PO-BOY VIEWS

By Phil LaMancusa

Tail Lights or Car Tales

“And if you give me weed, whites, and wine and show me a sign, I’ll be willin’ to be movin’.”

The Duchess is a ’97 Lincoln Towncar with 300,000 miles on her. The motor is a mean mutha-fawya monster, heard before seen, and should another of those punk, chump, flat-assed, cheap paper-mâché and styrofoam runabouts cut me off again, I’m sure she’ll wanna eat it for lunch. She’s just that kinda car.

Growing up (yep, another growing up story), I knew older guys that talked about the Tin Lizzie (Model T). You know, the one that Henry designed the assembly line to manufacture one per household of? I’ve seen ‘em, and I was impressed. They sold for $260.00—equal to 18 months salary one hundred years ago. You could have it in any color you wanted as long as you wanted black. Times have changed.

America went car crazy. The Lizzie had four cylinders, and, by 1930, Cadillac was making a 16 cylinder V engine (how many cylinders does your car have? You don’t know do you?). Packard, Studebaker, Duisenberg, Tucker, Kaiser, Hudson, Nash, Checker, Mercury, and a dozen other land yacht companies vied for consumer attention in the 30s, 40s, and 50s. I had a 1957 Ford Fairlane whose speedometer went up to 130 mph, and, believe me, it did go that fast.

We were incensed with speed, power, and style, even into the early 70s. We had cars with fins and chrome and color— names like Thunderbird, Continental, Cougar, Skylark, Malibu, Bel-Air, Ranchero, Continental, Road Master, Impala, Mustang (the older one, not that newer shadow of its former Mustang), Camaro, El Camino, and Corvette. We had a European invasion with the Volkswagen, Jaguar, Porsche, Alfa Romero, Ferrari, and Volvo hitting the streets with a veritable parade of identity and elan. We could tell by front ends and tail lights, the years and models. We car spotted Aston Martins, Rolls Royce, Fiat Spiders, Mercedes, and BMWs. We had songs about them, and we even drag raced with Maybelline and Nadine on Dead Man’s Curve. I once knew a woman with a figure like a Karmann Ghia, and then, and then it all went to shite.

We were still pretty cool rounding the corner and going in to the early eighties with a few Hondas, Toyotas, and Mazda slipping into our main streams. Then the floodgates opened and cost effectively made and sold, mass-produced, fuel-efficient, easier to park, hatched backed, and certainly less distinctive buckets were everywhere.

In 2009, the government instituted the Cash For Clunkers campaign, and everyone greedily sent their older, able to be easily repaired, been in the family boaters to the wrecking yard and bought the imports that grandpa would have thrown rocks at. Now, when I go down the road, I’m noticed because The Duchess is so much bigger, louder, and harkens back to a time of American individuality. Where were you twenty-six years ago?

The cheaper cars like the Cilantro and others (with fiberglass and styrofoam bumpers) that sell for dirt and are made overseas with souped up differentials that make them feel like race cars, and yahoos who can’t drive on a good day are racing these death traps like they’re Mario Fricken’ Andretti. No turn signals, running yellows and red lights. I don’t know whether they’re morons or car thieves the way they drive. And thus, the proliferation of car wreck lawyers who will get you hundreds of thousands when, not if, you get injured in what used to be called a fender bender and is now a “call Morris and then get me an ambulance” situation.

And what’s with the post sixty year-old male midlife crisis giant pick-up trucks with trailer hitches that never are seen towing anything—with a metal tool box in the bed? You know that toolbox is probably empty. Who do they think they’re kidding? Geezer Macho is so, so sad.

Now has come the electric and hybrid movement, which may get off the ground in another forty years, if we’re lucky. Don’t get me wrong, I believe that it’s more than a good idea and about time as well; however, those little sweethearts sell for more than twice the price of an Altima and what’s a poor schmuck to do to get one—sell the farm (the wife and the dog)? I wouldn’t mind if the new electric alternative cars were built to last 20 or 30 years, but they’re not. Replacing a battery can set you back 15 large, charging that battery costs money, and if you lose your charge, the car stops and can only be pushed if it has a neutral gear (or gets towed to a charging station). These are all things that will be corrected possibly in your lifetime.

Face it, the petro-chemical fat cats are not going to let fossil fuels go the way of the fossils that created them. It’s right and noble to cut down on your carbon footprint, but be aware that if gas is the monkey on our back, the gorilla in the room is plastic. It takes one gallon of gasoline to make 2 ½ pounds of plastic, not counting the resources it takes to move that plastic from point of origin to point of use (livescience.com) and since it is cheaper to make plastic than to recycle it (Mass Institute of Tech.)

An estimated 9 million tons of plastic enter the oceans each year (maritimeaquarium.org). How much do we collectively use, waste and throw away? The electric car is made from plastic, your recycle bin, toothbrush, this computer, and we even use gasoline to send plastic waste to the landfill.

The Duchess is made of steel. We try to limit our carbon imprint, but we’re confronted by the gorilla everywhere we look. We’re sad. We don’t like the way that times have changed.