We have an old, red Toyota Camery that my parents gave me to drive when I went to college. It's a 1990, and I vaguely remember my Mom going to buy it when I was four, so it's not quite older than me, but it's a close call. One of the wheel wells is all but rusted away from many years of exposure to the salty winter roads of central Illinois, augmented by the fact that I once steered it into the side of our garage as I was trying to back out into the driveway when I was sixteen and ruined the paint job; my one traffic collision to date. It has three clear glass side windows and one tinted one on the rear passenger side because while driving from New Jersey to Texas after graduation I got a flat on I-35 and, while going around to open the trunk, I realized I'd locked my keys inside the car along with my wallet and cell phone. A rock through the window quickly solved my entry problem, but apparently Toyota doesn't make clear windows for this particular model anymore. The air-conditioner still works, a miracle as it seems the AC is usually the first thing to go in old cars, but only for about thirty minutes at a time. After that, you have to give it a ten to fifteen minute break before trying to switch it back on. For long drives through the Texas desert in summer, this necessitates cranking up the AC to full blast and making the car as unbearably freezing as possible in order to have enough residual coolness to coast through the ten minutes of AClessness. The wiring for the ceiling light came loose a long time ago and one can hear it sliding around in the roof when you take a corner too quickly. And once, when I was driving to college with my friend, the engine overheated just outside of Texarkana because of a coolant leak and we refilled the coolant tank with water taken from the tap of a church retreat and then later emptied some out with a turkey baster to make room for some anti-freeze we'd purchased at Wal-Mart. I believe the turkey baster is still in the trunk. Needless to say, I love this car, and I think my parents do too, although they vehemently deny it. They were supposed to have sold it as soon as I left for Peace Corps, but there it was, still sitting in the driveway, more than a year later. According to my Dad the battery had died, so we took it into the shop to get it replaced so that we could have an extra car while I was in Austin. The trip to the shop revealed some pending problems with the transmission, but the mechanic gave it a couple months before they became critical. This was pretty perfect as I was only going to be in town for about six weeks.
Although the various skill involved with driving returned to me fairly quickly, parking remained something of an issue. I think the parking space gives an interesting insight into US life; parallel white lines that define a culture. The automobile, of course, is a widely recognized American icon, as well it should be. These modern marvels represent a culmination of over a century and a half of engineering work. Chemistry, mechanics, and electronics all come together to form a machine so intricately complicated that nowadays they can only be assembled by other machines. They operate unfailingly for decades and can be repaired by someone with only minimal technical training, and yet we've so streamlined their production that they are affordable to just about everyone and they're so easy to use that we trust them to the hands of even the most dimwitted of sixteen year olds. What is perhaps even more remarkable about these ten foot by five foot iron boxes is that, in some places, there are now so many of the machines that it has become difficult to find places to put them. Hence, the parking space. That these linear dabs of paint mean anything at all to us is in itself kind of strange. I mean, someone paints some lines on some cement and we all, without a second thought, organize our parked cars neatly between them. No one's ever like: “you know, I think I'll park ON the lines today.” Or put up a sign that says “No Parking” and we're all like “OK, no problem, I'll just drive around for another five minutes looking for another spot.” I mean, think about the level of organization that's required to achieve such a system. And how we frown upon those that do not follow the oh-so-holy parking code. I see a truck taking up two spaces outside of a Target and I'm filled with righteous indignation. Someone's back wheel is lying slightly over the line and I'm made angrier than a four-year-old whose brother is encroaching on his side of the car seat.
Parking has even become something of a competition. We take pride in our parking abilities. People brag about how close they manage to park their vehicles outside of Bed, Bath & Beyond. “Dude, you're not going to believe this. That parking lot was totally packed but I got myself a space right in front of the store. I'm talking right by the door!” Right by the door, huh? No shit. We prowl the massive concrete car-scapes outside of Best Buy or Wal-Mart in search of the holy grail: the spot that's just that much closer to the store entrance. We know it's out there somewhere and we will not rest until we've found it. And why? To shave a few tens of yards off of our foot journey? Perhaps. Perhaps we Americans are just so fat and lazy that we can no longer bear to walk the extra distance. While this explanation may appeal to those critical of our automobile-based lifestyle, I think there is more at stake here. In a world where we can no longer prove ourselves by going toe-to-toe with wild bears equipped only with wooden spears, we've found new outlets for our aggression. Backing down and accepting one of those god-forsaken back row spaces does not only increase our walking distance, it's also an admission of inadequacy. Consider: you see someone loading their purchases into the trunk. They've got a coveted third-row parking spot. Suddenly, the area fills with cars, hovering like buzzards over a fresh kill. Traffic backs up in the aisle, everyone watching for the outcome. On one side of the soon-to-be-opening space is a Lexus SUV, on the other is a Ford Expedition. The drivers stare each other down through tinted windows. They're both respectable adults. They probably have kids, perhaps even in the car with them. If they were to meet each other inside of the store whose lot they're circling, they'd no doubt be perfectly cordial and polite. But not here. Here, on this cement battleground, nothing is scared. Here, clothed in their armor of steel and rubber, two apes bare their teeth at each other. It's a contest for dominance of the oldest variety. The winner will have secured his position as leader, while the loser will be forced to go lick his wounds in the rear of the tarmac. And what about those of us that choose to frown upon such practice? I'm a back-of-the-lot kind of guy myself, and I like to think of myself as wiser for abstaining from such parking antics, but perhaps I'm kidding myself. Maybe my unwillingness to participate forever dooms me to some lesser rank of society. In our modern concrete savannah, it's hard to say.
I ended up getting plenty of parking practice, however, as with both my parents and my brother gone during the day to work and school, I was left with a lot of time to explore Austin. The first stop, and perhaps the most frequented during my vacation, was the grocery store. Texas is blessed with a large grocery store chain called H.E.B, which I've been going to with my family ever since I was a little kid and we'd fly to San Antonio for Christmas and browse the isles of said establishment for what seemed like hours, seeking various ingredients for Christmas dinner. No one really seems to know what H.E.B stands for, but a recent ad campaign associates it with the slogan “Here Everything's Better,” an assertion that I can't really argue with. H.E.B has everything a Texas family could ask for: tortillas made in-house, lots of Mexican food, a pretty good beer aisle, and it's open 24 hours. We've been over this before, I know, but I maintain that the grocery store is the single greatest achievement of the western world. It's a wonder, it really is. You approach this mecca of comestibles and the door miraculously slides open for you as you near. You're greeted by a blast of air conditioning or heat, depending on the time year, and (at least in my H.E.B) you're deposited in the produce section. I think we tend to forget this, but most fruits and vegetables have seasons. Take pineapples. In Vanuatu, we have pineapples in November and December. That's it. Want a pineapple in April? Too bad. But in the grocery store it's all there, laid out in front of you. Strawberries, apples (like ten different kinds. Ten kinds of apples!), avocados, oranges, grapes, seven different varieties of lettuce, broccoli, cucumbers, green beans, carrots, fruits and vegetables that I've never heard of. Food is shipped in from all different corners of the globe. Think about how much precision and effort goes into getting a single piece of fruit to a grocery store. The fruit has to be grown and picked, packed and shipped, unpacked and checked and placed on the shelf. Think about how many people are required in the process. Farmers, pickers, packers, truckers, and grocers all deal with the fruit directly, but a myriad of others are involved indirectly as well. Herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers have to be produced, distributed and applied to the plants. Harvesting equipment has to be built and maintained. Trucks have to be built, maintained, and fueled. Shipping routes have to be planned and overseen. A whole tangled, interconnected web of people and institutions, all relying on each other to operate properly, is required for something as simple as bringing a piece of fruit to a store. I think about this and my work in Vanuatu starts to seem just a little absurd. Our society is a staggeringly complicated mess of interlocking parts. Nothing in it exists in a vacuum, everything relies on everything else and the whole interconnected structure was built over a period of centuries. There was no moment of clarity when some guy woke up and was like “Eureka! I've invented technology! It's so simple! I don't know why I didn't think of it before!” There was no trick to it, no great leap forward, just a long trudge through a slow process of development. And now we're trying to fast forward the process for countries farther down the technological ladder, like Vanuatu. We try to hand them things. “Here, have some solar power,” we say or “here, take these medicines,” or “here, this is how bacteria work,” and we try to make such things “sustainable,” hoping that our efforts will have an impact lasting more than just a few months. It's like if aliens showed up in the US and handed us a bunch of gizmos and said “here, here's a bunch of teleportation devices, congratulations you're now a more advanced civilization.” Without any context or foundation to stand on, such infusions of technology or thinking are bound to be short lived. I'm not saying that such a fast forwarding process is necessarily impossible (I have no idea if it's possible or not, actually), but it does seem that it's usually attempted in the wrong way: donations of equipment or grants or training programs that last only a few days. Even the two years that we Peace Corps volunteers commit does next to nothing to chip away at the task. Sometimes I wonder how much thought goes into these international development projects. If this is a task we're going to pursue seriously, it seems like we should take the time to ensure that it's done well.
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