Almost all of my driving is a solitary operation. It's not the sort of gregarious road trip vibe that most people equate with being out on the open road. I'm driving because I am working and going from place to place is a huge part of the equation, so it's easy to think of it as just one part of the job. And, because I am constantly retreading the same ground, often multiple times in the same week, the scenery is rarely interesting and never really a surprise in and of itself. This kind of driving is a kind of mindless task that seems to be overwhelmed by the vast amounts of time I spend trapped in the car; the chore of sitting in one position, barreling down the interstate and realizing that home or the office is still more than a hundred miles off in the distance.
Lots of that time trapped in the car might be spent making or taking phone calls from colleagues and customers. Keeping busy like this does help to break the monotony of the solitary sojourn, but it's not only less than ideal for perfectly safe driving conditions, it is also like doing two forms of work at the same time. So, while it is a functional way to accomplish things in tandem, it also somewhat exhausting after a while and at the very least mildly hazardous.
In an effort to make the time go faster and seem more enjoyable, there is a lot of radio listening that happens inside my car. Public talk radio and intensely specific discussions about the minutiae of baseball are the preferred auditory distractions in my fairly clean 2008 Saturn Aura. My car has a subscription satellite radio service which broadcasts all manner of niche programming that varies from right wing talk radio to a station that plays nothing but Grateful Dead bootlegs 24/7/365. Certainly this allows for a great deal of choice in between those two widely disparate ends of the spectrum, and yet almost everything in that aural rainbow seems somewhat ridiculous after a while because it is almost all segmented and based on a singular methodological approach.
There are stations I frequent and even thoroughly enjoy for stretches of time. But after 45 minutes, honky-tonk number after honky-tonk number after honky-tonk number can begin to sound almost ridiculous even though I love those songs. Furthermore, every station has a series of "personalitites" that are charged with recapping the last few songs that we just listened to and spinning vaguely anecdotal tales somehow related to the station's milieu. The personalities on Willie's Roadhouse, the honky-tonk station, all seem to be male and performing a half-hearted attempt at a Sam Elliott impression that is simultaneously soothing and irritating. Stations like the Verge and XMU are layered in teams of indie rock bloggers and pundits who all sound like synthetically energetic music nerds in their late thirties and early forties pretending as though they're 23 years old and just got back from a Vampire Weekend in the rustic woods of northern Vermont.
Because these stations on the satellite radio dial often play songs that I like, and in most cases those songs are not readily available on conventional radio - after all when was the last time your local country station played Buck Owens and His Buckaroos "Tiger By The Tail"? - it's really easy to enjoy it and to dance around the presets seeking out exciting and interesting music. After a while though, it just seems like work and the music begins to run together in a stream of mundanity and the enthusiasm it gave me an hour ago transforms into a sense of duty and obligation.
At this point, I might toss in a mix CD, or a podcast burned to disc or settle upon a mildly interesting NPR chat show and sort of tune out the sound of the radio altogether. It's at times like these that I learn a great deal about my neighbors on the road. There are innumerable sociological indicators out there on America's highways and byways.
Firstly, there are the people who you can tell at first glance are the ones who are bitching constantly about the cost of gasoline. These loud-mouthed consumer advocates are easy to spot because they are the ones driving the largest vehicles on the road and are traveling in these caverns on wheels all by themselves. They proliferate the interstate in Hummers, minivans, and overly engorged SUV type things that appear to be pregnant versions of what a car used to look like way back in the days before gas was more expensive than milk.
Next, you have the lonely driver. This driver, even in the smallest of commutes is terribly uncomfortable, and is neurotically petrified that he or she will have to spend even a few scant minutes alone in the car with actual thoughts. To combat this desolate landscape of emptiness the lonely driver makes various and sundry cell phone calls to fight off the loneliness. SIDE NOTE: Jeff Tweedy, if you're reading this, now you know how to fight loneliness for reals. For the lonely driver, leaving a rambling, disjointed voice mail for a guy you went to a movie six weeks ago and haven't seen since really is better than a moment of self reflection. Apparently, even a nagging 17 minute tirade from your haggard, chain smoking mother in-law is a better alternative than a brief interlude of peace and quiet.
Billboards and road signs are so commonplace in my daily transitory routes that after even just a short while they begin to meld in to the landscape. However, there are times when you can't help but be pulled in by their wiley charms. I am especially fascinated by the recent push to market hospital services along the sides of our interstate highway systems. Routinely, I will see gigantic photos of a doctor's head shots with an alphabet soup of qualifications after his or her name and a vapid tag line about a particular caregiver's credentials for open heart surgery or oncology. Am I really supposed to believe that when choosing a surgeon to perform an operation in which they stop your heart for three minutes that the deciding factor is going to be a mug shot on a billboard across the road from KFC? There are also a bevy of billboards to make the public aware of expected ER wait times. What the hell is this there for? Have you ever been trucked into an ambulance at 1:45 in the morning after missing a step and tumbling headlong down the stairway, your broken bones aching in gut-wrenching pain and had the lucidity to mention to the EMT that the wait at St. Lawrence is likely to be more than 30 minutes shorter than the wait at Sparrow Hospital? Of course, you know this because the marketing Gods bestowed this knowledge upon you even though they did not give you the intelligence to watch that first step before it became the doozie that left you with three cracked ribs and clavicle that snapped so badly part of it is now scraping against your ear when you turn your head.
It is even routine to see ads on the highway for funeral homes, hospice care, vasectomies and painless dentistry. I understand that these are businesses trying to drum up customers, but where does marketing stop and where does common sense begin? I cannot imagine choosing funeral services or where to get my baby-making area clipped because I saw a catchy billboard for vasectomies (and for vasectomy reversals - is this really an area where dudes flip-flop a lot?) and noticed they had what appeared to be competitive rates and a very professional marketing campaign.
I know that much of the marketing's approach here is to remind people that they might need these things. After all that is a big part of advertising. It just seems that a reminder of your own mortality might be delivered in a more careful way than a giant 60 foot sign for funeral services. "DON'T FORGET! YOU ARE GOING TO PERISH FROM THIS EARTH - MAYBE EVEN SOON. GET YOUR PLANNING STARTED TODAY!" This doesn't have the same pizzazz as a plea for you to spend $5 on a Taco Bell Big Box or a car lot offering credit to all potential buyers. Funeral services probably shouldn't be an impulse purchase and if you're being swayed by advertising for the location of your memorial service, you likely own some Ginsu knives and that pasta pot thinger I see the troll-like red-headed lady plugging on my television every Saturday morning.
Lots of people like to say lots of things with the back ends of their cars. Of course there are stickers on bumpers for a massive number of interests and viewpoints; political leanings, honor student recognition, travel destinations, rooting interest in particular sports teams, brands of choice and even preferences for a specific breed of dog - although I always feel as if this is some sort of thinly veiled pet racism; "I Heart Schnauzers" reads an awful lot like Aryan dog love and the Schnauzers are the Nazis taking the poor little Terriers and ShitZu's to Doggie Auschwitz.
I have three especially favorite categories of the bumper sticker bon vivant and what the stickers say about the owner of a particular vehicle and our society at large. They are as follows.
1. The Calvin's Bladder Viewpoint Guy
You have seen them everywhere; Calvin of the famed Calvin and Hobbes comic strip is plastered on a sticker. Calvin is standing, often with his head leaned slightly forward and an impish devil grin on his face, always with his hands in crotchal region and usually with a faint hint of carpenter's crack smiling from above the line of Calvin's pants. Emanating from Calvin's zipper area is a stream of liquid, always drawn in a dramatically arcing fashion, and the urine descends to land on an item that the owner of this particular vehicle holds in contempt. Please understand that the possibilities here are endless; political candidates, ex-wives, former girlfriends, football teams, and virtually any brands of trucks, car, auto part, snow machine, motorbike, bicycle and breakfast cereal that has been in production in the last twenty years. The concept here is that this driver can say more about himself or herself by explaining what they hate about the world than by telling you about that which they love. If Calvin is pissing on a Ford logo and they're driving a Chevy truck, it is easy to deduce that the driver loves Chevy trucks and part of the glory of that statement is that you had to know what the driver hated and then noticed the brand of truck the sticker was on and by extension where the allegiance of the driver is allied. It's a very basic form of social mathematics for the mildly retarded.
I do not appreciate the Calvin's Bladder Viewpoint Guys (CBVG) because I like the stickers nor especially the idea of using a cleverly written comic strip character to vulgarly voice one's opinons. I revel in the CBVG because they are not only so shallow and lacking in self-confidence that they need to use hate to voice their love, but they have to do it through the urethra of an ill-tempered six year old. Not only is this a fabulous parable for the state of discourse in this country, but it's also a very helpful way for you to figure out who is the person you are currently sharing the road with that is the most likely to get a DUI this coming Friday night.
2. The Stick Figure Family Lady
I am beginning to wonder if every minivan sold in the United States today comes with a free set of family stick figures. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, this is a phenomenon in which the members of a family are caricatured into stick figures for a series of stickers that get placed almost exclusively in the lower left corner of a minivan's rear window. The sticker not only contains a stick figure approximation of each family member's likeness, but usually includes that family member's name directly above or below their corresponding image. Most of the stickers are arranged in a misogynistic fashion straight out of Eisenhower era attitudes on family life; Dad is first and then Mom and then the children are arranged in order of chronology. Many of these stickers also accommodate room for family pets as well as the humans in the family.
The logic behind this behavior is really sort of lost on me. For one, I cannot imagine why I would want the names of my children plastered on the back of our vehicle. This seems like name tags for pedophiles. It is as if, desperate moms everywhere are shouting, "Hey creepy neighbor guy, or shady dude at the mall parking lot, I just want to make sure you know the name of my kids before you go snatch them and toss them in the back of your white, windowless van". The same woman who won't let her 11 year old kid ride around the block on his bike by himself has no compunction whatever about publicly announcing the names of her entire family on permanent display in her driveway. Furthermore though, this also feels like a cry for help.
Did you ever have one of those friends who had a girlfriend that was a real harpy pain in the ass sort and he was also telling you and his other friends how great she was. He did this, of course, because he was trying to convince himself that she was great, not because he wanted you to be convinced. The Family Stick Figure Sticker is the soccer mom's method of telling you how great her family is.
She's telling you how much she loves and appreciates her borderline alcoholic insurance salesman husband who tells off-color jokes to the neighbors at the annual picnic and hasn't finished a chore without 2.5 hours of incessant nagging since the second week of their marriage.
She's telling you all about her daughter Molly, her oldest child and the daughter with whom she shares a special relationship even though last week Molly confessed that she "went to Planned Parenthood and got on the pill because it was easy and, well, Amanda has been on it for over a year and what else was she supposed to do to make boys like her?" Molly has also been sneaking out at night and is probably smoking pot already, but she is the oldest, so we put her stick figure first in the kids group.
Jason's sticker is slightly shorter than Molly's, even though at 12, he is already as tall as Molly and practically as tall as his mother. Jason is a chronic underachiever, behaves like an insolent middle schooler and has all the social graces of a death row inmate. In short, he's a little prick.
Muffy and Azrielle are the family cats. Their moppy and carefree faces are plastered at the end of the family row. Never mind that Muffy met an untimely end more than three months ago when she slipped out the front door and chased a squirrel across the road only to be squashed by a Chevrolet truck with a Calvin sticker in the cab's back window. It was a great deal like an object lesson in evolutionary stickering. In any case, because the line goes from Jason to Muffy to Azrielle, if we took Muffy's sticker out there would be a gap and that would just be a greater reminder of the loss of our precious kitty.
Don't worry about us. We haven't all had dinner at the same table since Christmas evening, but our family is great and you know that because we took the time to get custom stickers made and place them carefully on the rear window of our Honda Odyssey. Plus, we have a license plate that proclaims "Kids! Just Love 'Em".
For a more in-depth look at the phenomena of stick figure stickers and their place in the current cultural landscape, see some conjectures on the subject at the blog losanjealous.
3. Sour Grapes Political Loser
Political viewpoints are far and away the most popular form of bumper sticker expression. Stickers have been designed to encompass different drivers opposing opinions on topics like prayer in schools, abortion, political candidates, tax reforms, millage proposals, and union affiliations. Hands down my favorite political sticker is the one for the cause or candidate whose election is long since passed. That ragged McCain-Palin sticker on the back of the Buick you saw last week is exactly what I mean. These people have taken to washing the car as infrequently as possible so as to elongate the lifespan of their political message. They didn't vote for Obama, so you cannot blame them for all the bad things happening in the world. How do you know they didn't vote for Obama? Because they went to painstaking lengths to keep a navy blue mini-banner on their vehicle for three full years to remind you who they did vote for. Doesn't that help you get on with your day and to sort out your own political prerogatives? That scrubby quasi-hippie you just passed in his weathered and sputtering '96 VW Golf was expressing his disgust for the second half of the G.W. Bush administration and his inherent distrust in the two-party political system with his Nader '04 sticker, which is, of course, green. How clever.
This sort of rationale to hang on so long to a cause long lost seems not only sad, but offers an insight in to our deeply held political beliefs; we are much more interested in maintaining our own belief in our own opinion about a past action or belief than we are in crafting a way to move forward. We hate our politicians, even the ones we voted for. So, why do we hold on so tightly to the ones who didn't get the chance that we fervently believed they deserved to be hated like the others? Even if, as they say, history teaches us nothing, maybe we can learn at least a little something of ourselves in the way we refuse to let go of something as simple as a sticker for an election loser.
These and many other "lessons" are the sorts of lessons you learn out on the road. Or, at least convince yourself that these trite observations are lessons. Like I said, these drives are almost all solo operations. And, as I slice through the lanes of our lovely mitten I am frequently amazed at the fellow travelers with whom I share the road. I am amazed at their hubris and their willingness to help a fellow stranded driver. I am amazed at their level of interest in and allegiance to specific brands of energy drink while giving non-verbal indications that they've traveled to far off lands and appear to greatly support the National Park system. My road neighbors are a weird lot, and are most likely very much like me: They are wildly contradicted in their behaviors and opinions. They are opinionated and generous. They are snarky while being sentimental. They have lots of smart ass things to say and a bumper on which to say it. I have a bumper too, but my blog has a lot more room on it. I HEART SABAUTEUR!
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