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CA Confessions: Driving on the Axles of Evil

I drive an SUV, a 1996 Jeep Grand Cherokee that has a small profile compared to some. But still, it’s got a big V8 engine and gets about 17 miles to the gallon. We call it The Truck. (As in “Honey, is The Truck parked on the right side of the street?”) I bought it when the dot-com gravy train was still running down Covina Avenue. I bought it to do all the things that a truck could do for us: haul the big dogs, big monitors, big canvases, the house and garden stuff from Home Depot, the 64 rolls of toilet paper AND 36 rolls of paper towels from Costco. I also bought it because, tooling around Southern California’s freeway mega-plex of death in my super fuel-efficient 1989 Honda Civic, I felt like a tin-clad mouse at the unending elephant’s polka. Everybody so head-up and so big, whizzing by. So I broke. I wanted to get big too. The used Jeep was in great shape; low mileage and it seemed big enough. I got a good deal and wrote a check for the full amount.

That was in 1999. But last night — Jeep hulking at the curb, me in bed trying to get to sleep — my reasons for buying it kept cropping up, morphing into excuses, dissolving into the ether of that trippy place between wakefulness and dreams — but I need my truck…I have hauled all kinds of great big stuff … I hardly drive at it all … what about the dogs … small is scary. All true, but meaningless. My eyes snapped open.

The thing is, I see the Jeep really was a selfish purchase right from the start. It wasn’t news to me then — any more than it is now — that the oil money that feeds American families also feeds rampant, guzzling, despoiling, poison-breathing evil — both corporate and political. And although I really didn’t have a specific idea of how much, I knew that I was going to be pumping much more crap into the air than I did with the Civic. I never considered a minivan or station wagon — more fuel-efficient big-haulers. I wasn’t duped by safety claims or outdoorsy marketing. I knew all of it, but I was mad-busy and a deal came my way and I took it. I did it for myself and it would be absurd for me — or any educated person who drives an SUV — to say, “I didn’t know what I was buying into.” It’s a conscious tradeoff that, in the moment, you are willing to make. Me and mine! World-be-damned.

So, I knew what I was doing… for a nanosecond. Then I forgot it, let it evaporate like rubbing alcohol from that ever evanescent top of mind awareness. You know what I mean, because we all do it. I think it is hardwired into our heads by evolution — maybe it’s an important ability we have: to get shocky and forget the daily toll. You do your best, but living is a grisly business after all, filled with all kinds of meat processing, agro-business horror stories, distracting things we don’t want to think about our chicken sandwich, or where our chopsticks come from, or how our cute shirt was made by slaves, or what’s being burned to make the juice that comes out of the plugs in our house. We should have a brick in our toilet, eschew disposable diapers, stop eating Chilean sea bass, take the bus. If we thought about it all, all at once, despair would shut us down. So we forget, rationalize, and stay functional. We do our best in a complicated world.

That’s how people like me — conscious-living, all-recycling, organic-gardening, green-voting, decent citizens — find themselves driving these wasteful vehicles. And then someone like (can you believe it?) Arianna Huffington comes along, and sort of rushes you into a hall of mirrors and in all the hyper reflections you catch a glimpse of yourself — being selfish. You remember. Oh, I hate that.

Of course, the Buddha teaches that once you find the source of suffering, you are already on the path to end it. I want to get rid of the Jeep.

But — the Noble Truths aside — the whole thing is really turning out to be an exercise in old-style Catholic contrition. I can’t afford to get rid of the Jeep and driving it is like penance. It’s the Shame Utility Vehicle, because SUV’s are the new fur. And because it certainly says that (1) I am ignorant of the world around me OR (2) I succumbed to at least one moment of truly selfish All-American consumerism and now we’re all paying for it. I’d rather say 10,000 Hail Marys.

But the trap is bigger than the personal finance juggling required to get a new car in a year when we’re recovering from a nasty dose of the unexpected unemployment. The Jeep is worth $8 to $10K, and even before the bubble burst, I couldn’t have afforded to just melt it down and make a sculpture out of it, like they do in gun exchanges. So I’d have to sell it. Pass it on to … who?

A college freshman who cruises through life at top speed? An offroading yahoo? The young executive who commutes 2 hours a day? The mom who works and carts the kids to five extra-curricular activities a week? Do I have a right to choose? “You can’t sell the Jeep,” says a friend as I pace on the phone, “no one drives as little as you do.” It’s true, many weeks I just drive it across the street once to accommodate the street cleaners. So how will I find another hermit who wants a Jeep? Hermit-bay?

And I can’t even give it away; the charities will just sell it.

So, it looks like penance it is. My penance is that it’s mine for life. I’ll have to fight terrorism by keeping the tires properly inflated, the engine tuned, driving the speed limit and using husband Val’s VW Jetta when I can. Of course, I could start a Scrap Kate’s Shame Utility Vehicle Fund and get 10,000 people to donate a buck to get one SUV off the road. But barring an upwelling of public sentiment, I’ll have to just be a good custodian of the shamemobile, and keep saying my Hail Marys in public.