Word: carly
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...United States is television. To reinforce the box-like world view gained from hours in front of the tube we have surrounded ourselves with television analogues. Reality has become a metaphor for a 19-inch screen. More than anything else, it is from the windows of a car that we see the world, and the world we see is a General Motors version of Stagecoach or The Streets of San Francisco...
Even the Rockies could not break the spell. After a few days in the car, sleeping, seeing the world through glass panes, the whole experience seems less than real. Within the car is one world, anything outside is just entertainment. Rocky Mountain National Park might as well have been Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom...
...rule, in town and on my trip, is simple: stay with the car. It is your most important possession. It is home, and more--it can take you, protect you and move you on to another scene when weirdness threatens. The next day, as I rolled out of town, I gave up all pretense of a larger goal for the trip than simply getting back home. The time had come for the speed run across the hinterland, to burn off Utah and Nevada and rush down Donner Pass to the Pacific Ocean...
...break came shortly thereafter. Even from within the car the world pressed in. There was nothing around me. No towns, no houses, no power lines--nothing blocked out the desert and sky but the edge of the road, the broken glass in the run-offs. It wasn't the American Dream, but it was an acceptable substitute: the random and the strange. Driving down 70 could not fit anymore into my easy categories--the images flowing past my windshield demanded my attention. The television mode with its comforting torpor collapsed in the face of scenes no screen could capture...
...fifty miles past Grand Junction, past the last house, I hit a traffic jam. Under normal circumstances this would have been completely unexceptional, but this was nowhere. A quarter of a mile ahead, the worst of reasons was lying moaning on the ground, a victim of a three-car accident...