A Darwinian Rapture

Throughout my life I’ve been either burdened or blessed — you choose — by a keen awareness that mankind lives on a razors’ edge. My first recollection of this was in 1962 after I got my first drivers license. I was at my neighborhood gas station fuel up my first car, a green, four-door 1951 Chevy. Gas was 24 cents a gallon.

As I fueled my trusty old “Pickle Wagon,” (as my mortified girlfriends used to call the beast.) I watched other motorists fueling their Detroit steeds, and it just popped into my heads. I can still hear the bells dinging and dinging as six cars filled up. (Pumps had bells in those days that dinged at ten cent intervals.)

“Well, this sure can’t last forever!”

Even as hormonally poisoned teenage boy with his first set of wheels, I had enough sense to know that cars, trucks, trains and planes running on finite million-year old fossilized trash from the earths’ previous incarnations was not a sustainable model.

Smirking Chimp