Off the road again, period
It’s one thing when your own milestones fade into the past — in retirement, in age, in health — but it’s another thing when your country’s, maybe your civilization’s, do.
Our days of gasoline-driven mobility are over, period.
Maybe that’s a good thing, but it’s going to be a long time before alternative sources of energy replace petroleum, and there’s going to be a lot of pain and hardship in the meantime.
What brought this realization crashing down on me was our trip to Indiana. In the 1,700 miles we drove there and back, I saw exactly eight recreational vehicles on the road. In the old days, I might have seen that many in a mile.
I know whereof I speak. Twenty years ago, I lived year-round in an RV and did so for about seven years. It wasn’t my love of travel but my desire to survive in the cheapest way possible. Stay in a place for a while, then drive on a few miles to another place where you wouldn’t attract attention for another while. Never in an RV park.
My vehicle was small and efficient — a 1985 Toyota one-ton truck outfitted into a mini-motor home with a four-cylinder engine that got gas mileage in the mid-20s and camouflaged by me to look like a commercial vehicle instead of my home with all my belongings. Take a closer look, if you wish.
I was always conscientious about using gasoline. I stayed more than I went, and when I went, it was always with a definite destination in mind, even if it was only the next town. Wherever I stayed, I walked a lot. Saw a lot of America that way.
Gasoline in those days was barely a dollar a gallon. Crude oil ran $15 to $25 a barrel. When we got home Friday from our trip, the price of crude increased more than $10 — now at $138 a barrel. Gasoline was averaging $4 a gallon.
Crude oil and gasoline prices may come down again, but not much. Because even now, they’re cheaper than they should be. A lot of us who pay attention to Europe have known that for a long time.
So please join me as I say goodbye to carefree driving.
Well, back to work — actually, I should say Works — and today’s new offerings in those sections:
• A new installment, Chapter Three, of Jeri Cafesin’s novel Disconnected. Lee helps Rachel bake a pie for her Thanksgiving reunion with her family, always a source of tension, and she finds more to him than the smooth-talking source of drugs that initially attracted her.
• Chapter Five of R.J. Keller’s novel Waiting for Spring. Tess Dyer is settling into her apartment in a new town, but memories of her ex-husband and their life together continue to be unsettling, even as she grows closer to Brian LaChance.
• Chapter 17: Vietnam of Gerard Jones’ nonfiction novel Ginny Good. Gerard and Ginny listen to their friend Elliot’s strange visions from Vietnam, and while none of them can explain it, they all know what he’s been talking about — and that they are going to do things with each other, share things.
– Sid Leavitt
Posted in Uncategorized |
June 9, 2008 at 12:09 pm
We nearly put off our own vacation to D.C. because of gas prices, but it’s now or never. It’s only going to get worse.
June 9, 2008 at 9:45 pm
I know. As I said in today’s post, I can put up with the passing of my own milestones — and eventually that of myself — but I hate to see my country, perhaps my world, passing into the twilight.
Maybe with a new government, we can get past our narcissistic obsession with driving gas-guzzling vehicles and shopping at big-box stores and mobilize ourselves to develop renewable energy sources that will keep our planet from cooking itself.
These past eight years have been dreadful. Shame on us for not making wiser choices.
June 10, 2008 at 10:28 am
I didn’t choose the last eight years. That’s the thing about democracy — ostensibly everyone has a choice, and the minority loses. I hope, pray, beg, grovel, plead that those who made the choice for our last eight years of government see the destructive effects of that decision and make wiser, more global choices in the future.
June 10, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Yeah, my choices lost, too. Unfortunately, the winners made losers of all of us.
June 10, 2008 at 4:07 pm
“I didn’t choose the last eight years…I hope, pray, beg, grovel, plead that those who made the choice for our last eight years of government see the destructive effects of that decision and make wiser, more global choices in the future.”
I couldn’t have said it better.
June 10, 2008 at 8:52 pm
I couldn’t agree more, Sid. I hope this year marks a crossroads in history, the last best chance for us to save ourselves, and not “too little, too late.” I’m volunteering for the good guys this election, the first time since my activist teen years in the ’70’s. It’s never felt so personal — I guess I’ve never felt so personally insulted by the Powers That Be.
On a further personal note, I’m envious of your gypsy past. I had hoped for a gypsy future of my own, on similar terms. It’s probably no longer possible, or ethical, even with the most gas-miserly vehicle.
On an even more personal note, I’m verging into your old territory this weekend — a feature I wrote for Father’s Day about my godfather is running in the local paper on Sunday. With pictures. Hey, who else can I brag to?
June 10, 2008 at 11:11 pm
Thanks for your thoughts, Lisa, and congratulations on getting the feature in print. If it’s as well written as your weblog, Fragile Industries — and I’m sure it is — it should be well received.
As for my gypsy past, my teen years were in the 1950s — two decades before yours — and my road life was two decades ago, so you are at a comparable age to do it. Actually, I never used that much gasoline. The Toyota four-banger was pretty efficient, and I moved only far enough and only often enough to get beyond the reach of the local police and the local criminals before they noticed me too much.
As I told R.J. Keller on her blog — she and her husband will be driving from Maine to Washington, D.C., next week — one of the things she may notice is that, due to $4 gas, the roads may be a little less crowded.
So if you can, go for it. I recommend a little gypsy life for everyone. (Although maybe not the seven years that I did it.)
June 11, 2008 at 7:03 pm
There are viable alternatives to gasoline; they’re not widely available because of Big Oil’s filthy stranglehold on the economy, and they succeed in killing the electric car (and vilifying biofuels), but they will shortly become victims of their own excess.
Bide a while, brave hearts…bide a while.
June 11, 2008 at 8:28 pm
‘Filthy’ is a good adjective to describe what is happening to our economy and our environment. Cleaning the two oilmen out of the White House will be a good start, but how about those Senate Republicans who killed a bill that would have taxed Big Oil on its windfall profits and would have denied a big tax break our current government has bestowed on the oil companies. Maybe a few of those senators should go, too.