I’ve just returned from a 2000 mile road trip down south which provided me plenty of time to get a better perspective on our past and our future. We live in a confusing, fast-changing world; there’s no better place to mull it over and slow it down than by driving, at 70 mph–passing mile marker after mile marker–along the desolate stretches of the Ohio turnpike, through the carved mountains of West Virginia, and amid the blue grass of Kentucky and Tennessee.
First things first: GPS. My God. Twenty years ago, this would have been science fiction. How the hell can some little gadget know precisely where I am in this world and when I’m turning and when I’m lost? It’s Big Brother come to life.
Of course, what GPS means is that we no longer need maps. They’re so-o-o 20th century. Just like we don’t need encyclopedias and almanacs anymore (we have Wikipedia and millions of other sites on the web), and we haven’t needed basic mathematical skills for decades, ever since we got our hands on calculators.
So we don’t have to think much anymore. We just need to push buttons.
Second: I’m not much of an FM music lover on the road so I was able every day to sample the fare on AM radio. Let’s see–there was a shouting, drawling preacher (click) a rollicking fun sports talk show (click) a tinny oldies station (click) a bombastic right wing talk show host (click) a football preview show (click) an evangelist (click) more bombast (click) another football show….
Maybe FM soft rock is a more palatable option.
Actually, what really struck me as a sports fan as I was scanning the AM dial is that this nation is football-crazed, far more than ever before, especially in the South. Baseball hardly registers. I just saw a survey which told us that 61 percent of Americans don’t care in the least about the World Series. I believe it. We’re a people that like speed and violence.
Third: Why do we still employ so many toll-takers on bridges and turnpikes? We’ve managed to automate virtually everything else in our lives and yet we still find it necessary to place people in boxes, 8 hours a day at $15 or $20 an hour, so they can take our quarters and dollar bills. Talk about being behind the times.
Fourth: I love smoothies. They’re tasty, they’re healthy, and they cost…what?…about $3?…Well, in Atlanta, I had one at a very cool, very hip restaurant (Usher is known to frequent the place) and I paid $7 dollar for a special, three-ingredient smoothie that tasted like grapefruit juice with foam on top. That was it. Nothin’ special. And then we washed it down with a 2 ounce hit of wheat grass. Ugh. Tasted bad, but of course it’s supposed to make you feel good. I DID feel good, once I had choked it down and got rid of the acrid taste.
And finally: I love cities, I loved Atlanta when I lived there, and I love seeing family and friends but after spending three days on the bustling 12 lane freeways amid the speeding cars and angry motorists, on the surface streets in the slums where despair and danger reside hand-in-hand, and in the choking bumper-to-bumper traffic of downtown, I was thrilled to be out on the Interstate again facing an open road and a big sky. And of course, that also allowed me to again sample the bombastic talk show hosts, the chatty football preview shows, and the hell-and-damnation evangelists.