Boomers . . . and How They Got That Way

Epistle 25 – Bein’ Green

My car has 750 miles on it and is sitting in the garage, plotting to at least scare me to death, if not outright kill me. That’s what CNN says, and they ought to know. My car is being recalled because the floor mat or the accelerator or the brake or the computer or all of the above was designed by a mad, serial, automotive engineering loon.

Maybe it’s industrial highjinks by those multinational corporate funsters, but I believe it’s all my fault. I went green. Not just light green–green green. I decided I was not too old to save the planet and spent most of my money on a hybrid. And not just any hybrid.

One that came all the way from Japan with lots of whistles and bells and a spare tire you could also use on your bicycle. The GPS system magically pops up on the dashboard when you start the car (which you can’t hear because it has a big flashlight battery instead of an engine), and will pinpoint to the n^th degree the exact location of my death. So be it. I will be one less greenhouse gas polluting our planet, and for Boomers the gas can be considerable.

Oh, I know there are misguided people who pooh pooh this global warming stuff. I even did it a time or two myself. I just can’t shake this nagging image of dinosaurs heating up the climate in South Dakota with their automobiles. Anyway, I cast aside my doubts and fears and bought my hybrid. Not to say I haven’t carried my share of the ecological load in the past. My house in New Mexico had a swamp cooler instead of an air conditioner and a solar pool heater.

I turn off the lights as soon as my wife turns them on, which especially annoys her when she’s trying to read, and I only water my lawn on odd numbered days. I even recycle my plastic Perrier bottles. What a guy. Let’s forget the fact that I generate all those bottles in the first place.

So now that I am no longer driving a gas-guzzling, smoke belching vehicle, why is my life being threatened by a car that refuses to stop? In the good ol’ days, I didn’t have to worry that my cars wouldn’t stop. Most of them wouldn’t start when I needed them most, but they’d always stop. I was once cursed with a Nash Rambler that should never have been allowed on a public highway, but it always stopped.

I also had a 1959 Ford that occasionally had important parts fall off, but it always stopped. In fact, on the very day I tried to sell it, it stopped for good. And then there was the red Pontiac that I took to the car wash every Saturday because the wax was all that held it together. That car was world class at stopping–anywhere, anytime– until I finally had to put a bullet in it on a Chicago freeway.

Now, after all that, I am cursed with an evil machine bent on my destruction. Not only will it go 500 miles on a gallon of gas, it will keep going . . . and going . . . and going until I run out of road and meet my Maker. It ain’t easy bein’ green.

We Will Win

Filed under: Boomers . . . and How They Got That Way

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