The Graying of the Freeways

You might think this entry is about the lack of maintenance given to the country's freeways since their construction between the 1950's and today. Well, 'tis true enough that, in their haste to hand out vast sums of money to those who don't feel like working, and to hand out even more money to artists who construct hideous, useless structures they call objets d'art in front of government buildings and in atria and foyers of these same buildings, and to hand out money for greater and grander offices within those buildings, the highways are getting the short shrift. Politicians need these grand offices to create the edicts that cause us to have to take three to five times as long as it should to get to our lousy metal desk-furnished soft cubicles. And to wreck our cars in the potholes that happen when it rains, that there's no money left over to fix. But that's not what this rant is about, at all.

Have you ever notices, while creeping slowly along these selfsame freeways, that most of the cars thereon are gray? Almost all of them.

In the mornings I usually commute in the dark, in relatively light traffic, at normal freeway speeds. In the afternoon, on the other hand, I drive in the afternoon light, at speeds that range from a slow creep to maybe 50mph, for part of the way, if I'm lucky. Plenty of time to observe the cars around me, to observe some of their incredibly bad driving habits and to occasionally check out the odd blonde talking illegally on her cell phone.

To observe the drivers of convertibles with the tops down but the side windows up (!?) and with those silly girlie screens behind their heads so they don't have to contend with the stray current of moving air that might cause a stir in their $400 coifs.

But, most of the cars are gray. Gray cars driven by gray people. Gray, for my current purpose, includes everything from the purest silver to, but not including, black. It also includes grayish brown, grayish beige and grayish blue--and remember, they don't call it olive drab because the color is electric.

I don't think, even though it hadn't occurred to me until relatively recently, that I've ever owned a gray car. The closest was my 1975 Olds convertible, which was a kind of off-white. It also almost always had its top and all of it's side windows down unless it was raining. It doesn't rain often in the southern third of the Stalag.

Oh, yeah, my 1937 Olds hotrod was sprayed with gray primer, but only in anticipation of a deep candy burgundy paint job it would've gotten had I not sold it.

Why would anyone buy a gray car? There sure are a lot of them. Perhaps it's a herd thing. Conformity. Fitting in. A sign of a conforming society.

Perhaps it's camouflage. Pavement is gray. Blending in with your surroundings.

I think that I shall never see/
A baby blue SUV/
A car the color of the sky/
Or the blue of a baby's eye.

When I decide to buy another car, I'm going to look for paisley.

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California