NOTES FROM THE HINTERLAND
EXCERPTS FROM A GASOLINE DIARY
By Laurie Meunier Graves
On January 31, 2006, President Bush delivered his annual State of the Union
Address to Congress. True to form, he said what was expected and delivered
such platitudes as “the United States of America will continue to lead….We
seek the end of tyranny in the world….we will act boldly in freedom’s
cause.” Because I am a liberal Democrat, the mind-numbing triteness of his
address—How much, exactly, do those speechwriters get paid?—only served to
remind me of this administration’s long list of blunders, which by now are
so well known that it hardly seems necessary to list them. However,
something Bush said made me turn my attention from the Republicans’ folly to
my own behavior. That is, “we have a serious problem: America is addicted to
oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world.”
Now, it must be mentioned that for Bush to lecture America about being
addicted to oil is a little like a Colombian drug lord chiding Marion Barry
for being addicted to cocaine. Nevertheless, Bush does have a point—the
United States is completely dependent on oil, and without it, our society
couldn’t function. From the food we eat to transportation to fuel, every
aspect of our lives is touched by oil, and this is true whether you live in
Maine or in California, whether you’re an organic farmer or a movie star,
whether you drive a Prius or an SUV. At some level, everyone in this country
relies on oil.
After the State of the Union address, I wanted to see just what part I
played in the country’s addiction to oil, and I decided to do this by
keeping a month-long gasoline diary where I would record how far I drove and
how much I spent on gas. I would also describe where I went and what I did
so that I could get a sense of exactly how I was “feeding my addiction.”
This method, of course, didn’t take into account all the oil that was used
to transport the many things I bought during the month. I will leave it to
those with a better grasp of numbers to figure out how much gasoline is used
to deliver the things we buy. My goal was to see how much gasoline I used in
my car for one month, the month of February, 2006. And this I did.
Finally, I do want to note that my situation is much different from most
people’s circumstances. Both my husband and I work at home, and we only have
one car, a Toyota Corolla that gets about forty miles per gallon. Because of
this, I started the diary feeling a little smug, certain that my husband and
I went for days on end without using the car. As it turned out, the reality
was somewhat different, and my diary proved to be a valuable lesson on how
record keeping always trumps guessing.
Here, then, are excerpts from the diary.
February 1
A no-car day and an auspicious beginning. As I sit at my desk and do my
daily work, I can’t help but think that the world would be a better place if
everyone worked at home the way my husband and I do.
Total mileage for the day: 0
February 2
I drive to my town’s Food Pantry to do my civic duty. Once a month or so, I
volunteer at the pantry and give food to those who need it. Being a
bleeding-heart liberal as well as a Franco-American, there are few things I
enjoy more than loading food into boxes and seeing people leave with plenty
of good things to eat. Cheerios, bread, spaghetti, and fruit. Sugar, coffee,
and tea. I picture all this food going to various homes in Winthrop and
feeding children, grandparents, mothers, and fathers. Not for the first
time, I reflect that in this richest country in the world, nobody, whatever
their circumstance might be, should go hungry.
Later that night, I drive to Augusta, a small city not far from where I
live, to meet a friend for tea at Barnes & Noble. We have known each other
since childhood, but it has been many years since we have seen each other.
After an evening spent catching up with each other’s lives, we decide not to
let this happen again.
On the way home, I fill the gas tank for $24.95
Total mileage: 28
(I must admit that I am shocked to discover that I have driven nearly thirty
miles to work at the Food Pantry and visit with a friend. The smug feeling
is replaced with a feeling of foreboding that my addiction is worse than I
thought it was.)
February 3
My husband and I drive to Augusta to meet friends for dinner. We go to a new
pub that is totally packed and totally disorganized, and we have to wait for
over an hour just to be seated. To make matters worse, the menu features a
sandwich called “The O’Reilly Factor.” The hostess pleads ignorance when I
bring it up, but I know very well that the name is in reference to the
right-wing talk show host Bill O’Reilly. My bleeding heart is heavy as I
order fish and chips, which turn out to be very good. However, they are not
any better than a nearby pub’s fish and chips where there is nary a mention
of right-wing commentators. Also, the other pub’s name—The Liberal
Cup—somehow has a better ring.
Total mileage: 20
February 6
A no-car day.
Total mileage: 0
February 7
From Joseph Fitzpatrick’s letter in today’s New York Times: “How about
starting a unified national program to conserve oil through conservation,
sacrifices, and leadership? This would be an excellent way for all of us to
come together and support our troops with action (as we did in World War II)
rather than rhetoric…. Members of congress and even the administration could
demonstrate great leadership, unite the country, and set a wonderful example
by using fuel-efficient vehicles.”
Mr. Fitzpatrick is quite the optimist when it comes to our leaders. Two of
Dick Cheney’s pithy remarks concerning conservation come to mind. The first
is the oft quoted “conservation is a personal virtue,” with the
understanding that the government should not get involved. The second is the
remark, made sometime during Bush’s first term, about fuel-efficient
vehicles: “Americans don’t drive cars like that.”
Still, we need people like Joseph Fitzpatrick to remind us what leaders
could do, if they only had the will.
Today is an errand day around Winthrop, where I live. I go to the transfer
station, pet-supply store, florist, post office, drug store, and grocery
store. I try to get everything done so that I won’t have to use the car for
a few days, but the snag comes at the post office where there are two orders
for the journal. This is a good thing, but it means I have to go back to the
post office tomorrow. Technically, the post office is within walking
distance, but, at two miles, it is just far enough away so that walking
isn’t convenient. Do I walk, ride, or wait a few days? Such are the choices
a gasoline addict must make.
In the evening we go to Augusta to visit a friend with a broken ankle.
Naturally, we do other errands along the way. With a tight grip on the
remote control, our friend is in good spirits, happily settled on the couch.
He has books, DVDs, and the Olympics to keep him occupied, and, for now, at
least, cabin fever isn’t an issue.
Total mileage: 36.6
February 9
A no-car day. The weather is clear and cold, and the sky is deep blue.
Total mileage: 0
February 10
Errands around Winthrop. More packages to mail. I visit a friend who is
recovering from knee surgery and bring him blueberry muffins as well as Bill
Roorbach’s excellent book, Temple Stream. This friend also is in good
spirits and is very perky. He lets me borrow two books by Joyce
Carey—Herself Surprised and To Be a Pilgrim. I put them at the top of my “To
Be Read Pile.”
Total mileage: 3
February 13
I go to visit yet another friend who is recovering from an injury, this time
a broken foot, and I go farther afield to Brunswick, a forty-five minute
drive. I take my friend out to lunch, and she is better coordinated on
crutches than most people are on foot. Her doctor gave her permission to
continue to ride her exercise bike and to do calisthenics, and even with her
broken foot, she exercises faithfully every day. This, of course, is why she
is so nimble on crutches, and I can only watch with amazement as she scoots
around.
When I get back home, I discover I have driven ninety-five miles today, and
I am shocked. Is my friend worth it? Absolutely. But ninety-five miles is a
lot of miles.
In “Bright as Windblown Lark,” William Maxwell writes about the poet Laurie
Lee, who grew up in the English countryside in the 1920s. Maxwell quotes
Lee: “Myself, my family, my generation were born in a world of silence, a
world of hard work and necessary patience, of backs bent to the ground,
hands massaging crops, of waiting on weather and growth; of villages like
ships in the empty landscapes and the walking distances between them, of
white narrow roads rutted by hooves and cart wheels, innocent of oil or
petrol…”
Maxwell goes on to comment “Granted that one has to live in one’s own Age or
give up all contact with life; nevertheless, one puts this book [Lee’s The
Edge of Day] aside not with nostalgia but with a kind of horror at what has
happened. There was perhaps no stopping it, one thinks, and the same time as
one thinks that, one thinks that it should never have been allowed to
happen…Like a fatal disease, it has now got in our bloodstream.”
So much so that it seems like nothing at all to go ninety-five miles to
visit a friend. Leave before noon. Come home before dinner and not only have
time to visit but also to do a number of errands. We cram so much into each
day, and we still think that we don’t have enough time. It is incredible to
think about the distances we travel, the people we see, the things we
accomplish. On the other hand, we have the environmental damage we do
combined with a hopeless, rushed feeling. Both are the logical results of a
life based around the automobile.
Filled the car: $24.75
Total mileage: 95
February 14
Errands around Winthrop, including a trustee meeting at the Food Pantry. I’m
still marveling over driving ninety-five miles to have lunch with a friend.
I think about how cars give us the freedom to go places and visit people,
how they expand our horizons. Then I think about global warming, congestion,
and pollution. How to balance the two? We certainly can’t go back (Can we?).
But what would going forward look like?
On another note…Vice President Cheney accidentally shot a man with whom he
was hunting. I’ve come to think of Cheney as this administration’s id, all
snarling impulse, and the shooting is a perfect metaphor for the leadership
of this country.
Total mileage: 10.7
February 16
From Verlyn Klinkenborg’s “The Rural Life,” a column from the New York
Times: “There has been an extraordinary groundswell of farming up here [in
upstate New York]. I mean small farms, usually organic, that have learned
how to connect directly…with consumers. It is a new model of farming based
on an old model, one that my grandfather would have understood back in the
days before cheap transportation—or transportation whose costs we chose not
to notice—changed the way farmers and consumers think.”
Thinking about what Klinkenborg wrote, I did errands around Winthrop—post
office, bank, video store, grocery store—all for 3.3 miles. While it might
have been better not to use the car at all, there is no denying that doing
all those errands in 3.3 miles is a gasoline bargain. Perhaps it’s time to
bring back the town with its cluster of shops and businesses. I wonder if
higher gasoline prices would encourage this. After all, strip development
and sprawl are choices that we have made, and, with some effort, they can be
unmade.
February 23
To Augusta and back. I took our dog Liam with me, and we went for a walk in
a cemetery in town. We come across a row of small white tombstones that are
all inscribed the same way—“Maine Industrial School for Girls.” The dates
range from the late 1880s to the early 1900s, and the girls’ ages go from
fourteen to nineteen.
I have lived in this area for nearly fifty years, and I have no idea where
or what the Maine Industrial School for Girls was. I suspect that it must
have been nearby or else the girls would not have been buried in this
cemetery, and with a bit of research, I discover I am right. The complex,
now a prerelease center for prisoners, is only a few miles away, and I have
driven by it hundreds of times without being aware of what it once was. A
casual look at the large brick buildings should have told me that this was
an institution built in the late 1880s. But I did not even look casually,
and the school’s origins have passed from most people’s memories. How little
we know about the history of our towns! How soon it can fade.
(Paradoxically, at times ancient grudges are all too present.) Dalí’s The
Persistence of Memory features melting clocks, suggesting that while memory
might be persistent, it is also unreliable, haphazard, and subject to decay.
Further research leads me to the Report of the Maine Commissioner on State
Industrial School for Girls, a small bound notebook printed in 1868. I get
it on loan from the Bangor Public Library, and my town’s librarian tells me
that she is surprised that the aged notebook was allowed out of the library.
It is well beyond the scope of this diary to give a full account of this
report, which sways between compassion and stern judgement, a concern for
the common good mixed with a disapproval and disgust for “a class who have
no sympathy with the right; justice, peace, and regulated liberty, they
regard as foes…” In short, the school was built for “girls of a peculiar
class and condition” and “They belong to what has been termed ‘the perishing
and dangerous classes of society.’”
The report is a fascinating document that shows the history of our
ambivalence toward the poor, an ambivalence that is still with us today.
Total miles: 25
February 26
I drive to South Portland to bring my husband to the airport. He is going on
a business trip and will be gone for about a week, too long to go without a
car. I drop off my husband, and as I leave the airport, the car gets a flat
tire. After driving to a nearby parking lot, I take out the spare tire,
which looks straightforward enough, but I am completely baffled by the car
jack, and I decide the best ploy is to stand by the car and look helpless.
Within a few minutes I have two men changing the tire for me. This is more
than a little humiliating, and I vow yet again to learn how to change a flat
tire. Right.
I had planned to do errands in Portland, but with the small spare tire, I
decide the best thing to do is to go home, a sixty mile ride, as soon as
possible.
Filled the gas tank: $24.50
Total mileage: 120
February 28
I end the month as I began it, with a no-car day.
Total mileage: 0
Now, it is time for the final reckoning, the tally of how many miles I drove
in February and how much I spent on gasoline. It is here I come face to face
with my addiction to oil, my smugness long gone.
Total mileage for the month: 468.5 (This includes mileage for days not
mentioned in these excerpts.)
Total gasoline cost for the month: $73.50
My initial response is that 468.5 miles in one month is a hell of a lot for
someone who works at home. On the other hand, $73.50 for gas for one month
is pretty economical.
Now, dear readers, I have a challenge for you. Keep your own gasoline diary
for one month. See how far you drive. Note how much you spend. And, if you
are so inspired, send your results to me, and I will post the results in the
web magazine. While this isn’t going to change anything, it will bring about
a mindfulness to an activity that most people don’t think twice about yet
spend so much of their time doing. I know. When it comes to Wolf Moon
readers, I am most likely, as the saying goes, preaching to the choir.
However, to stretch the metaphor, maybe the songs of the choir will inspire
others.
