s paw.
Eco-guilt is a subject of great fascination for me. At once it can be a positive force and a compulsive neurosis. I can walk through a mega-store and see a kaleidoscope of carbon-footprint stories swirling down each aisle until I’m dizzy. And now guilt has gone and clouded up the sacred view out my windshield.
But as much as I lament the loss of eco-innocence, of course I have to admit the nagging voice is absolutely right. We can’t act as though we’re isolated and our actions have no ripple consequences. Human disconnect is the exception, not the norm. The garden we’re trying to get back to is one of interdependence, not dominance. A garden where there is no waste.
Maybe there’s no redemption for my gas-guzzling, muscle-car sins. Maybe the point isn’t only better fuel efficiency – what if I get 500 miles per gallon with some futuristic ride but still take the winding road less traveled? Isn’t that still harmful? I don’t know the answer. If American car culture is defined by mindless waste, then indeed I welcome it’s death. But at the same time, if cars are reduced merely to joyless transportation pods for essential errands, then we risk killing the underlying freedom that cars enabled. No one wants to live a life of straight lines. We all need a little zig-zag in our path. We all need back roads.
Like me, the American car companies have been joyriding for decades. It’s hard to grasp just how tone-deaf they’ve been to why Japanese cars are so popular, starting with the ‘70’s oil crisis. They insisted it was a fluke. Meanwhile they foisted gas-guzzlers on us long after we knew their evils, all for short-term profits. They molded the American Dream into the macho SUV dream. They fought every attempt at regulations that would have been in their own long-term self-interest. Even the slightest suggestion of raising fuel standards brought cries of how impossible it would be to retool the plants. These are the same plants that completely retooled after Pearl Harbor, from cars to churning out planes in a matter of months. And now that we taxpayers own 60% of General Motors, let’s pray that long-term thinking may prevail. The trimmed-down companies need much higher fuel-efficiency standards. The factories that don’t make the cut need help retooling to manufacture green energy technology. And of course we need higher gas taxes to not only discourage big cars, but to discourage excess driving. Oh, but wait. That sounds a lot like I have to give up a few of my freedom miles. I suppose I can. Can you?
