Remnant #37, Less gas/Alameda Street, El Paso, Texas – May 12, 2008
“Gas for less.”
Less gas.
This is not a glitch, it is the changing of a culture.
Usually when a culture changes -sorry Barack- it is the result of a calamity: Depression, war, pandemic, natural disaster. Were it not so, but “change,” is not engineered. Eventually, it is managed.
The petroleum change may be a result of a couple of the downers, above, but, for sure, it is also about coming to an end of an era of gluttony (can you spell Hummer, Suburban, “toys,” like unneeded pickup trucks and SUVs, and, of course, there are the never necessary land rippers, ATVs?).
We’re still sorting this out (I guess we’re trying to sort this out), but one thing is for sure -have you noticed?- there are less people in restaurants, less people on the highway, less people in the stores. This time we are not being told to buy our way out of this one because the bill is due and everyone knows it. It’s harder to dream when you just woke up. Raising gas prices make the Dream Of Plastic…a bad joke. Credit cards are due from about twenty Christmas’, from off-shoring everything, from serious mismanagement- governmental and personal- and about 48 years of “deposit spending (you get a pass on this one Mr. Clinton).”
Less gas.
No more cruising?
They say the national pastime is various things: NFL, television, Rock n’ Roll, et al.
Nah!
It’s always been our cars: cruisin’, washing, buying, one-upping, opposite sex attracting.
Car culture may not be over,but it looks like it’s gonna come with a downer: a pound of flesh every time you slide that card, open that gas flap, put that little phallic pump handle into the nozzle and stare at the sky and act as if you’re not suffering. Filling the tank has become a moment of contemplation and that does not bode well for free spirited consuming, the false industry that this country carved for itself once the accountants had figured out how to make a company’s stock still render dividends by saying adios (high priced) American worker. Every time I stand at the pump and look over at other self-serving pumpers, I get no feeling of joy. How about you?
Looks like apprehension. How long can you sustain apprehension at, even, 25mpg?
If you read just a little, one can not avoid knowing that while we look at a “slide,” the Indians and Asians are just starting up their road freedom dream.
Still looking for a dream?
Can we come to love our bullet trains?
