This Carbon Based Life

By David Glenn Cox

This is a strange little story. It’s about a man who lived in a nice little house on a nice little street in a nice little neighborhood. Then one day he took a trip across the sea, and when he landed there, everything was much bigger. The airport, the cars, the roads. Everything was bigger. The plates of food were bigger, and the beers were bigger too! This was all heady stuff, like being in a Hollywood movie.

A French restauranter asked the City of New Orleans what he needed to do to open a French restaurant. He was expecting forms to fill out and a strict questioning. What he got was “Buy a business license, follow the health code, and good luck!”

Our traveler finds a big rental car waiting and drives off on big, big roads. Instead of the gasoline being $7.50 a gallon, it’s only four dollars a gallon here. The sky is blue, and the weather is warm, but there’s air conditioning everywhere. The stores stay open until ten or stay open all night long. The parking is always free to use, like the restrooms. Our traveler might be tempted by the sixteen varieties of Oreos at Walmart, but he’s not ready to pull up stakes just yet. He fills his suitcase with Crest toothpaste and Crest whitening strips because they can’t get them at home. The government has determined them bad. “That’s right, chief. Another white strip related overdose.”

A German tourist marveled at a CVS drugstore. “A whole building full of over-the-counter medications to treat myself!” As an American, I found that comment insightful. Who else is going to treat you? If you go to the doctor, it’s expensive, so you treat yourself. But he saw it exactly the opposite way. You mean I don’t have to go to the doctor if I don’t want to? I can treat myself? I can pick up 200 acetaminophen tablets, a bag of medicated cough drops, a half-gallon of ice cream, and a twelve pack of beer all in one store? Choice!

It’s not the hugeness of Walmart or Bass Pro Shop or even Buckee’s. It’s about a widening horizon of choices and opportunities. You see, the bass boats and you think, I’d like a bass boat like this. Or a 4×4, or maybe a jet ski, that would be fun! At home, it’s too cold or too expensive to do any of that. Ah, but you could really tear though gator country with your Evinrude a pumping in this baby! The wind in your hair blowing your cowboy hat back. Knocking back a few Coors light “Yea Ha!”

The trouble begins as they begin to see their job at home pays 25% more in the United States. Then, when they see the real estate prices there’s trouble brewing. For what they paid for a two-bedroom, one-bath flat in Leeds, they could have bought a four-bedroom, three and a half bath detached house with an office outside of Dallas or Houston. (AKA, McMansion) How are you going to keep them down on the farm after they’ve seen Dallas, Atlanta or Charleston? After they’ve see a different, larger life from the one fate has assigned to them.

They returned home and drove their tiny little car down their tiny little street. And all the time thinking F-150 or Dodge Ram. They go into their little office and think about how much they are being underpaid, and about the warm sunny skies. But I heard this repeated over and over. They were always encouraged to stay on a path. Don’t rock the boat! That’s a stupid idea and you should forget about it! You’re the third assistant bottle capper! In another five years, you could be the second assistant bottle capper! The skies the limit!

Steve Jobs quit a good job to start a computer company in his garage. The fool! Throwing away his security like that. Ed Roth had a good job at Sears. He quit to become a custom car designer and automotive legend. In America, everyone has a dream. And that’s all right. You can be whatever you want to be. That’s heady and dangerous stuff to someone raised to stand in line and wait patiently and not make waves. A French restauranter wonders if he could be the next toast of New Orleans? An Englishman rode a bull in Alabama. That’s a bad case; now he wants to imitate us! But I respect his guts, if not his brains. He rode that bull for a second, and that took guts. He arrived as a foreigner and rode the bull like an American cowboy. And as he picked himself up off the ground everyone applauded, He’s one of us now. Somebody give him a beer! In America, they reward effort, not just success.

The warmth of the American south with its friendliness and manners has an intoxicating effect on our European visitors. “Yes, sir. Yes, ma’am.” More coffee, sweetie?  

Yes, it’s the giant stores and free refills, ranch dressing and tacos, but it’s more. It about a way of life largely invisible to us because we’re born into it. It’s all about freedom, but not the big freedom to demand redress from your government. It’s about the little freedom to go to the store at ten o’clock at night. The freedom to wear your hat backwards or wear a flowered shirt. To try to be a movie star or a rap singer, or a great novelist. A TV star or a YouTube sensation.

Sometimes others need to show us ourselves. A big house in sunlit Dallas or Atlanta. A big car or truck in the driveway. Cheap gas and free soft drink refills, but more than anything ever purchased was repeated over and over. “In America, you can be whoever you want to be. In America, you can live your best life.”

Back home, they wonder. He seems so much quieter since he returned from America. But aren’t his teeth white though! The American Dream is alive and well. Others are still dreaming a it.

“The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking spaces.”
― Will Rogers