While visiting relatives in Massachusetts last week I stopped by Walden Pond, where Henry David Thoreau built his house and lived close to the land (and where I used to swim as a teen). Part of what Thoreau was trying to demonstrate was that if you simplify your life, your desires can be fulfilled more easily, more naturally, and with perhaps less dependence on others. I don't think Thoreau was suggesting that we all live like hermits. If I recall correctly, he did receive help from neighbors, and wasn't the land he was farming owned by Emerson? My thinking is that cooperation is a basic element of civilized society, but at the same time, those who take the initiative and make an effort to stand on their own feet will attract more support. It's a delicate balance between "God helps those who help themselves" and "love thy neighbor."

Unfortunately, in this modern age we are heavily biased toward the "help yourself" side of the equation. Competition has been elevated to a distinctly superior position over cooperation. It's the strongest, most aggressive and most independent among – us the "rugged individualists" – who are the most successful. At least, that is, according to the materialistic yardstick by which we measure success nowadays. We've created this ingenious financial system for bottling our success – sequestering it for future use – that does away with considerations of conscience in how the success was achieved – what activities we involved ourselves in, be they evolutionary or otherwise. If you can manage to accumulate a lot of money, it puts you in a position to choose not only your own comfort level, but to dictate the comfort of others. Moreover, it allows you to set the rules of the wealth accumulation game. In this manner the wealthy perpetuate their own.

Thoreau's lessons on simplicity, spirituality, self-sufficiency and cooperation were timely for the 1840s, but in the 2000s, they're critical. Modern life has become several orders of magnitude more complicated. Driving Route 95 from Boston to D.C., as I did the other day, passing through the megalopolis of New York, I was again reminded of how enormously complex is our social and technological infrastructure. Witnessing those bridges and towers, the highways and high-rises ... just the civil engineering alone is staggering. The transportation infrastructure, the communications systems, the hospitals, the industrial parks, the shipping docks, the concrete, glass and steel ... it's mind boggling to think how it's all managed, and how deeply dependent we all are on it. But it's a doubled-edged sword, this modern technology. We aim to make life easier, more comfortable, yet we're spawning entire generations of urbanites who never see the stars, who can't feed themselves, and who see nature as pigeons and roaches. And urbanization is just picking up steam. Third world countries are hot on our citified, industrialized heels.

Getting back to my pickup, we've created an economic infrastructure that requires us to own a car. People must drive if they want to scale the peak of materialistic success that's been set before us. Truthfully, most of us need cars to simply survive these days, let alone accumulate wealth. Given the importance of having an operable vehicle, it's astonishing how badly we Americans treat them. We beat them down, smash them up, and trade them in after a few years. We treat cars like disposable toys; luxury items that people in other parts of the world can't buy with an entire lifetime of earnings.We drive them from the dealership one day, and to the junkyard the next. I've had my Toyota pickup since 1998, being the second owner after a retired colonel in my old Camp Springs neighborhood sold it to me for $1000.

I'm actually rather proud that I haven't contributed to some landfill or other with this truck, as have the owners of 99.99% of the other 1981 (and subsequent year) vehicles over the decades. Moreover, a half-ton pickup with relatively low mileage, a 7-foot bed and a cap is a very handy thing to have. More than that, it's spiritually handy; it's a touchstone for my own material success, modest though it has been. Thoreau pointed out the absurdity of how people go through life dragging their furniture behind them, but really it's the poor whom we must think of when we consider the importance of cars, trucks and transport. I've slept in this Toyota truck. Camped in it. Sold a nine room house full of belongings, compressed it down to a pickup-size load, then transported myself to a Missouri farm in this truck. An equivalent truck new would cost in the $20,000 range – a fortune, in other words, for most people. I'm lucky in that I now possess a second car, a hand-me-down, that I can drive when I need to, but for a long time this truck was my lifeline. I'd have been sunk had I not had it at certain crucial points in my life.

Seeing the importance we've assigned to having your own wheels, I suggest it's imperative that we allow those with less means to be able to own and maintain such wheels. We've got to stop putting obstacles in the way of people who need to drive. We've got to stop harassing them, threatening their livelihood, killing them with our rules and regulations – insurance, inspections, registrations, parking restrictions. It costs $300 to put a car on the road in Montgomery County Maryland, plus another $500 for even bare minimum insurance coverage. Parking tickets can cost $50. A moving violation will run you $150. Auto repair shops charge upwards of $60 to $70 per hour for their labor. Compare this with the $6 or $7 per hour wage that millions of lower income people earn (not to mention the $6 per day they earn across the border), and it's easy to see how the cost of even a small repair can break a person's budget; how one lousy towing incident can put you in difficult straits. (I once knew a young man whose car was towed in D.C. It took several days before he was able to find it. The cost of retrieving the car from the impoundment lot was so exorbitant that the poor guy never went back to get it. Is there any question that tow truck drivers are among the lowest forms of planetary life?) I myself broke a fan belt on this truck last year driving through the White Flint area. Looking at a $50 minimum tow charge, plus another $100 for the repair, I decided to fix it myself on the spot. I had pulled into some random commercial lot on Parklawn Drive, but couldn't return to the truck until the next day. Luckily it was still there when I came back. But it's deeply discouraging how in this universe of roads, lots and cars, in this world where auto ownership is forced down your throat, to see the severe degree of rigid control these legislators and city planners have imposed on us. Signs everywhere issue dire warnings about what, why and how you can handle your car and where you can do it. Have a breakdown? Try calling your local councilperson and see where you get. Maybe he or she will give you the money to have it towed. Ha!

This is why every community must provide some means, some accommodation, for residents to make car repairs. Whether it's a trailer park or a condo complex, a housing project or a neighborhood of single-family homes, community leaders are obliged to figure out how to accommodate the do-it-yourself folks in this very important aspect of a citizen's economic life. To not do so is heartless. To not do so accentuates the gap between the haves and the have-nots. Certainly we all understand the arguments people give for prohibiting car repair in their front yards. As the community watch leader in Westchester Estates, I ran up against this issue all the time. We had folks in the neighborhood who set up veritable repair shops in their driveways, working not only on their own cars, but on those of their friends. I realize full well that cars are oily, greasy, junky looking and bad for the environment. But look, we live in an oily, greasy, junky world. We've created this greasy, black hell-hole of an urban universe, we've forced people to survive in it, and it's only right that we allow them the means of survival. Covenants and by-laws be damned. Lawyerly elitists be damned. Persnickety condo association officers be damned. Let people work on their cars, for God's sake! Find someplace. Designate an area if you must. But don't add another rock to the chain that is already dragging on the ankles of the poor masses.

So let us make a call right here for a new mode of thinking; for a compassionate turn in our view on this matter. Let us start a movement this very day to support the underclass in the area of auto maintenance, and put the controlling elite, the lawyers and legalists, the politicians, the planners, the condo and community managers on notice. Their thinking, their consciousness must and will change on this matter.

Aspen Hill, Maryland ... July 2006

Al Gabis Jr.
14505 Dunsinane Terrace
Aspen Hill, MD 20906
Nonspam email: tinkerscreekpressXXX "at" yahooYYY "dot" com
Managing the Spiritual Neighborhood
http://www.SpiritualNeighborhood.org
http://www.CommunityConscienceAdvocate.org

Posted to Yahoo group DCMetrosimplifiers
Post to Usenet News group DC.General
Copy to members of the Montgomery County Council

At right is a typical condo association flier from Oxford Crossing. These are hand delivered to the front doors of each residence. Note the severe warning about inoperable vehicles. The text reads:

"Parking Inoperable Vehicle(s) is strictly prohibited as outlined in Cahtper 2, section 2.106. These vehicles will be towed at the owner's expense."

No association officer ever visited our household, or introduced him/herself in any way, in my two years of living here. In typical punitive fashion, these cop-like, lawyerly-thinking individuals make no attempt to interact in a natural way with the people around them – to initiate friendly contact or inquire into personal circumstances. They're not offering any sort of help to you. There's no element of service. No intent to educate or work with their fellow residents. Rather their only aim is to control and prosecute. As with most all legislators, lawyers and legalists, they can't think very far beyond the written rules. They baricade themselves behind the walls of legal code – fearful, and unable it seems, to even converse in a neighborly way about matters of community courtesy. The mind-set and mode of operation of these condo officials reflect and are reflected in, the rigid, top-down control that characterizes our entire legal/judicial/ governmental system, and the artificial formality that structures our anonymous, urbanized, Western society.