18 Jun 08 14:46, Cindy Haglund wrote to all:

 CH> Remember Charles Kerault's "On the Road" show and book? Imagine
 CH> anybody doing that now... Disclaimer: I don't see any 'slants in this
 CH> so it's just neutral I think. Y'll let me know otherwise.
 CH> ...............................


 CH> The motor home fades into the sunset

 CH> There's nothing like having the freedom of the road and the comforts
 CH> of home. But $5 gas is pushing the fantasy of comfortable vagabondage
 CH> to the wall.

 CH> By Garrison Keillor

 CH> Jun. 18, 2008 | Eighty-six percent of the American people believe the
 CH> price of gasoline will climb to five bucks a gallon this year, a big
 CH> shift in public opinion from a year ago when most people felt that
 CH> oil prices were spiking high and would soon return to normal -- which
 CH> is 35 cents a gallon, same as a pack of smokes -- and we'd be able to
 CH> head west in our Winnebagos for a nice summer vacation.

Faceteous statement noted.

 CH> This does not appear to be in the cards and Winnebago stock has
 CH> fallen about 50 percent in the past year. If you are selling a big
 CH> box on a truck chassis for as much as a quarter-million dollars when
 CH> gas is at $4 and rising, you are aiming at a rather select clientele
 CH> indeed, folks who might rather buy a beach house in Costa Rica than
 CH> go cruising the Interstate.

The beach house sounds like a good idea we can all appreciate.

 CH> Nonetheless it's sad to see the motor home fade into the sunset. I
 CH> used to despise them when I was a canoeist, of course. You paddle up
 CH> to a campground at the end of a hard day and see a few R.V.s parked
 CH> there, the air conditioners rumbling, the flickering blue light of
 CH> the TVs in the windows, and as you set up your tent as far from them
 CH> as possible, you feel a moral grandeur purer than you will ever feel
 CH> again. A holy Christian pilgrim among the piggish heathen.

He should travel the 13 miles of the Guadalupe River here in Texas. I
service those 13 miles and see the mix of tents among RVs on a daily basis
during the summer. It seems that the pending $5/gallon of gas doesn't
impede their camping one bit. The river campgrounds are crowded early in
the year with reservations being made last October when the campgrounds
closed for the winter.

 CH> The fantasy of comfortable vagabondage lies deep within each one of
 CH> us, though, and once, 30 years ago, driving a GMC motor home around
 CH> western Minnesota, I fell under the spell. To have the freedom of the
 CH> road and the comforts of home -- your own books on the shelf, your
 CH> clothes in a drawer, your brand of beer in the fridge -- is an
 CH> aristocratic privilege and I was happy to give up moral grandeur for
 CH> a couple weeks and enjoy it.

Hmmmm. Did he rent or own?

 CH> Five-dollar gasoline is pushing that fantasy to the wall, and it's
 CH> also showing most of us that we live in communities whose design is
 CH> based on the assumption of cheap gasoline -- big lots with backyard
 CH> privacy make for a long drive to the grocery store.

There are only two grocery stores in this town. Both are across town where
the lots and the backyards are big. On those lots are big houses where the
richer than I am live. Mine isn't a small lot either.

 CH> In the big old-fashioned city neighborhood, if you're bored in the
 CH> evening you just stroll out the door and there, within five or 10
 CH> minutes, are a newsstand, a diner, a movie theater, a palm reader, a
 CH> tavern with a bartender named Joe, whatever you're looking for.

All that's right across the freeway from here. Unfortunately, you can't
get there from here.

 CH> But in the sort of neighborhood most Americans prefer, there are only
 CH> a lot of houses like yours and residents who give evening pedestrians
 CH> the hairy eyeball. The mall is a long hike away and it's an amalgam
 CH> of chain outlets, with a vast parking lot around it. To a person
 CH> approaching on foot, it feels like an enemy fortress.

That's the one on the other side of town.

 CH> So we will need to amuse ourselves in new ways. I predict that banjo
 CH> sales will pick up. The screened porch will come back in style. And
 CH> the art of storytelling will burgeon along with it. Stories are
 CH> common currency in life but only to people on foot. Nobody ever told
 CH> a story to a clerk at a drive-up window, but you can walk up to the
 CH> lady at the check-out counter and make small talk and she might tell
 CH> you, as a woman told me the other day as she rang up my groceries,
 CH> that she had gotten a puppy that day to replace the old dog who had
 CH> to be put down a month ago, and right there was a little exchange of
 CH> humanity. Her willingness to tell me that made her real to me. People
 CH> who aren't real to each other are dangerous to each other. Stories
 CH> give us the simple empathy that is the basis of the Golden Rule,
 CH> which is the basis of civilized society.

I get those stories everyday. Idle conversation as I fill out the
paperwork before unlocking someone's car or pickup. Do you know how long
it takes to put 2 gallons of gas into a car from a gas can? That's a two
story job.

 CH> So when gas passes $5 and heads for $8 and $10, we will learn to sit
 CH> in dim light with our loved ones and talk about hunting and fishing
 CH> adventures, about war and romance and times of consummate foolishness
 CH> when we threw caution to the wind and flung ourselves over the Cliffs
 CH> of Desire and did not land on the Sharp Rocks of Regret.

He's probably never stumbled over the dirty diaper pail in the night.

 CH> I'll tell you about the motor home trip and how lovely it was,
 CH> cruising the prairie at night and drinking beer, stopping by a little
 CH> creek and grilling fish on a Coleman stove, listening to coyotes. The
 CH> vanishing of the R.V. only makes your story more interesting. One
 CH> thing lost, something else gained. Life is like that.

The RV's as we know them days may be numbered, but there will come along
something to replace it. You can't keep people down forever. As a matter
of fact, my first car door unlocking on the river this year was for a
young couple who had just bought everything there was to buy to do
camping; their first time ever. That tent slept 8, it was so big. They're
probably planning on a big family.

 CH> (Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" can be
heard Saturday
 CH> nights on public radio stations across the country.)

PBS! I knew it.

                R\%/itt



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