I’m the kind of person who likes a lot of color. I saw a woman wearing a yellow dress the other day and, swoosh, I was high aloft. It was like I rode a sunflower up to the sun and sizzled in the heat. What about blue? I took a walk on the Greenbrier River Trail recently and arrived at a spot where the sky came right down to earth and flowed through the mountains. A cerulean breeze picked up and blew right through me, sending me bouncing along my way like a sapphire tumbleweed.

I took a walk on the Greenbrier River Trail recently and arrived at a spot where the sky came right down to earth and flowed through the mountains.

With me relishing bright colors so much, it only stands to reason that others would too, but you’d never know it by looking at their vehicles. Most of the time I don’t think about it, but every now and then my attention will turn to cars, as it must eventually to almost anything, and I can’t help but notice this drab sea of white and silver metal that streams along the veins of commerce and pools in asphalt basins.

I find this lack of color, this dearth of vibrancy, strange for something so close to the heart of American culture. I usually think of it as a purely modern phenomenon, but perhaps this isn’t entirely true. I know that many cars of the 1950s tended to be more vibrant and colorful. But cars then were also molded with curves, sleek and on the prowl, rockets ready to hurtle into the space age. 

By comparison, most of the vehicles we drive today seem to be black and white boxes – the TV sets of the 50s turned mobile. Does all this have something to tell us about the modern American psyche? I don’t know. Maybe you can tell me.

By comparison, most of the vehicles we drive today seem to be black and white boxes – the TV sets of the 50s turned mobile.  

So, what’s the color of my own car, you ask? Surely I must drive something lean and mean – a maxed out lemon drop that’ll burn your eyes out, right? Not so. When I looked up the official color name of my A to B clunker, you know what it said? ‘Sad Cloud’. Sheesh. Or maybe I just imagined that.

I guess I should probably be content with the way things are though. When you’ve got people pushing a dandelion seed up to 80 miles per hour, lord knows what they’d do tooling around in a drop of Satan’s blood.

Until next time, watch where you tread, and maybe, just maybe, you might sometimes want to go OFF THE BEATEN PATH.