Pleistocene Drip

Relax a stare at pavement: sparkling pepper jewels, freckled with ginger, shadowed, grease spotted, tire skidded, patchworked, manholed, yellow striped, notations spraypainted of utilities below. Occasional white spots bubble in gaps of campfire blackened marshmallows not ready for s'mores. The breakfast lunch and dinner, the all-in-one energy bar, the bowl of milky cornflakes topped with chopped banana, Blue Bunny neapolitan, no-brand peanuts and canned chocolate syrup--of motor vehicle diet.

25,000 years ago a 3,500 pound ground sloth, dazed by the art of a juniper, stumbled into a salty molasses funk and sunk. The black goop of La Brea Tar Pits is actually not tar--a derivative of coal--but asphalt. The tedious work of mining these pits ended in the early twentieth century as a process of refining road's dark essence from crude oil emerged.

Asphalt plants, scattered throughout our metro areas--All American Asphalt in San Fernando, Valero Energy in Wilmington--generate the gravy of automobility. A 2004 study showed one neighborhood downwind of a plant had not just the predictable increased rates of cancer and respitory illness but also a more than threefold growth in suicides.

Gravy needs meat--bitumen needs gravel. Seventeen pits in San Gabriel Valley supply hard crumble for 70% of California roads. But please no dusty mess in Santa Clarita. A proposed gravel mine drew outrage from these clean exurban livers and a bill to prevent its construction by Assemblyman Cameron Smith. "We need to do everything we can to protect the quality of life in the region," Smith says with a straightface.

Drive 35 miles east to the development blaze of Antelope Valley and find Caltrans workers widening Highway 138 under fire from flying burritos and bb guns.

There was a piercing scream from the woods, followed by a pistol report. "Does it seem right to you, lady, that one is punished a heap and another ain't punished at all?"
"Jesus!" the old lady cried. "You've got good blood! I know you wouldn't shoot a lady! I know you come from nice people! Pray! Jesus, you ought not to shoot a lady. I'll give you all the money I've got!"
"Lady," The Misfit said, looking beyond her far into the woods, "there never was a body that give the undertaker a tip."
--Flannery O'Connor, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find"