On Wednesday I drove past a golf course and felt the need to pull over. An older man in sunglasses was walking from the snack bar to the putting green. His golf bag followed him a few paces behind. I’d never seen anything like it. The bag was on wheels, an electric caddy, trailing him like a well trained dog. He stopped. The bag stopped. He continued. The bag continued. He stopped again, but this time the bag approached him. I thought for a second he was going to pet it.
Southern California is for vehicles. We see people driving trikes. Dirt bikes and ATVs race up our street. At some point living here, inevitably, someone tells you the type of car you drive says things about you in a different way than in other places of the country – what you value, how you see yourself, what you desire to project about your status in society. It’s all very silly and still real. A common trope in Los Angeles, when you see someone driving an expensive but dated car, e.g., a dusty Porsche or beat-up Range Rover, is that it represents the year that person hit it big, but perhaps they’re hitting it less big today.
I drive a Honda Accord. We named it Jet Car when we bought it because it had six cylinders, two mufflers, and surprisingly good pick-up. My wife’s uncle in North Carolina approved the purchase, he’s a record-holding race car driver and his daily driver is a Honda Fit. Now, a hundred thousand miles later, it may be time to part ways. A mechanic advised me recently to start looking around, in maybe another year some big work will be necessary, not cheap. If I’m honest, my eye’s been straying for a couple years. I’d love to go electric, at least hybrid. Or maybe old and sexy, no matter how unreliable and gas-guzzling: early-aughts BMW threes, mid-nineties Toyota Land Cruisers. I long to have a truck I can overland with, a Tacoma or Ford Ranger I can kit out for off-roading with less worry, more function (the Jet Car has struggled at times in far-flung places). But quickly, thinking these thoughts, I feel ungrateful, like a cheating asshole. Jet Car has seen us safely through multiple adventures and it rarely complains, it’s never needed work beyond maintenance. Granted, the stereo situation is not cute – there’s no Bluetooth functionality, no port for a phone, and I don’t think I’ve replaced the CDs in the stereo in five years. But what more could I ask for? I consider myself a car guy – I like driving, I like automobile design – but I’m quite content driving a vehicle that rarely wants for anything.
The gentlemen at the golf club reached for a club and extracted it. His bag waited patiently, then followed him to the green. I pulled Jet Car back into traffic and was filled with compassion, I felt guilty about looking elsewhere, I was pleased by the way it handled the turn onto the next street and patted the dashboard with thanks.
Event notice: Angelenos, catch me and fabulous local novelist Héctor Tobar in conversation this week about all things Los Angeles and Everything Now. Wednesday, Pasadena, details over here. Would love to see you there!
In tomorrow’s Sunday supplement: a good new app if you ever need to deal with transcribing things; the best and worst of what I read and saw this week about Ukraine; and a lot of love for locked-room mysteries. Plus more!
If you’re not on the supporter train yet, there’s a blue button for that (with a free trial so you can dig into the archives to see if it’s for you). As always, thanks.
“Meditations in an Emergency” is a micro-essay published Saturdays by novelist Rosecrans Baldwin about things he finds beautiful, with a longer essay once a month dispatched from the wilderness. Also for subscribers: a Sunday supplement with three-plus ideas for things to love, no paid placements lol 💸
Rosecrans is the bestselling author of Everything Now: Lessons From the City-State of Los Angeles, available from Bookshop, Amazon, or your local store. Other books include The Last Kid Left and Paris, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down. His debut novel, You Lost Me There, was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.
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