The International Writers Magazine: Evironment

Thanks for Driving Around • John Vaughn I was taken somewhat aback earlier this month when I overheard some of the fellows in the clubhouse referring to the fact that the earth’s climate was improving due to the traffic congestion on the highways. Intuitive as this may be to younger people, I must confess that the obviousness of the fact escaped me. But I’m curious and so I went to the county library. And darned if it isn’t true.

According to the really smart characters like scientists, politicians, and newspaper writers there seems to be some sort of connection between car exhaust and the temperature in winter. They call this whole shebang Global Warming, and I’m dogged if it isn’t the slickest thing I ever heard of. This one feller name of Gore says he knows for a fact that if the cars keep on rolling the temperature in winter will eventually get to the place where it doesn’t snow no more. Now I don’t know about you, but that that sounds mighty good to me. Anybody that has ever scraped ice off their windshield, or shoveled a sidewalk after a three day blizzard would sure give a warm welcome to a little bit of warming.
 
The crazy thing is that it’s not that hard to do. Accordin’ to this feller I was talking about, all you really need to do is to hop into your car or pickup and drive around for a few hours a day.
 
I can tell you this, I intend to cooperate. I filled up my old pickup this morning and drove all over the county. I told everybody I met what I was doing and they said they might as well try it too. I’m already dreaming of watermelons in February.
 
I sure do hope that this guy and his buddies aren’t just a bunch of con-men trying to put something over on us plain folks. You know how they do sometimes. Why, they’ll promise you this and that and tell you how it can’t fail and you need to do your part and then later on it all turns out to be a lot of hogwash.
 
My neighbor Buck says he’s gonna do even more to help things along. He’s got this old tractor motor sittin’ up on some blocks in his front yard that smokes like a yellow volcano. He mostly uses it as a conversation starter whenever company comes around but he says he’ll start runnin’ it all day long if that will help. “I don’t know,” I sez, “but it can’t hurt.” This Gore fellow says you need to send up smoke by the ton if you really want to do some good. “Hell,” he sez, “I won’t even care if the wife burns the toast if that will help get me out of buyin’ a new jacket every couple of years.”
 
Now I don’t know if all of this smoke needs to be a special kind or not because what this science fella says is kinda confusin’. He says quite clearly that the smoke and drivin’ around and stuff that rich people do don’t contribute to this warming scenario one bit. It’s only the smoke from poor people’s vehicles that is gonna make the world warm up. I’m still struggling to get my mind clear on this point. I never was that good in science class at school and sometimes I actually need to put my pencil to some paper to make the arithmetic come out right. This Gore fellow, he don’t need none of that, he just does it all in his head.  This whole idea might just be a lot of flim-flam but if it was they wouldn’t write about it in the papers. Would they?
 
I’m not afraid to do my part and I hope you all will do yours. Thank you for driving around.

© John Vaughn  April 2012
djvaughn@q.com

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