The radio can strike fear sometimes
My children were bouncing off the walls and my spouse needed a break so I took the kids out of the house in that aimless Sunday afternoon kind of way. Today was one of those visually stunning days that also happened to be too damn hot, when the world looks best from inside of an air conditioned car.
This was a tradition back when my kids were toddlers and needed to take a nap and the gentle rocking of the road would lull them to sleep. Now they stay awake, but quietly read books in the back while I listen to my favorite shows on WFMU (that part has stayed the same.)
Today, in honor of the death of Ric Ocasek, the DJ spun "Drive" by The Cars. A chill came over me as I drove the winding Morris Avenue as it wended its way from Summit to Millburn. It's not just that this is one of the most profoundly sad songs allowed on the charts in the dayglo lobotomy of Reagan era America. I had a slight real life connection to Ocasek (not worth discussing here), but also got news that a friend from my time in Texas died suddenly on Friday morning.
For some reason that feeling of dread drifted to thinking about Friday's climate strike. Driving through the sprawl I looked out at the way of life destroying life on earth. What will future generations think of our Sunday drives? Of our pop music reveries while the tailpipe belches poison into the air? I get the feeling that the suburbs of New Jersey will be like Nineveh and Tyre for future generations.
On the way home we ran into a traffic jam at a bridge over the freeway. Evidently a horrible crash left a truck overturned and a car on fire. People from the neighborhood were gathered on the bridge looking at the wreckage below. It seems to have barely made it into the local news. Just another day in our way of being, I guess.
In any case, my kids and I went to the Dairy Queen and enjoyed some ice cream. That made me forget this doomed world and all the people I've lost in recent years for a bit.
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