Eugene Burdick (1918-1965)

The Car

From Three Californias, 1965

Think of southern California and you're likely to focus on two things, the automobile and the freeway, avatars of an absurd lifestyle simultaneously attractive and appalling.

In 1965, University of California professor Eugene Burdick took a stab at describing the car culture of southern California for Holiday Magazine. Here are his conclusions.

If the mystique word that drew them to the South is "luck," the object that enthralls the Southerner is that seductive possession "the car." The South depends on the car, and not just in some dim Freudian sense. The South is the only place in the world so geared to the automobile that if it were eliminated the whole region would collapse. Outsiders stare with a barely disguised horror at the white, wormlike freeways of the South. . . . The freeways are expensive, hideous, congested and self-defeating. They are obsolete the day they are finished. But the Southerner cares little. He plans his life so that he roars to work on the freeway in off-hours. . . . It is not uncommon for the Southerner to drive sixty miles to work; 120 miles on a date; and fifty miles to shop for loss leaders at the colossal supermarkets. . . .

Eugene Burdick was co-author of the best selling novels The Ugly American and Fail Safe.