So America is the land of the automobile: apparently there are 253 million cars and trucks on the roads over here – something like 80 for every 100 people, compared with 52 per 100 back in the UK. Being a car owner here is so different than it is in the UK: the main difference being that there are actually enough places to park. Anyone who has tried to get into the John Lewis car park in Kingston-upon-Thames on a Saturday afternoon will know what I’m talking about here…
Anyway, being the Land of the Car, everything is set up towards car use. Even at school, there’s a car pool lane for drop-off and collection. No standing round chatting at the school gate: the teacher recognises the car pulling up, and calls the pupil out of the school to hop straight into the car. The ideal scenario for the antisocial parent!
The Land of the Car also means Drive Thru’. So far, I have discovered:
- drive-through (sorry, I can’t bring myself to write “thru”) barbecue restaurants
- several different drive through burger joints
- drive-through Starbucks
- drive-through Chick Fil A (for the uninitiated, Chik Fil A, with an advertising campaign featuring three cows exhorting you to “Eat Mor Chikin”, is like KFC except staffed almost exclusively by students)
- drive-through Baskin Robbins for ice-cream
- drive-through pharmacy
- drive-through ATM and drive up banking (this is awesome – you talk to a cashier through a microphone, and money flies back and forth through plastic tubes in a little container).
Theoretically you could drive through the bank, withdraw some cash, drive through the burger joint, drive through the ice cream shop, then drive through the pharmacy to get some Alka-Seltzer on the way home. That’s a lot of driving through. The only one I knew of in London was the truly terrible drive through Krispy Kreme by the A3 (!)
My initial reaction was something along the lines of “why do you need a drive through when you can just park up and walk?” But after five months, I have started to realise that there are at least a few reasons. Yes, you could still park up and walk. But when it’s 30+ degrees C outside, it’s a lot more comfortable to keep the air-con in your car on. And when it’s torrential rain, like Tropical Storm “Colin” which passed over yesterday, it’s a lot drier to stay in your car.
To be really useful, someone should invent a drive-through supermarket, a drive-through gas station, or perhaps a drive-though office…
The aircon in this car is low-tech.
South of the Mason-Dixon line 