Posted on 01/22/2009 2:18:24 PM PST by Caleb1411
In keeping with the leaner, belt-tightened America now governed by President Barack Obama, I got a small car. Small. The smallest car I have ever owned. If I won the Pioneer Press Treasure Hunt, which I am not allowed to do, the medallion would constitute luggage.
Everybody, it seemed, was doing something to prepare themselves for Obama's inauguration: clipping photos, making scrapbooks, lighting votive candles, buying commemorative coins and plates. I wanted to do something, too, so I went small car. I have motorcycles longer than this car.
It doesn't make any difference what kind of car. What I discovered as a result of driving such a small car would be universally true of any small car with a short wheelbase. They alert you to the horrible condition of our streets.
Let's put it this way: If I drove by the Minnesota Public Radio studios on Cedar Street, I am certain I would be disruptive to their delicate equipment as they record yet another performance with cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who would have to stop and wonder, "What was that? Light rail?''
So little time passes between the arrival of the front wheels on a bump and the transfer of the same bump to the rear wheels that little cars hump themselves into the air, bang back down to the pavement and then do it again in another 20 feet or so.
The streets are better in China or Bulgaria.
The latest euphemism is "tenting,'' meaning those ridges of heaved-together pavement that look like waves breaking on the beach. That's a good one. Tenting. Our streets are thoroughly tented, pockmarked, potholed, lumpy, bumpy. Throw in fissured, bombed, crumbled, busted and broken.
A little car exacerbates the horrible streets. Well, so does winter, I suppose, but the only difference between summer and winter in a little car is that in the summer, there will be more shoulder to use to veer around craters.
It certainly alerts me to an odd irony. For years now, the new urbanists have been admonishing us to drive small cars or use public transportation or, better yet, walk, but a small car meets the template of what the sustainable urban visionaries find acceptable. And then, you make the move to a small car only to discover that the only suitable automobile for the streets of St. Paul is Lincoln's largest Town Car or Cadillac's largest sedan.
It's no wonder a lot of our older citizens drive big cars that say "I am bringing the hotdish.'' These older citizens are no dummies. If they don't want their teeth to fly out or their backs to break, they install themselves behind the wheel of large land yachts.
General Motors, despite its woes, just delivered Obama's new car, a Cadillac so heavy, so reinforced and so stretched it is called "The Beast.'' I want one.
With a car like The Beast, enough time would pass between the front wheels going over the tent and the rear wheels that you wouldn't even notice. In fact, with a car like The Beast, you might even be able to just flatten out some of the tent ridges, ensuring a smooth, pillowlike ride.
For a president, incidentally, who appears to buy into this climate-change nonsense — we are getting cooler, not warmer — Obama certainly lives in a world of impressive cylinders. And his friends, too, have no shortage of private airplanes and stretch limousines. The stretch-limo business in Washington never had it so good as it has the past few days.
That's cool with me.
But I am bouncing around like a jumping bean in a little tiny econo-box. I don't think I am destined to have a long-term relationship with this car. I want to be like Obama. I want The Beast.
Tough.
The state that has all but given us Al Frankenstein clearly has its priorities backwards.
Maybe St. Paul should spend more on street repair, and less on ACORN, welfare and “social services”.
Oh, and spend a nickel or two on BRIDGES while you’re at it.
Damn socialists.
Was the car a Peel Trident or an Isetta?
They looik like Honda Fits that were in the car wash for too long!
“General Motors, despite its woes, just delivered Obama’s new car, a Cadillac so heavy, so reinforced and so stretched it is called “The Beast.’’ I want one.”
Cadillac for him, Yugo for you.
Welcome to Barack’s America. if it feels like the Communist era, maybe it is.
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