Autoculture 040912

The enduring myth of American culture is the 19th century cowboy life.  Idealized as the symbol of independence and freedom the legendary cowboy was one with his horse with a world only viewed from a saddle. 

By the turn of the century, automobiles crashed into the cowboys’ world.   Despite the collision the horse culture lived on until the mid-20th century.  The early era of moving pictures romanticized cowboys’ dying values but automobiles were slow to catch on, sometimes slower than a cowboy’s ambling horse.  Roads were wagon ruts, and cars unreliable.  “Get a horse” was the public’s derisive cry to early autonauts.  Streetcars eventually replaced horse cars but they competed with horse drawn utility vehicles.  Left alone the horse could take care of itself but despite constant care and maintenance mechanical “stink pots” fell apart.  By 1950 Saturday still saw farm families arriving in small towns by horse drawn wagons to sell produce, shop and visit.  That remnant of horse culture quickly disappeared as the result of a convergence of war, production, marketing and politics.

World War Two taught a generation to drive and maintain vehicles.  Mobilized for war, industry found itself with excess capacity at its end.  Oil producers formed a cabal with auto companies to market mechanized cowboy independence and freedom to a young population freed of wartime constraints.  President Eisenhower began a coast to coast road building program.  Television programming moved from horse operas to auto adventures. “Route 66,” about the adventures of two modern cowboys and a Corvette, became popular entertainment.  LBJ signed the death knell of horse with his “Great Society” extending roads into backwoods America where rusted out pickup trucks replaced mules.  A mule could always get a Saturday night reveler home, but pickups littered ditches until Sunday afternoons.  Mass transit became the victim of aggressive auto marketing, cheap gas and new car models sold dreams.   Auto centric suburbs and shopping malls littered the landscape.   You could escape by exotic auto vacations; from one parking lot to another. Developers’ quest became to blacktop the world.

By the 21st century the only remnant of cowboy life is that if it can’t be done from your own “auto saddle” it doesn’t need to be done.  There are drive through restaurants, laundries, funeral homes even traffic courts.  There are also potholes, collapsing bridges, gridlock and smog.  Drivers now answer cell phones, text mindless thoughts, buy online, even play games while driving.  Technophobic drivers are seen reading papers, applying makeup or playing a guitar at 70miles an hour; the ditches are now littered with wrecks everyday of the week.   Gas is expensive, cars cost as much as a house but the auto culture clings to it’s cowboy image of freedom of the road.  Road rage, rages and today’s autonauts fight any return of mass transit.  Riding a train or bus infringes on their constitutional freedom.  Autonauts will accept abuse, humiliation and sardine like seating on an airplane because flying gets them into their rent-a-car saddle faster.

It’s time for the autonauts to save the world and saddle up to ride off into the sunset.   Time for the autoculture to GET A HORSE!