Vergil’s Coffee

My first real car, the 1988 Ford Festiva of Love, got rear ended by a van full of Amish folk. The current car, the 1993 Ford Escort, hasn’t lived up to the myth-like status of the Festiva–the Northern California nights of a San Francisco Giants hatted Dominos driver blasting the soundtrack to Cats out of Spark-o-matic speakers whiles eating an extra slice of pizza getting 46 miles on a gallon of gasoline. Instead, the Escort has been the ugly step brother of cars: purchased with the settlement money from the totalling of the Festiva and little love has been put into the forest green Escort wagon with it’s missing grill, cracked front bumper and punched driver’s side bumper. It is ugly but useful and like most ugly useful things, it has been quite consistent in being the designated “Point A” to “Point B” car (6.5 miles each way). So when it didn’t start the morning of the last day of school, I was a bit shocked, a little annoyed and slightly disappointed that the Green Wagon couldn’t just hold it together for one more day.

So I had to take public transportation.

We don’t really have a lot of public transportation in Goshen, Indiana; it is a small community, and aside from riding your bicycle and perhaps calling one of the 2 taxi services, about all you got is the Interurban Trolley which conveniently runs by the public library (about 2 blocks from my house).

I’m running a tad later than I wanted and the last time I rode the Interurban Trolley I found out quickly that the drivers believe in a schedule to the point of being much like my in-laws after Lori and me got married: on time means 5 minutes early. I was able to speed walk across US 15 and head toward the library while looking back to check on the presence of the Trolley and it was acomin’. The nice thing about the Interurban trolley is that you can also flag it down if you are not at a designated stop–and I was not–but the driver did pull over and pick me up (this may have something to do with my height or that I was wearing my optic orange polo shirt).

I take my seat halfway to the back of the Trolley and pull out my cellphone to twitter a bit about my trip thus far (for these are the exciting things in life that people should be reading, eh?) And then it happened: I began to read some of the signs on the Trolley. There was the usual “No Smoking” sign which seemed appropriate enough and then there’s that “Don’t stand beyond this white line” threat. The one that confused me a bit, partially because of its message, but also because it was the biggest sign inside: “No Profanity Allowed!”

And at this little observation followed by a chuckle, I came to the conclusion that I was doing a good thing: taking public transportation instead of stomping my big-ass carbon foot print in the sands of this day and time. No, I was riding the Interurban trolley while others, who could have done the same, were speeding by in their gas-guzzling, smog spewing, environmental death bombs that will certainly lead to the destruction of all things green and damn our children to an impossible, irreversible future of breathing air through a mask.

I was, in a sense, doing my part to help the future of the Mother Earth and was finally being a submissive fellow earth walker and a responsible one too.

I decided that I would skip getting to school 30 minutes early and get off at the Starbucks about a 1/2 mile down the road from school (and that was an easy decision: coffee or people?)

So, for about 15 minutes, I walked to school along US 33 South as a myriad of death inducing vehicles sped past me (remember, I’m tall and I’m wearing an optic orange shirt with a Starbucks coffee in hand, walking along a roadway where very people tend to trod).

Again I felt smug; in fact I even Twittered about it (so imagine the lanky orange pylon holding a coffee in one hand and texting with the other). Indeed, I was good.

And that didn’t last.

I remembered the absolute fear in second grade that we all would be swimming in our own garbage by the year 2000 (and then the tear rolls down the face of the Indian chief and fade to some recycle message in white on back). Hostility returned to my smug face as I recall how fashionable now it is to “Go Green” and buy expensive light bulbs, not use toilet paper and buy a hybrid car. Isn’t interesting that in order to “Go Green” you have to buy more stuff?

Douglas Rushkoff points out in his Frontline video “Merchants of Cool” where he comments on how the metaphor for consumerism is not a mirror (where the ads and media are only reflecting back to us images of ourselves) but more of a feedback loop (where the “cool” new stuff is seen in people and the media picks up that “cool” and then sells it back to the mainstream and by the time “cool” hits mainstream, “cool” has been effectively killed…it’s no longer cool).

And that’s when it hit me: It’s a giant feedback loop. The media watches kids and then sells them an image of themselves. Then kids watch those images and aspire to be that mook or midriff in the TV set. And the media is there watching them do that in order to craft new images for them, and so on.

This idea that by the time something becomes popular or hits the mainstream consciousness should be a clue to all of us that something is amiss. When Leonardo DiCaprio tells us about his use of energy-saving lightbulbs or that entire networks are having “Green” weeks where both the advertising and the content of the shows are reflecting this “Go Green” message, you have to wonder what’s being sold.

And really, how much will a hybrid car help the environment? If one really thinks that burning fossil fuels is bad, why then (you upper middle class guilt-ridden suckers) would you spend almost twice as much for a car that still uses gasoline? “Every little bit helps” has been the slogan to sucker money from so many people who may truly care about various causes.

And it’s not over: we’re ready to enter into the SuperBowl of US Politics this summer and we really have to realize that every single motto, every single stump speech, every thing that can be squeezed on a bumper sticker is for a vote and not so much a promise to keep.

After moving through the smugness into hostility, a car pulled in front of me in a driveway to the one of the many car dealerships on US 33S and I recognized the person as a colleague from school. She asked if I would like a ride and since I was only 5 blocks from school, I said no but thanked her for stopping. And I remember feeling a bit mixed on if I had done the right thing by refusing a Good Samartian offer. Perhaps I should just take the offer as a reminder of the more important things in life, instead of getting guilted into a cause for someone else’s financial gain. Perhaps, it’s more important to remember the nice things people do every once in a while and to appreciate even the ugly but useful things in our lives.

Besides, about the most “Green” you see me get is when I hit my “mid-age life crisis” and do what I can really get excited about: buy a Segway. It’s useful and ugly.

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