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Prologue: A Car of One’s Own
- University of Washington Press
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xix Prologue A Car of One’s Own A good transportation system minimizes unnecessary transportation. —Lewis Mumford (1958)1 Like many of my friends, I was ecstatic when the long vigil leading up to my sixteenth birthday ended, and I finally—finally!—got my driver ’s license. Driving opened a new world of freedom and mobility, particularly after my father bought a new car and gave me his old one: a yellow 1977 Toyota long-bed pickup truck. Despite its flashy white racing stripe, my new truck was in sad shape. Parts of the bed were rusting through, torn bits of foam protruded from gaping holes in its vinyl seats, and the passenger-side door, which was crumpled from a previous accident, could only be opened by observing a careful sequence of steps that flummoxed all but a select group of initiates. I was utterly blind to its problems: the truck was a piece of junk, but it was my piece of junk. My truck made everything about high-school life easier. Now that I was finally free of the complicated process of arranging rides home after my various practices and after-school activities, it also became infinitely easier to get to friends’ houses, to soccer games and debate tournaments, and to movies and parties. Best of all, the costs of my newfound mobility were negligible: I had only to make an occasional emergency run to the grocery store for my mother, to give my younger sister a ride when she needed one, and to use my own money to keep the truck’s tank full.2 My previously well-used bicycle went into storage , and for the rest of high school came out only for recreational rides with friends. When I left home for college in the mountains of western Massachusetts , first-year students were barred from owning vehicles—a policy designed to prevent the town’s picturesque streets from becoming a parking lot. Full of regret, I left my truck behind. I still vividly remember the phone call, several months later, when I asked about my truck and got silence in return. After some prodding, my parents xx || Prologue explained that it had been totaled—the victim of a fallen tree during a storm. The insurance company proclaimed it a worthless hunk of metal, but I knew better: its loss meant forfeiting the easy mobility that I had enjoyed through my last years of high school. I spent my remaining college breaks in Atlanta hitching rides with friends or negotiating the use of one of my parents’ cars. Somewhat to my surprise, though, I seldom missed my truck at college . The campus itself was less than one square mile in extent and contained everything a student could need: dormitories, dining halls, classrooms, athletic fields, museums, a variety of shops and restaurants on main street, and a profusion of public gathering spaces that hosted a diverse mix of activities, including lectures, musical and theatrical performances, and whatever else two thousand college students living in an isolated town could dream up. When I moved off campus as a senior, two of my housemates had cars—although most of the time they sat parked outside the house, unused, until one of us needed to run to the nearest grocery store in the next town over. After graduation, I took a job teaching high-school history in 1977 Toyota sr5 long-bed pickup truck (with racing stripe). Ben Piff, courtesy of oldparkedcars.com [3.239.214.173] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 09:12 GMT) Prologue || xxi Switzerland, and like many Americans living in Europe I marveled at how easy it was to get around by foot, bus, and train. Even without a car, it was easy (and affordable, even on my small salary) to spend my free weekends traveling. By contrast, on the occasions when I had to drive a school van, driving seemed downright cumbersome. Narrow streets, low speed limits, what struck me as outrageously high gasoline prices, and exceedingly scarce parking—not to mention the boisterous teenagers I was carting around—undercut much of driving’s appeal. Rather than embodying freedom and mobility, driving in Switzerland seemed more like an expensive, inconvenient, and at times even harrowing chore. Yet almost immediately upon returning to Atlanta for the summer, the familiar yearning for a car of my own came flooding back. Even something as simple as meeting friends during their lunch breaks presented significant obstacles. Infrequent, inconveniently located bus service...