by Malatesta
Mercury Rising #3, January 1992
Response to the following letter from Mercury Rising #3 (December 1991):
Dear Mercury Rising:
Mr. or Ms. Malatesta in his/her "Stay on 2 Wheels" article (November, 1991) doesn't seem to grasp the importance of the automobile to the state of well-being of the populace.
Late each day I leave the room filled with petty gossip past the dustbins and gravy-flecked ties. Before I know it, it is time to get into my car. On silver wings I float to my parking spot and then I am there. In my car, I am flooded with unexpected silence in which I can reminisce. Or, better, I can increase the volume of the stereo until I drive out all thought, agony or discrimination. We must all have a life with which we can live. Our cars help us with that. God bless my car. If anyone should venture to take my car from me, I would shoot him or (perhaps more appropriately) run him down.
My car is the only place where I am sure I will be alone and undisturbed. It is not just a vehicle. It is a personal resort.
Sometimes I feel I pay for this resort. No, my life with my car is not all easy. Traffic jams are one example, traffic jams when I am late for an appointment and my veins are flooded with pounding force. Or hot summer days on which the bucket seats cause my buttocks to sweat. Or at the gas station where my taxes have been raised once again by people who believe even my right to drive should be taxed.
Sometimes this irks me so much that I feel moved to immediately call my congresswoman, right there in my car. She usually pretends she isn't there.
Sincerely, Josephine Flinch Buick
by Malatesta
Your letter testifies sadly to your boring and anal obsession with your automobile. This pervasive malady affects everyone to some degree or other, even me! Although I do not own or drive a car, I am prone to disabling fits of sexual psychosis involving 1960’s model Lincolns and Cadillacs, and tabloid celebrities in various states of collision and prowess, ad nauseam... I find we must ask ourselves, is America's love affair with the car (auto-eroticism) a healthy fetish, or an addiction/disease indicative of the neurotic and apocryphal stages of a society on the verge of collapse?
Methinks, Josephine, that we are being misled, seduced by the comfort and convenience of a product and industry that will ultimately leave us lonely in a toxic wasteland of rust and despair!
You complain of high gas taxes as you plow the pavement perpetual and blissfully pollute our world... Your sweaty buttocks indeed! A major concern of the growing anti-car movement is getting the car off welfare , referring to the 300 billion dollars needed annually to main tain the infrastructure needed to keep the auto mobile system running. This huge sum ( in the form of tax breaks, subsidies, and highway expenditures) amounts to over $2,000.00 per vehicle, per year. Shame, shame!
To assert that the automobile is of high importance to the well-being of the populace is to waltz ignorantly over such facts as these: - Approximately 47,000 people are killed each year on U.S. roads.
- 30,000 additional deaths per year are caused by motor vehicle emissions.-
-the U.S. consumes 40% of the world’s gasoline.
- 6 of the 7 chief air pollutants come from automobiles.
- Pavement covers 40% of some urban areas.
- An average of 1.5 million acres of farmland is lost to suburban development each year.
- U.S. oil reserves will be depleted by 2020, world reserves by 2040. And furthermore: -The American Lung Association figures that the medical costs alone from gasoline fumes amounts to 40-45 cents per gallon.
-In 1982, the Federal Department of Transportation estimated that the cost of noise and air pollution, as well as congestion, in U.S. dollars, at about 20 cents per mile.
-Only 15 cents per gallon spent on gasoline stays in the local economy.
A noxious and heady matter, this auto-absurdia certainly appears to be a latent and malignant virus affecting our culture irreversibly! I implore you, Josephine dear, give up that Tin Lizzie, get a bicycle and get busy! Or to quote Dave Brower, All those who believe in individual mass transportation, raise your right foot.
*facts courtesy of Alliance for a paving moratorium, facts from 1979 study by the Institute for Local Self Reliance
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