Nowhere Road

Originally Posted Monday, September 15, 2014

Nissan is running "hip" ads on iTunes radio about the lure of the open road and its connection to music.  I remember that.  I still get to experience it in California.  It begins about halfway to Yosemite from San Francisco.  I just roll down the windows of whatever rental car I am driving and put my foot to the floor as I float/fly virtually alone up and down the big yellow hills, past the big turbine windmills, along the barbed wire fences, past the small, scrubby trees that offer relief to all that yellow, the stereo turned up. . . just flying. . . flying. 

Cars were the thing, of course, that liberated "the teen."  There was something about cruising in a car that was new to history.  There was a radio and a backseat where you could drink and try to have sex.  You just went though there was really no place to go.  You drove and drove nowhere, and perhaps that is what became of us and them--a Nowhere Generation full of permanent longing. 

They made songs about cars that everybody listened to.  Romeo always had one that was cool. 

Do they make songs about cars any more?  Is there like a rapper car?  Tell me if there is so I will know. 

Where I live now, a car is just a miserable necessity.  There is no liberation in it.  I would get most places just as quickly or quicker riding a bicycle.  My Jeep was romantic for short trips, but driving that clutch truly would wear my ass out around here.  It was all clutching and stopping and shifting and sitting at traffic lights breathing exhaust straight from somebody's tailpipe while listening to the unfiltered roar. 

But I remember what it was like to be young and to get into a car and just go.  All that music, all those feelings, driving. . . just driving. . . nowhere.