It continues to be the oddest of summers. Today is the last day of June and it's 65 degrees in Streeterville. It has threatened rain all day long, but I have yet to see a single drop, just a lot of clouds. Babs claims to have seen several drops, but when I looked out the window from the 14th floor, there was nary a drop to be seen. Nevertheless, overcast and cool cannot be good for the tourist trade over at Navy Pier, and the number of boaters on the lake is pretty small today. The Water Treatment Plant is unaffected.
Tomorrow is the first of July and the 4th of July is this coming Saturday, and, as such I have been wondering just what is it that makes someone a real American. I've been around on this planet for 58 years now and all of those 58 years have been as an American citizen. Yet somehow I've always gotten subtle hints from here and there that something I'm doing is just not quite what "normal" Americans do. So just what is it that "normal" Americans do anyway?
I thought about this for a while and compiled a short list of things that "normal" Americans do that signal their Americanness, and that I definitely do not do. I must protest, however, that I cannot be considered "All American" by this standard, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Number one on the list of things that are considered quintessentially American is driving a "Big American Car". Ask any European. Americans like to drive around in big cars. Most families like to own multiple "Big American Cars", one for the husband, one for the wife, one for the kids, and maybe one just for fun. This doesn't even take into account the motorcycles, scooters, ATVs, and riding lawn-mowers that also populate the garages and sheds of America.
Alas, I am not a "Big American Car" kind of guy. My very first car that I ever purchased was an Opel Kadet. My current vehicle is a Mini Cooper, and I only own one. I hear that audible gasp escaping from your mouth. Shut that mouth. You'll be catching flies in it. You heard me correctly. One car, a small car, and it gets 33 mpg on the highway, 26 mpg in the city. Furthermore, Babs can fit her cello in that sucker and I have never, not once had a moment when I had to cart around such a quantity of "Big American Stuff" that I needed a bigger vehicle.
Now I know that Americans have a love affair with their "Big American Cars." Just owning a car is a privilege in some societies. In America, it's a necessity, unless you're a New York City resident. The rest of the country lives in their cars. They clog the streets and the freeways from coast to coast and they're all sitting in their "Big American Cars" listening to their satellite radios, talking on their cell phones, enjoying the A/C, and giving the finger to other drivers of "Big American Cars."
Americans don't like public transportation. They think it's declasse. They want to go where they want to go, when they want to go, and on their own terms, in their own "Big American Car." Americans feel safer in their "Big American Cars." They denigrate the safety of little cars. They think their cars tie them to the history of a rootless society that always looked for the next new frontier, and their "Big American Cars." give them the ability to pack up everything and just go. And when they get to that new frontier, usually another suburb of a major city, they can use that "Big American Car" to haul anything and everything they need from the "Big American Mall" to their "Big American Home." and they can pay for it all with their "Big American Credit Card," all the while incurring "Big American Debt."
Let's face it, to not own a "Big American Car" is just not "normal." Yet I hold a job, I own a home (More about that in another installment.), I have a wife, and to see me walk down the street one would think that I am a very ordinary, "normal" middle-aged man. I have no doubt that out there somewhere there is an intervention group waiting to help me through a 12 step program helping me past this thing, this abnormalcy, this addiction to small, efficient, reasonable cars. Then again, maybe I'm just ahead of my time, a visionary. This has been the first in my July 4th week series on All Americanness, and how some of us just don't fit the mold, yet manage to survive anyway. Tomorrow-"Big houses with big yards."
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