Jim’s 1996 Jaguar which he ran until May 2013
Dear friends and readers,
The variety and vexed nature of the responses I’ve had to my previous blog prompts me to write about an aspect of American culture not much talked about in the vein I’m going to discuss it, but certainly part of the backdrop that allows the DMV to get away with mistreating those who come under their jurisdiction: that’s almost everyone as most US people either drive or have a license to drive (why it is used as a de facto identification card) and that it is used as a visible symbol of status.
US culture and the lack of a decent public transportation system in so many areas fosters a car worshipping stance where many people equate their visible status with the car they have on the streets. Trading your car in every three years for a new one was once upon a time common among the now declining middle class. It is still uncommon to keep a car for many years. I owned my Chevy Cavalier (1993) for nearly 20 years, and when I’d tell people I had such an old car I even experienced open jeers – from students. When I challenged the student on his shameless behavior, he refused to back down. (I should emphasize how rarely I challenged students on this kind of thing.) He insisted I was not supposed to give away I had such an old car. People treated my car like a freak. But it worked and beautifully until the last year or so when it did begin to fall apart. It need not have if it had been better built. I’ve heard again and again people say, What do they work such a hard job for unless they can have this super-duper expensive car with all its gadgets (the cockpit with all its fancy radios, GPS, and other playthings)?
1993 chevy, photo taken in 2012 — I’d give a good deal to have that car in my driveway today
People lease cars and get into absurd debt arrangements so they may be seen in a fancy car with all the gadgets.
Buying a car is not fun even now when there is less dealing and negotiation than there once was because the presence of the Internet makes available to prospective buyers a plethora of choices and prices. I remember horrendous episodes of car buying. Once when Yvette was 6 and Caroline around 11, we had such a hectic absurd time — the Admiral wanted this (to me) ridiculous red convertible at a sale price — that Yvette began to run a temperature from the stress and the next day could not go to school. Caroline couldn’t get over it and took Yvette’s temperature. Sure enough. It was elevated to 103. In later years he learned the trick was to walk out and not care if you got that car. Now one can comparison shop before one shows up to the car store.
Still once there these status necessary toys cost a lot — $40,000 for a new sedan is no joke. And thus the soreness comes in. Someone nicks this beauty of yours; you nick it. Monthly high bills. You have to pay insurance, upkeep, and deal with mechanics and their exorbitant prices. Insurance is high. And then there are frequent accidents — with all the bother and harassment and forms and misery this brings even when you are not declared at fault. When people consider all this instead of identifying with others who share these troubles, a common human impulse is to resent complaints. See what I suffer. Your suffering are nothing in comparison to this.
It reminds me of the way women who are working to lower middle class used to resent women in welfare — instead of seeing themselves in the same boat but a different seat, they loathe the person supposedly getting this wonderful free ride. They don’t think of those who are wealthy paying such small taxes that there are no job programs and consequent unemployment without unions puts everyone in a bad position.
Is being in a car fun? The car you get reflects your ideal self-image or character. A car is liberty, freedom, independence — and I did like the sense of controlling the space in my car so I could say listen to a novel I loved or what music I wanted. But I’m not sure this is not a compensatory enjoyment rather than a satisfaction one seeks in and of itself. But you’ve got to get into it each morning and night, traffic jams, sometimes driving such distances, the drive is a job in itself. And you have to pay large sums each month to park it where you work. This is like the 19th century world where you had to buy food in your employer’s food store and he jacked up the price. The last time I looked it was over $300 a year to park at GMU — you can’t take a class unless you can get there and it’s not near a Metro stop. Buses are few.
The lack of public transportation and the way things are situated so it is difficult to get from one thing to another on foot makes it hard not to have a car at all unless you live in an old style city where things are apart foot distances. The admiral and I did so live in such cities: we had no car and I did not learn to drive until I was 29 and got my first job where public transportation took me an hour and a half and by car I could get to Queens College (CUNY, NYC) inside 25 minutes and there was free ample parking there (1974). When we lived in England, the buses ran continually throughout Yorkshire and trains were cheap. I remember getting from one end of the West Riding to another in no time. I first taught Jim to drive when I was 30 and he 28 — and we did take our first vacation trip into Canada with both of us able to drive.
But even after that when we ran out of money, for a 2 year period we went back to no car at all. We moved to Virginia and quickly saw what an ordeal life was without car and six months later my father gave us one. We moved to Virginia because the Pentagon where he got his first job was in Virginia and there was a bus line from Old Town to the Pentagon.
As with the TV, occasionally we’d have periods where we had no car again. (We were without a working TV on and off all our married lives. Most of the time we did have a TV, but often it didn’t work and then there were periods when we had none at all.) When he first retired altogether (no working for money at all), he decided not to replace or fix the used jaguar he was running (the sums involved were large) and get along using my old Chevy when I wasn’t using it, public transportation or a zip-car. A zip-car is one you rent when you really need a car: you pay so much a month and then a fee for the time rented. They are placed in groups around a given area. But finally he decided it was costing him more to rent cars than to fix his old Jaguar so he fixed it. That was the car he was running just before he died — which we gave to NPR. Both of us kept the cars we had as long as we could after we bought them to get our money’s worth from the price we had paid. Un-American as I say.
I get nagging harassing notices warning me if I don’t pay hundreds for a warranty I’ll lose my investment. $17,000. After a house, the most money people usually spend for a single object is their car.
You don’t have a car. What is wrong with you? It is almost socially unacceptable to admit you don’t drive. What is wrong with you that you don’t drive? nervous? disabled in some way?
The status element, the use of the car for private space activities is a way of turning a necessity into a virtue or half-luxury. But people do worry about the use of the cell phone in the car, listening to novels in cars — all the many things people do in car where they spend so many hours of their lives.
So rightly people fear accidents from these huge machines. The strong movement against alcoholism today is a direct result of fear of drunken drivers. Jim and I were almost killed in one accident where we were pedestrians and woman clearly on some kind of drug for depression pressed on the gas instead of her brake and couldn’t gain self-possession to reverse her feet and stop her car. He rode the bonnet as he said and I didn’t make it in time so my leg bones are permanently damaged.
When I was in first grade a teacher told us a car is like a sleeping lion. Children as you walk home from school and find yourself between two parked cars, you are between two sleeping lions. They weigh a lot, move ultra fast unnaturally, and thus can kill you easily.
This past Sunday Caroline drove Yvette and I to the bank, to a container store for some needed supplies and then Whole Foods for grocery shopping. The parking garage a madhouse it was so crowded – this was an Arlington shopping center where there are sidewalks and no parking lots. It was very stressful and people joked on-lines in the stores. Caroline, as Yvette wrote, “compared the crowded aisles to a jammed highway; the woman in front of us told her to turn our cart’s blinkers on.” We had parked in a garage further off or we’d had have had a half hour wait to get out of the garage too. This was a pre-snow storm social scene.
The following early dawn on Monday — scene photographed from Yvette’s window
And yet the human race is beginning to run out of these fossil fuels and the coal that allows for electricity and gas, and that leads to poisoning what environment we have — fracking — it’s unspeakable to describe what such places become, not to mention the high and higher rates of the rightly dreaded horrific cancers. The unscrupulous making huge sums — or hoping to.
The car (as we all know) a major polluter too. You think people are pro-bicycle, all for protecting the environment. Think again. A friend commented on my previous blog that in Iowa “the penalty for a driver who runs over a bicyclist and kills him/her? $400.” I was probably near killed walking to the HD-opera on Saturday morning; the light turned green and we began to cross a real cross-walk (not many in our area) but the car driver wasn’t expecting walkers and didn’t look and had to stop his machine screeching short. The wife had her hands up in nervous horror. The husband indignant. How dare we be there?
What people are. What is there to be done when you live in an area like mine where except during rush hours on weekdays one bus comes through once an hour? Not just Republicans repeatedly vote against extending public transportation. No high speed railways as in Europe.
So no wonder the DMV gets away with what they do.
Nonetheless nothing more irritating, needling, frustrating to me when people insist at me I’m going to get my driving rights back in later May. Actually it’ll be June before the “decision” is made when I have turned in precisely the same kind of medical reports and forms I turned in twice already. They can give no reason for their assurance when I point out there will be no difference in the documents handed in and the letter I have is as cold, mean, indifferent and ambiguous with boiler-plate as the first. It’s irritating because I long to drive so strongly and don’t believe they have any right to any certainty or even probability. They are dismissing me and my agon as unimportant, trivial because forsooth it will end.
Kerry Kennedy’s case — she went to court and risked a jury trial — shows me I’m right to be worried sick over the loss of my investment (not to omit the cost of car insurance which I’m paying). How to get rid of this car now if I can’t drive it.
Imagine your self a blind person or forced to walk around with blinders (or you’ll go to jail) and then being told you’re going to be allowed see in just a few months (!) when there are no solid grounds to be sure this will be allowed. That’s my situation.
Sylvia
Under the Sign of Sylvia II 
RJ: “I begin each day with a prayer of thanks: ‘Thank heaven I don’t own or need a car'”
I agree with you completely, Ellen. For me, a car has always been a necessary evil – a huge waste of money, expensive, barely paying for itself considering how little I drive, and just something to get me from Point A to Point B. I have been lucky to have good cars and have run them until they would run no longer. I can find better things to spend my money on, and I would never waste my money on a new car. I am not my car. That said, I do give them names and try to talk nicely to them.
Patrick: ” “Is there a turbocharger on that Jag? I’m afraid I am guilty as charged. Strictly speaking I am an atheist. Well…except for car worship, not to mention aeroplanes. Deux ex machina.”
Me: I don’t know what a turbocharger is. The Jag is now with the person NPR sold it to on auction for $500.
I agree about cars being expensive etc, but here in UK many are not so status conscious, and anyway I refuse to be intimidated into car conformity. I have a 7 year old Suzuki and because we have motorbikes too, it has only done about 30,000 miles. Mark’s old Ford Mondeo has done over 200,000 miles. He is determined it will be owned by him until it goes to the scrap yard. The bikes are fun, cheaper to run and are more environmentally friendly. When we have to replace the cars we will buy secondhand. The secondhand market has lots of great cars for little money, I wouldn’t buy.a new one now. I am NOT my vehicle and refuse to think I am. I’d rather spend on concerts, instruments and books. Sorry to rant, but it seems crazy that the richest country in the world is so public ally impoverished that large towns have no public transport or health care. America seems so far from the early days of freedom, democracy and egalitarianism. The fact that Ellen has no recourse to an ombudsman or anyone else to help her with the outright injustice committed by the DMV is an outrage.
Clare
Yes I now regret I bought such an expensive used car. There was one on the lot for $13,000; a pretty cherry color. If I have eventually to live without being able to drive in Virginia, I would have lost less on the car and as a decoration in my yard it’d be pleasanter to look at. What I am doing is each day sitting in the car, running it, putting it in gear and listening to 3 more chapters of War and Peace. I sincerely hope I get my right to drive back (a human civil right I should think that ought to be protected as well as monitored) but have been given no reassurance from the DMV.
As to the lawyer I hired I fear he can’t or won’t help. Nothing is happening with the lawyer and DMV. I have phone twice. It seems my case is being handled by the paralegal and I am told she’s in court on a case and just as soon as it’s over she’ll call me. The estimate was tomorrow. He didn’t charge me for the visit but he is not taking me seriously. I don’t know who to go to and don’t want to go to anyone uselessly — if nothing else it’d be another car fare there and back.
I feel helpless and powerless — which is what I am intended to feel. I shall leave early for AU tomorrow lest I not get to the class on time. I do want to go to better movies and am actually thinking of taking a cab to the Shirlington Theater to see Gloria in the one place it’s left in Northern Virginia. One can get there by bus; it’s two buses but they don’t run all the time and you have to make a time to see a film. My other option is to go to the West End Cinema near Kennedy Center and the film is at 7:20 on Saturday night. It’s a trek and distrupts dinner hour — I could do it.
By some of the replies I got to my previous blog I became aware of the irony that I hate the car worshipping culture, never participated in it, and never drove until I was 29, only did it as a necessary instrument. So I wrote this blog lest I be misunderstood or seen as part of this stupid worship.
A decent, low mileage secondhand car here would cost £2000 or so. Mark is good at fixing problems, if they occur. This week he replaced the brake pads on my Suzuki. It just cost £30 for materials. You are doing well starting your car and running it on the drive, it’ll ensure the oil coats the internals and the fuel doesn’t get stale. Why are you putting it in gear? You could move it a few inches on the drive so that the tyres don’t distort, as long as you don’t go onto the road.
As for the lawyer, he seems not to be a lot of help, since no charges have been incurred, if you don’t hear from the para-legal by the end of the week, maybe you could think about engaging a different lawyer.
Clare
Yes once I get the phone call perhaps I should go on-line and see if what the ads say turn up a better prospect. This time someone in Alexandria, not so far away.
I thought perhaps I should put the car in gear too — lest that system lose its functionality. I will consult someone on how to sell it if the time should come that I find I won’t ever be able to use it. I’ll give the DMV three more go-rounds; if on the third, it’s the same “this is unacceptable,” I’ll give up if no lawyer has wanted to or been able to help me. Jim was not handy so we had always to pay high bills.
Moving from this house is an enormous change and I’m not sure that is wise; I suppose if I could get myself to eventually I could take the price I’d have spent on a car and use it for trips there to take in the culture — or elsewhere. I’d want to live in NYC to be able to make friends too (like myself in culture or background) but I am now older and know no one and it would not be easy as really I know no one there now. Here I do know a few people and how to get round well enough. I would have to give it a lot of thought and have a lot of help from professsionals.
And I am set up beautifully with this computer arrangement.
Mark says it’s not necessary to engage the gear, since it isn’t moving, nothing will really happen. Does nobody in the family have insurance to drive other vehicles, ie yours. If so they could maybe take you shopping or something to run the car. One thing is it will recondition the battery, by running the engine for a while each day.
Let’s hope some lawyer will take the DMV on.
I think you are wise to stay put for the time being. Once you feel more steady emotionally, more robust, you can seriously think what you want to do. Wish you were here for us to take you under our wing.
Clare
Laura has come over for two Sundays in a row to take us to supermarket, bank, &c. I have not asked her to drive the car; she did half-offer — the only thing is it is insured under my name and if a cop did check the license plate he might stop the car thinking I’m driving and maybe would not believe Laura had been driving it all the while. I don’t want trouble from US police.
Yes staying put for now is the calming reassuring thing to do. I’m thinking of taking a cab to see the movie Gloria tomorrow. I’d enjoy it. Very difficult to get there by bus (but doable) and not far by cab so not expensive. I can’t walk because it’s across a multi-lane highway and no way to get round it except by car!
This is an area unfriendly to pedestrians except in my local narrow area just around Old Town — which has an Anglo look because its core was built in the 18th century.
Your immediate area sounds nice. I remember you saying that you a have a local farmers’ market. We go to Totnes, a medieval town 8 miles away for their market. We’ll take you when you come.
In the UK you get a piece on the insurance policy to say you can drive other cars, so Mark drives mine, I can drive his, we can both drive the motorhome, which is insured in my name. You can also get a named driver put on the policy.
I think a trip to the cinema would be a treat for you, something normal.
Clare
Our immediate area is okay and Jim used to say when he would say we won’t move from here that it is within walking distance of shopping, one bank, pharmacy and other necessaries, a bus (however rare during the day) to take us to Metro. He thought about what was going to happen when we grew old together — rather like people in an apartment house in NYC glad they have an elevator or are on the ground floor. Here usually a family of drivers is assumed to allow different family members to drive, but I have written that Izzy can’t as a disabled person — it brought the price down. Laura is not a designated driver of this car but she could legally drive it; it’s only if we were stopped it might be uncomfortable as cops are not exactly friendly in the US much of the time. In fact during my accident I did have a very friendly courteous cop — he really did see how upset I was — and to be blunt and acknowledge US racism, ethnicities, and class ever operating I was clearly white, older, a woman, with originally a decent car … Black people as well as people of color appear to be as a matter of course mistreated in the US.
The racial thing happens here with the police, in areas where minorities occur, although the minorities in Torquay tend to be Poles, Rumanians etc. yes, I realised that Izzy can’t drive, but it maybe an idea that Isobel do so, but if you are uncomfortable with the idea, avoid the additional stress.
Clare
I will start with a story that allows me to laugh at myself now, ala Jane Austen. When I was in Germany two years ago, traveling by myself, I was panicked about how I would get from the small town of Thale to an even smaller one in the Harz mountains. (I was traveling by train.) Could I rent a car? Could I hire a driver? I got there and found a shuttle bus travelled to and from Thale something like eight times a day–and was free to me because I was staying at a local inn! It was great. I laugh at myself now because I KNEW public transportation is good in Europe and yet have been so steeped in American culture (especially living in the midwest for 5 1/2 years now) that I simply couldn’t believe such transportation could be provided. I treated it as if it were manna from heaven! Am I dreaming? Can this be real? I kept wondering that. When will I wake from this dream?
I contrast that with Ohio, where public transportation is largely non-existent, and certainly is non-existent between towns (there may some little bit of public transport in big cities). With the (almost) demise of Greyhound (looted by profiteers who have closed most of the routes and let the buses go to hell), you simply cannot survive here, as in most places in the US, without a car. A friend, whose wife is in a long-term care hospital in Columbus, two hours away, suffering from a stroke and waiting for a “bed” to open up closer, simply can’t get to her unless someone drives him, as he as medical conditions of his own that disallow long drives. There simply is no transportation, except cars, between our small towns strung along 70 and the state capitol. It’s outrageous. How much would it cost to run a shuttle bus like the one in the Harz mountains? How many seniors are simply housebound?
What is even worse is the fiction that a car is optional luxury, a fantasy which allows states to high-handedly revoke licenses on a whim and charge heavy fees for the privilege of owning that “luxury” item of an auto–as if most of us had a choice. Even drunk driving laws, though I support them, can be punitive: a very low level of blood alcohol can in many states temporarily cost a person a license–or a lot of money and heartache.
I would love to live in a country where owning a car truly was a choice, not a necessity. Ellen, I feel for you. In a just world, the government would be required to provide free transportation to citizens, who for “health reasons” were not allowed to drive.
Diane is right. The German transport system is exemplary. If you arrive at a rail station, outside will be rows of buses waiting to go to smaller towns and villages. They are all scheduled to meet the trains. Additionally, mainly towns have modern trams and/or underground railways. Many other European countries follow the Grrman example. I don’t think there is a European country that follows the US model. In the UK one is issued with a bus card at 60, from when bus travel is free.
Clare
You are controlled — well so was I. I was nowhere as seething and desperate as I feel. I don’t know why US people stand for this but that they are part of this car worship — which is why I brought it up and one person did contribute a brief statement he is part of this. Divide and conquer: each state has legislatures able to block public transportation at the behest of lobbyists. Corporations control the media — what is said, thought and therefore thinkable by most people. No sense we are in a social world and in it together, need one another, should help one another — punish, punish, punish is the solution, charge, charge, charge..
Another friends: I read Clare’s response too-everyone gets a free bus pass at 60 in England–we could easily afford that in this country
Me: We could easily afford so much. Programs for jobs. Instead of engineering a coup and installing neocons in Ukraine and then threatening war, we could fix our railways, multiply them, buses …
It’s no wonder so many are unhappy and shoot one another to death: they are led to have the most unreal expectations and told they are living in a happy free democracy. Instead it’s a prison ridden state. Laws spreading declaring it illegal (put you in jail) to film the cruelty inflicted on animals people eat — animals fed with chemically treated products.
How did t”the Land of the Free” come to this! The Ukraine is another tinderbox that the US Government is poking. What with them and Putin in power, we may be heading for another Cold War, at least. As for the things that need fixing in the US, of course you could afford to fix the buses, healthcare etc, it just needs political will and a society that puts two fingers up to the real ruling powers, the multinational corporations.
Clare
In the great chasm of grief I am living in I could shut up and say nothing I suppose. Perhaps I’d have more dignity that way. I know (as I’ve said) personally what this removal from me of my power to move freely so I can say take a job, get to a psychologist, bank, drive my daughter is as much a symbol as anything. It writ large to me what I am without Jim and how without him I have failed and continue to fail to manage in the way I could when he was here. That’s the source of the searing pain. Maybe he would have recognized the second letter meant my license was still suspended until I got a phone and then I never would have bought a car, would not today be paying for car insurance. He would have been there to spell me and I would not have blanked out.
Indeed DC has good public transportation in comparison with most areas of the US and NYC even better. I said that in a previous blog. That I expect to drive to my door is a slur, ignores all I have said. The question is one of justice, of transparency (without which there can be no justice), of the way I have treated by the DMV in and of itself. I am astonished at this disregard.
Yes Amtrak is underfunded and how expensive, enormously time-consuming and frustrating it is to travel around the US unless you can drive the distance. A friend asked me to visit him in northern Georgia and I discovered to do it I had to endure anywhere from 8 to 12 hours because of the hub system and the price would be over $300, prohibitive, and this is using airplanes. Trains and buses yet worse. I cannot visit him — driving itself is difficult too. This is quite deliberate: isolate and exclude is the way space is organized in the US. The value of your comment is to point to larger areas where in Europe and other places around the world travel is set up with convenience, inexpensively as opposed to the US.
That the US transportation system resembles its health care system is no coincidence: they are the result of the same deeply reactionary group of people setting up and controlling the gov’t laws of the US.
When I said I got vexed responses from numerous people, most of the hostile ones were precisely from people who don’t drive and suffer from the lack of public transportation in many ways. The refrain is they do it (they endure it), why should I complain? On the analogy of working class women resenting the women yet worse off than them but near enough to kick. I am policed and bullied by a threat of jail after having produced documents which prove conclusively it’s safe for me to drive. I can’t move easily to DC — I don’t have the kind of resources — my house is not one I can get a lot of money from to buy an reasonable sized apartment with. I am not prepared nor do I have a husband to help me move to those urban areas where public transportation is okay. They are often expensive — that’s why so many poorer American live out in the spokes of these systems.
It seems to me that the problem is not the car itself, but the lack of regard for the environment at a Government level, that forces people to use the car because of lack of investment in public transport. Even in Europe and the UK many people in rural areas are forced to drive to work and to shop. Local shops close in favour of supermarkets and people have to drive to the out of town sites. There is little public transport to such out of town complexes. Therefore, people are forced into car use. This is in Europe where there are trains and buses in many areas. It seems that the US is in a worse position as far as transport is concerned. Many people here who are forced to run cars resent it., but have no alternative. Bicycle use is growing here, but again many rural and small towns have narrow, dangerous roads, which are unsuitable for cycling. My town is built in a very hilly region with narrow roads, not ideal for cyclists. Little investment is put into cycle lanes.
Clare
I compare the Britain I lived in in 1968-71 and the one I saw in the later 1990s and 2000s when Jim and I came frequently. When I lived in the UK I could get almost anywhere and with ease: buses criss-crossed, they came frequently and everything was attached to an inexpensive frequent train. Shopping was done in local nearby places, and although there were supermarkets, they were located on streets alongside other shops. There were not as many of them: there were still butchers and speciality shops for food (diary shops).
Fast forward to the later 1990s: we discovered the huge supermarket had come in, complete with parking lot. To shop when we stayed in Somerset we needed a car. There was no nearby set of shops. The same held true in Devonshire where we rented a gatehouse. This was true in the area around Hampton Court Palace where we rented a division of the gardener’s house –a Landmark Trust place offered for tourists and vacationers.
Trains were now expensive and nowhere as frequent. Far far less buses. My British friends who can’t drive have a devil of a time getting to work — it can take the 2 hours it’s going to take me today to get to AU instead of the half hour it used to take by bus. Of course if you have a car in Britain the trip will be half an hour — but I notice that high costs of parking have come in too. The one partial bright spot of my going to AU in this freezing cold for 2 hours each way is that I don’t have to park. Parking is hellish around AU if you are not regular full-time faculty. When I taught at AU between 1987 and 1992 I used to call parking like an Indian caste system. If you were tenured with a high office you had the right to spaces near by your office; just tenured farther off; contingent your salary was garnished but you could buy full time parking in a garage. As an adjunct I could get parking only in certain areas in the garage and in a parking lot outside the campus (a brief walk). Sometimes the pay was in reverse so the privileged paid less than the full-time contingent. If I didn’t want to park in the garage I could and did get a sticker which allowed me t park in the parking lot but only for 3 hours. After that I was ticketed.
As an OLLI person I can park in the lot but only for 2 hours and I have to pay a high fee for each hour. I can park by the church I teach in but only for 2 and 1/2 hours — just enough to teach. Beyond that I’m left to street-park (hell). And yet coming by public transportation to AU even for the people who live nearby is rare. US people love their cars and will spend time finding parking, paying for it before they take public transportation. This when the shuttle bus from the Metro runs every 15 minutes during term time when the college is in session. It won’t take you to the library which is outside its circle — libraries have never been popular. It amuses me — in a Trollopian spirit that to get to the library is a walk in a high wind — very windy central space on campus.
I assume as the Health Services are cut, the disabled people are let to starve or live with relatives, as the tax system becomes regressive, social services are cut everywhere — bus service cut, prices put up for trains, so the people making, selling cars have ruled in parliament and cut public transportation within Britain wherever they can and shopping and other needed things changed their ways accordingly. If a rotting corpse could, Trollope would be turning over in his grave at what has been done to the postal service in the UK.
I do see that most British people still buy smaller cars and do not regard them as worshipful status symbols. The attitude seems still to be mostly utilitarian — except among the very wealthy among whom super-expensive vehicles are bought. Not so at all in the US. The poorer you are among some populations, especially males who want to prove their maleness, the more “sexy” and “aggressive” and expensive looking the chosen car is. Jim fell for wanting to appear British in his comfortable “gentlemanly” Jaguar. They were terrible in the snow, expensive to fix; the one thing I could say of his choice is at least he always bought older used ones.
By-the-bye in the US owning the space for a parking lot (a license to print money) is a patronage plum. Perhaps this is true in the UK too?
What Ellen says about UK is true, yet towns do still have buses, particularly in retirement areas where the companies can make profit from the travelling elderly and school children. Therefore, towns like Plymouth , Exeter and Torquay all still have good bus services. On every 10 to 15 mins opposite my house. The main problem is the rural villages and small towns.
It is true that a only the very wealthy here see there car as a status symbol, although 4 x 4s and pickups are filtering down from the rich to the poor, but the majority run smallish cars. There are niche markets for farmers etc, who need bigger vehicles and 4×4 drive.
I was shocked at the air quality which Ellen talks of. We have a few bad towns, but not in the South West, which is largely rural. These things are getting worse, but nowhere as bad as Ellen describes. There are pockets of hope too, for instance rivers are now cleaner than 20 years ago.
Clare
I should have begun with: in DC where I live in summer we have continual “unhealthful” air alerts. Red means very bad and when the temperature reaches super-hot (over middle 90s fahrenheit) the buses are for free. Cool rooms are opened around the city for people without air-conditioning, which often includes older people who are afraid to keep their windows open lest someone come in and steal from them. Orange is not so bad and equally frequent. The air feels oppressive and itchy near gas stations.
In talking with Yvette tonight we realized that Chris Christie is no longer a contender for the Republican nomination for president. Why? he caused a monumental traffic jam deliberately, ruthlessly, out of spite. Is there anything more one can say to show how sore the topic of car worshipping is.
I read your blog yesterday and meditated on it for the rest of the day. It brought to mind lots of instances from the past and one was how – talking about material things to my son – I commented how one could not take outward appearances as as a sign of financial status [or of course more importantly happiness] Looking down a road and seeing a big house with an expensive new car on the driveway might mean an affluent family income or it might mean a family with a massive mortgage which they are struggling to service each month and a car which goes with the job that the employee has to work all hours to keep. The family in the smaller house with an old car could have far more disposable income and time for one and another to make memories. In life, one only impresses ‘people like us’ – i.e. my purchase of, say, the latest fashion shoes will only impress someone who would like the same shoes [I pick shoes as an example because I can’t wear the current fashion shoes so not many people will envy my choice of flat, *comfortable* types!]
I haven’t driven for four years due to health problems and although I miss the freedom very much I am lucky that at the moment here in the UK, at my age I get a free bus pass and the nearest bus stop is only yards from my house if Other Half isn’t around to deliver and collect me from places. But I also face the ‘non-person’ thing of not driving, after 30 years of hopping into my own car and beetling off to go wherever I wanted. However online shopping is a boon and the money saved by not having to tax, insure and run my own car pays for a taxi if a really urgent situation arises.
As my health situation also means I cannot easily go out on my own I am a bit curtailed now compared to just a few years ago but again thanks to the cyber community I can have discussions like this and keep up with world events and even ‘do’ my political activism sometimes without even getting dressed! ~Which reminds me……..
Thank you, Gwn, for this sensible response. I now have a second lawyer to visit: the lawyer who did our will called and I told him what happened and he’s set up an appt with someone in his office: this time I was told the reason there is no due process (a right to challenge) is there is no right to drive; it’s literally a “privilege” in law. In some moods I tell myself I’ll try 3 times more (put in the documents 3 times) and if this all powerful DMV will not renew my license, somehow sell this car, stop paying insurance (at long last), and save a ton of money (if I can ignore what I’ll probably lose on the car) and then what? it’s hard to move for me but at least consider it. The only place where it seems to me physical culture is so worth it is NYC (or London — out of the question). I never loved driving; it was a necessity and going into unfamiliar places, driving long distances often beyond me. It is a bad loss of freedom and time — and contacts as already I was invited to a meeting of people somewhere in Virginia and cannot get there but by car or taking some convoluted route for hours with much walking (probably where there are no sidewalks). I have no Other Half to chauffeur me.
On the material prestige element, I can only concur: Jim and I never bought any fancy furniture sets or remodeled the house and our cars were inexpensive and used until they died — leaving us without debt and with money to travel, go out to plays, buy books, eat what we wanted … The craziest thing to me in the US is the leased fancy car — where people end up in huge debt so as to look as if they are rich and have around the the accoutrements of toy luxuries. Yet — and this was the point of my blog too — how sore they are, how easily their anger and resentments are aroused as they “dig” in further into debt — for on top of these things in the US (and now the UK) are the loans to send the kids to college so they too can join this ceaseless treadmill of work to pay the payments. Don’t dare question anything and most of all (I now realize) people who chose or are forced not to drive. On my other blog I’ve started writing about Breaking Bad — I didn’t say but the characters there are measured by the cars they run. The hero, cancerous and desperate for money, has an old plain vehicle.
Gwyn: “Yes the race for ‘material superiority’ makes me dispair. At the moment, even though Other Half is retired we still have a company car, for which he pays a modest ‘lease fee’ which covers all bills. I say ‘at the moment’ as it is a grace & favour type thing which could be taken away at the drop of a hat. But it is amazing the sorts of comments we get about always having a smart new car, and yet when we point out that it is not ours therefore we don’t need it as a sign of ‘status’ others seem to find this really odd. We appreciate it greatly of course as at the moment it is one less worry on our finances and time but as I said before, it doesn’t ‘impress’ us so it surprises us that others are impressed. I worked in the past because I needed the money for what I considered essentials – uni fees for Youngest Daughter – yet one woman in one of my workplaces worked – as it seemed – to remodel her house constantly. She had three new kitchens alone over the time I knew her and each time disposed of perfectly good items like kettles and toasters, buying new to ‘match’ the latest lay out. But of course that was her choice and her reason for working so really I cannot criticise her. In the days when Eldest Daughter was at uni, Other Half did not have a company car and we had not long bought a new car. I couldn’t work as we had two younger children. We quickly realised we could not keep the car and help our daughter out with uni fees so he sold the car, went back to an old one and used the balance so that she left uni without any debts. His colleagues thought he was mad but that was our decision and it made us happy and we did not need approbation from our peers. I just wish our society admired individualism rather than competition for ‘perfection’ – emotionally, physically and materially.”
I’m glad you made these comments Gwyn. I was thinking of deleting the blog as it seemed to vex people (off-blog), but you have seen its central thrust: yes I wrote about the lack of public transportation but it’s this car worship that allows for it or somehow grows out of it when the corporate state cuts down what is publicly available. The worst aspects of the culture then emerge. I do remember the company car when I worked in England. The chief engineer at John Waddington and chief salesmen both had the latest model cars and the ability to show off in them was really seen as adequate compensation (in lieu of money) for what they went through over a given day’s hard efforts. Remodeling is another mode of spending money — sometimes I am led to use the word obscene when I see a perfectly good house flattened and some huge monstrosity take its place or someone buys a good house and proceeds to remodel what does not at all need remodeling. I do think of the thousands and thousands of people on this planet who haven’t got a decent place to live in, women in Africa who haven’t got running water. And all these things pollute our environment further, make us literally sicker.
Really materialism is a monkey on your back. Car worship is just part of that. The trouble with materialism that once infected one needs the next thing, get a nice car, then you want the next “toy” a boat or something. The latest new thing is never enjoyed, because now you are planning on the next thing. It’s not the things, it’s the having to have them for status and self- worth. It takes all pleasure out of things. My car is 7 years old and my favourite motorcycle is 10 years old, and I still enjoy them. If I could no longer afford them, that would be fine too, as there are alternatives. I think what upsets you, Ellen, is the injustice and sheer arbitrary treatment you have received at the hands of the DMV. It’s obvious you are not a car worshiper, just put in position where your freedom is damaged by the stupidity of a faceless official and the lack of alternative transport provision.
Clare
You’re spot on, Clare. It makes me more helpless, more powerless because I literally can’t get some places without paying a whopping (prohibitive) sum for cabs. The lawyer I hoped something from does not come to the phone, so now I will speak to a second (through the lawyer who did our will I have an appt with someone else). But I’m thinking maybe this is hopeless. One mistake and this organization has the right to punish and deprive the person for life? At any rate I’ll try three more times — send in three more sets of documents. If by that time they have not returned my right (I refuse to call it a privilege) to drive I’ll have the problem of selling the car. I will lose a lot of money probably. But it is a sort of headache to take care of, and I’ll drop the insurance I’m actually paying for. The kick is one of the acts I thought I had done right — to buy a car — boomerangs on me. As to moving, I’m not ready for it and I love the comfort and safety of my house but it is outside regular public transportation and much of Virginia where I live contains many places where there is no decent public transportation to speak of.
It’s bad enough my husband dies in an agony after being mistreated for weeks and weeks; now I am deprived of mobility. I cited the Kennedy case because it brings home to me that what real privilege is. at the same time as showing that in her case she was treated as a criminal and really did have to hire super-expensive famous lawyers to keep her right to drive.
P.S. I did manage to reach the first lawyer’s secretary and whether she was again leading me on or not I’m told they working on getting me a restricted right to drive — so some of the time and will call me Monday. Meanwhile I will return to my books, Clare, my writing, my friends on line and now my teaching.
Well at least they are working for you. My copies of “Scott’s Shadow” by Ian Duncan and “Portrait of a Novel” have arrived, so I’m well pleased. I’m glad you aren’t ready for a move. I really think you have had enough change pro tem. Maybe later, but I think once you get your licence back, things will get better. You didn’t hurt anyone or do much damage, I really think you’d not even have heard from the police here. I seems incredible that you lose your right to drive over this. “Privilege” my foot, if there’s no alternative, it’s a necessity. Mark says in Canada you’d need to drive fast into a school bus to get such treatment. He’s incensed at the punishment handed out to you.
Clare
And to show I can be cheered by the immediate: I saw the Chilean film, Gloria, which I liked — the audience was made up of middle-aged women. I can pay for a Uber cab to this one movie-house (across a highway and in another district for buses) which is by car 6 minutes away and so the fare is lowish. And at the movie-house they will call a cab for you (as they have a parking problem). So maybe next week I’ll try another good movie I’ve noticed that I would enjoy, The Lunchbox (set in Bombay) with Irrfan Khan, Nimrat Kaur, Nawazuddin Siddiqui.
I did well on Thursday with my students too and will write a blog about it tonight or tomorrow.
You and Mark are a wonderful support system.
That’s good. Having something to look forward to and hopefully enjoy, is a healthy sign. Great to that the teaching went well. I’ll look forward to hearing about it. We’re off to Cornwall for the day tomorrow, to visit friends. Sunday we go to Plymouth for a walk and then dinner with friends. We are supposed to have spring weather for the weekend. Boscastle tomorrow should be nice. It’s an hour and half each way so I’ll take a book and my kindle, so I can read in the dark on the way home.
Clare
Sounds lovely. If Jim were alive, this weekend we probably would have gone to a concert at Wolf Trap; last week seen the new Moby Dick opera; tomorrow go for a long walk as it’s supposed to be spring-like.
I have loved Moby Dick since I read it at 16, in a caravan in Cornwall. It was my first lone holiday. I stayed on the north coast in a caravan owned by my uncle. I got there on a little scooter, travelling light,except for books. I read the hunt scene in a thunderstorm late at night. Wonderful lightning strikes lighting up the sky and thunder rolling across the cliffs. I’ll never forget that midnight read.
We’re off to Cornwall now and the sun is shining on the spring flowers. Enjoy your walk.
The recent comparable book and experience I can think,Clare, of is James’s Golden Bowl. Once I was traveling to Italy all alone, and I picked up a copy of The Golden Bowl in a W.H Smith shop (grey Penguin — remember those shops and those kinds of literary inexpensive beautiful books) and was just gripped – by the sexual understory adn then loved the 1972 BBC mini-series with Cyril Cusack as narrator..
Maybe it would be a candidate for our read of a Novel by James or would you prefer one that you haven’t read?
Yes, Penguins are collectible and still available, but are now American owned.
Clare