‘... and one person in every one of them’

My old man was a traveling salesman. He spent a lot of time on Ohio's highways, and he seldom enjoyed it.

"Nine hundred million automobiles," he would grumble, "and one person in every one of them."

That was decades ago. I'm sure it only seemed there were 900 million automobiles out there. But suddenly the old man's long-ago complaint comes back sounding very much like a lament for our times.

On Tuesday, gasoline prices in Lima reached $4 a gallon for the first time. At least it's reliably reported that they did. The highest I saw for self-serve regular was $3.95.

In any case, oil was $127 a barrel Tuesday and there was talk of it hitting $200 in the foreseeable future. Even if gasoline is only $3.95 a gallon today, $4 can't be far behind.

Considering the situation we've gotten ourselves into, it would be nice to see my father as a man ahead of his time, a prophet for a 21st century-renaissance of mass transit. That might be stretching a point. My father's concerns were neither economic nor environmental, they were mainly about congestion and aggravation.

Even Willy Loman, I noted the other day, didn't fret about gas prices. Of all the things eroding the soul of the tragic protagonist of "Death of a Salesman" (currently at Encore Theatre with RicKard Workman as Willy and a supporting cast entirely worthy of both Arthur Miller's play and Workman's brilliantly restrained performance), gas prices weren't a consideration.

When Willy first appeared on stage, around the same time my dad first went on the road, a gallon of gas could handily be paid for in nickels and dimes. On Tuesday morning, I sat in line to fill my tank at $3.67 a gallon, and was glad to get such a bargain.

Ironically, the nation comes to this pass in the same year that will mark the centennial of the Model T Ford, the car that launched America's long and extravagant love affair with the automobile.

As we observe that milestone, we might be forced to consider the possibility that private, gasoline-powered automobiles were a great idea for maybe 65 years, but we may have to lean more toward other alternatives for the future.

More fuel-efficient vehicles might be part of the answer. Americans are gradually, grudgingly moving in that direction. Driving less is another option. That notion was almost inconceivable a few years ago, but now millions of people are cutting back where they can.

But even if Americans buy less gasoline, the price might not decline dramatically. In today's worldwide market, a news story the other day said rising food prices are spurred partly by people overseas who now want to "eat like Americans." As economies grow in China and India, it's likely people there will want to drive like Americans, too.

More mass transit is not cheap or easy outside major cities, and there's little evidence people in this part of the country are prepared to make the financial commitments or lifestyle adjustments that could make mass transit work. The Allen County Regional Transit Authority, after years of declining state funding, cut bus service 30 percent last year, and it remains to be seen whether a proposed high-speed rail link to Lima will ever be more than a billion-dollar pipe dream.

So on Tuesday afternoon, I parked and observed vehicles stopping at, or more often rolling through, the stop sign at a moderately busy intersection.

(Rolling through a stop sign is illegal and potentially dangerous, but more fuel-efficient than stopping. What would Al Gore do?)

In 18 minutes, I checked out 100 vehicles. Seventy-four had one occupant, 25 had two, and only one had as many as three. That averages out to not quite 1.3 people per vehicle.

Still, the picture might not be quite that grim. Two cars slipped past before I could check them out. If each of those vehicles contained 13 people, that would bring the average up to 1.5.

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