![\"Nut](\"https:\/\/farm8.staticflickr.com\/7637\/16259958134_bf779cac60_m.jpg\")
The Nut Tree was a landmark of\u00a0my younger days in California. In my last year of high school and first year of college, my friends and I\u00a0expressed our newly-found independence and adulthood\u00a0by driving from Sacramento to San Francisco on weekends. The Nut Tree, just\u00a0off the freeway south of Sacramento, was a mandatory coffee stop.<\/p>\n
That was in 1964 and 1965. Somewhere in there I met Donna, and she started making\u00a0San Francisco runs with us. When Donna and I, now married, returned from Germany in 1967, we continued to stop at the Nut Tree whenever we drove down to the City.<\/p>\n
Apparently the Nut Tree itself closed sometime in the late 1990s. I didn’t know it was out of business\u00a0until earlier this week, when I learned they’ve dismantled the last remaining part of it, the iconic sign alongside Interstate 80.<\/p>\n
Surprisingly, I find myself\u00a0moved by the news. Other institutions of our\u00a0younger days have come and gone, and who cares? This one, though, tugs at me, probably because I always associated stopping at the Nut Tree with adulthood and freedom. The freedom to hop in a car with friends for a\u00a0drive to the City, to\u00a0hang around the City Lights Bookstore and try to pass as sophisticates.<\/p>\n
Remember\u00a0this<\/a>?<\/p>\n “I have to tell you. Sen. Obama is a decent person and a person you don\u2019t have to be scared of as president of the United States,” McCain told a supporter at a town hall meeting in Minnesota who said he was \u201cscared\u201d of the prospect of an Obama presidency and of who the Democrat would appoint to the Supreme Court.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That happened in 2008, during McCain’s run for the\u00a0presidency. Last week potential Republican 2016 candidate Rick Santorum encountered a similar wacko<\/a>, who stood up during\u00a0the Q&A\u00a0period\u00a0and addressed him as Senator Santorum. She went on to say a few words about President Obama:<\/p>\n Why is the Congress rolling over and lettin\u2019 this communist dictator destroy my country? Y\u2019all know what he is and I know what he is. I want him out of the White House. He\u2019s not a citizen. He could\u2019ve been removed a long time ago.<\/p>\n . . . .<\/p>\n Obama tried to blow up a nuke in Charleston a few months ago and the three Admirals and Generals. He has totally destroyed our military. He has fired all the Generals and all the Admirals who said they wouldn\u2019t fire on the American people if they ask \u2018em to do so if he wanted to take the guns away from \u2018em.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And what did Santorum say in response? He corrected the wacko by pointing out that he was no longer a sitting senator. He said not one word about her crazy accusations. In fact, he seemed to go along with them, agreeing with her that\u00a0President Obama is a “tyrant.”<\/p>\n Santorum is considered one of the mainstream candidates vying for his party’s nomination.<\/p>\n BTW, this nuking Charleston thing? I hadn’t heard of it before, but apparently it’s a popular right-wing conspiracy theory<\/a>. How can you even work with people who are willing to believe shit like that? I can barely accept the fact that I share the\u00a0planet with them.<\/p>\n I blocked\u00a0another Facebook acquaintance\u00a0last week. She’d always been anti-Obama,\u00a0but recently she started\u00a0sharing\u00a0Facebook posts from fringe right-wing “news” organizations. Posts with headlines like this: “Welfare Queen Learns She Can\u2019t Get Change with Her EBT Card … It Doesn\u2019t End Well,” each post\u00a0accompanied by hundreds of vile comments.<\/p>\n I could see where this was heading, so I dropped her before she got around to\u00a0asking why we don’t have a White History Month. Because that’s always what’s next with those folks.<\/p>\n Speaking of assholes, we had a miserable drive\u00a0from Tucson to Phoenix last week for our secret squirrel ski trip<\/a>. Approaching Casa Grande from the south, we passed\u00a0an overhead electronic sign warning of a crash and heavy traffic ahead.\u00a0Sure enough, a mile or two later a wall of brake lights\u00a0blocked all lanes of I-10. We spent the next hour and a half alternately sitting still and crawling along in\u00a0car-length increments. Drivers\u00a0were getting out and climbing on top of their cars to see ahead. Other drivers\u00a0tried to cut the line by driving\u00a0on the shoulder\u00a0…\u00a0until the shoulder became jammed too.<\/p>\n An hour and a half later, we finally passed the\u00a0cause of the massive traffic jam: a single car, not badly damaged, parked in the median of the freeway. It looked as if\u00a0it had been rear-ended at a relatively low speed, since all the damage was to the rear bumper. Traffic started to flow again, and a minute later we were once again cruising at 75 mph.<\/p>\n In Phoenix, another overhead electronic sign, another crash ahead, this one supposedly blocking the\u00a0HOV lane. We always use HOV lanes when we drive through Phoenix and\u00a0other large cities.\u00a0HOV lanes are\u00a0kind of an oasis of calm on otherwise hectic freeways, separated as they are\u00a0from other lanes by double white lines. Drivers who constantly weave between lanes tend not to weave in and out of HOV lanes, at least in our\u00a0experience.<\/p>\n Traffic was crawling\u00a0along\u00a0in the HOV lane at the same rate\u00a0as\u00a0the other lanes, so we stayed put. The second blockage didn’t last\u00a0as long as the earlier one, maybe 40 minutes, and when we got to the choke point\u00a0drivers in the other lanes were allowing HOV lane traffic\u00a0to squeeze over to the right in a\u00a0civilized and\u00a0orderly manner (thank you, Phoenix drivers, for not behaving like Phoenix drivers for once). The\u00a0crash was more serious than the first one …\u00a0two substantially damaged cars, cops and emergency vehicles pulled up alongside\u00a0…\u00a0so at least the ensuing traffic jam was justified. Once again, as soon as we passed the crash traffic started to move again.<\/p>\n During all this sitting and crawling\u00a0I kept thinking of aircraft carriers, how when one airplane crashes on deck and other airplanes, low on fuel, are lined up on approach, there’s no question of closing the deck for an investigation: they fire up the Black Maria, shove the wreckage off the deck and into the ocean, and reset the arresting cables for the next plane. Why don’t we do that with freeway wrecks? Is it really necessary to take all those photos, measure skid marks, and put out those little yellow flags? We all know what happened: someone drove like an inconsiderate asshole and fucked things up for everyone else.<\/p>\n Truly, when it comes to driving, we are at the mercy of the lowest common denominator, the very crappiest driver, the one who’s always causing wrecks through inattentiveness, incompetence, or drunkenness.<\/p>\n It’s enough to make a sane person question the necessity of traveling anywhere, at any time, for any reason.<\/p>\n I wrote a short story about the experience:<\/p>\n Hours after the freeway\u00a0comes to a standstill, as dusk turns to night, people\u00a0realize traffic isn’t going to move before morning. We sleep in our cars. We\u00a0try to find out about the blockage with our\u00a0cell phones, but there’s no news, nothing on the radio either.\u00a0A week goes\u00a0by. We’re all out of gas now:\u00a0no more air conditioning, no recharging cell phone batteries. Cell phones are useless now anyway; no one has had any dots for days. Gangs of dads and teenaged sons form, raiding stalled RVs and travel trailers for water, food. Resisters are shot, their bodies pulled off the shoulders of the road, where makeshift toilet trenches have been dug. During the second\u00a0week helicopters appear, bringing emergency provisions. The pilots quickly learn not to land, instead dumping pallets from a low hover. Two weeks later the helos quit coming. The day after the last helicopter drop\u00a0our eyes begin to sting and we smell smoke. That night enormous pyres are visible in the distance. We realize the cities are burning.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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