This Car Culture

8.20.06

A friend just left Hanah's "friendship party" to drive her daughter to her riding lesson in a town 45" away, late this sunday afternoon. She is frazzled after a week of shepherding her 8 year old all over the place and will grab some fast food dinner on her way. Another friend and I were talking about how our husbands don't understand this job we have as moms/homemakers, which include maintenance, budgeting, cooking, cleaning, time management, therapy and chauffeuring. Another mom picking up her daughter lamented the 20 pounds she's gained recently and Noah earlier wanted to go to the store and buy more stuff. Sitting on my front porch as M washed his vehicle, it all just hit me: these are symptoms of our car culture.

Because we can, we cart our children all over town to their play-dates and various activities. We spontaneously go to a store to get that one thing we need for a project. We back up our bloated mini-vans to supermarkets and load up with bags and bags of groceries. We commute hours daily to our jobs. And along the way we pick up these pre-fab, fat-filled foods because we have no time to cook. I have no idea how many hours we spend running around doing this and that every day, but especially in a city as spread out as LA, it's just too much.

A recent article in Truthout sighted a study in Australia which showed that our cities are more and more unhealthy as suburbs take people farther from work and we spend more time driving than walking. We are getting fatter and more depressed by this lifestyle that doesn't afford our bodies the basic privilege of walking and we have so much food/TV/computer distraction available that we numb out from the stresses of living with whatever's fast and readily available. Our cars and our bellies get bigger, but what's happening to our souls?

Thinking of our recent stay in Guanajuato where people have to carry their grocery bags up steep hills and every one walks everywhere, I was reminded of New York City, where, also, most people don't have cars. You live in small apartments with small kitchens and refrigerators and there's just no room for all the stuff you can purchase and accumulate in a suburb with a 3,000' ranch home. When I remember my many bachelorette pads over the years, in various cities, I remember having cosy dinner parties and planning outings with rental cars and taking public transportation to cultural events or classes. My life was no less rich for the lack of space or "stuff" to fill it with, or the ready wheels with which to zoom around. One goes out to restaurants or parks or even the streets in summer to socialize when you dont' have enough space to share. You live out in the community more. I remember the great scene in "The General" with Buster Keaton as a spoiled young rich man who gets into his car and drives across the stree to visit his girlfriend. A brilliant moment of visual commentary.

We are isolated in our cars and we drive farther distances to achieve the same ends we used to be able to attain on foot in smaller environs. And we are getting sicker along the way. Plus these machines are eating up our environment, using up resources and driving people nuts and our nations to war. Something's not right with this picture.

Cars are wonderful when they transport one quickly to the emergency room, bring you to your far flung family for re-unions, let you cart your bass across town for a gig. But I feel we're paying a huge price on a daily basis by these huge mobile shopping carts we drive around, constantly filling them with gas and gadjets and groceries and a go-to, gotta-get-there now mania. Not to mention the garages whose interiors accumulate all the stuff you don't have room for, don't really need, and don't know where to put.

What if we were all allowed a donkey to get around? Maybe we could slow down this pace of living, firm our inner thighs and generate enough high quality compost to grow more broccoli on our roads' medians? Okay, not likely. But a girl can dream, can't she?