Today I pulled the truck out of mothballs and drove it down to the park and ride from work since I decided I didn't want to be completely sweaty since I was meeting my friend at the mall. So I'm at the stop waiting for my bus and a fellow wearing a bright red baseball cap that competed with the shade of red on his face and neck, asks if the main road there is "Research." I tell him yes and he then tells me he's ridden in from a place called Liberty Hill some 20 miles north for the first time today.
He'd just started taking the bus, because, at 6 miles per gallon on his truck, he didn't have much of a choice. Before the spike in his fuel costs, he used to come to town on weekends to see his kid but now it's going to be during the week since the Express doesn't run on the weekends. He said he'd gone to catch it on the weekend and it never came. It makes you wonder how this new world will affect the bonds of family. Will it force people to stick it out due to economic realities of maintaining two residences and sharing their child in the case of separation? Or will it further drive a wedge between them, pitting want against need? I can only hope that it strengthens them.
The red-capped gentleman thanks me for my help and, almost as if on cue for my next discussion, a woman walks up asking about a particular bus route. She explains that she's just taken her cat to the vet as it has a problem with its bladder and we discussed the U.S. Open and Tiger's victory that she'd been watching in the vet's office. I wondered where her cat was since she bore no evidence of a cat carrier or even the smallest strand of cat fur. I didn't want to ask. She then pulls out an alcoholic beverage from a brown paper sack and proceeds to pour it into a clear bottle as we discuss heat stroke and the fact that she doesn't do the long hauls walking anymore since she'd suffered one last year. Her skin was dark from the sun and weathered to leathery perfection and I wondered what she considered a "long haul."
My friend texted me and said she was in my neck of the woods and checked to see if I wanted to carpool over to the mall and just then, my regular bus rolled up and what do you know, there was the bus driver who'd identified me as a regular. He was waving at me as if I were comatose, asking if I wanted to get on. I proceeded to tell him I was getting a ride from a friend and he smiled and waved as the door shut and he drove off into the sunset like a bus-borne lawman of the asphalt frontier.
Moments later, my friend picked me up in her sweetly-air conditioned horseless carriage and we floated down the road in pure luxury, blasting past one bus stop after another with only one destination on our map: front-row parking at the most lavish shopping experience in North Austin. We arrived and spilled out into the mall, surrounded by the sights and sounds of our perfect society; colorful posters arranged in a rich tapestry of story-telling, promising us a lifestyle of similar stature as only the models telling the story could tell. Each extolling our inner desire to purchase the contents therein and beckoning to us with cool, air-conditioned fingers of temptation from the gaping, resplendent doors bedecked with ornate, heavy-gauge steel handles and plate glass, gleaming like crystals, enshrouding a world of baubles and curios just waiting to be purchased, held and experienced over and over again.
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