My Drive Thru Life

By Jim Benning
Orange County Register

I have driven into the belly of a whale and emerged 1 minute, 47 seconds later with a car so clean you could perform emergency surgery on it. I have idled at a drive-through window for 45.6 seconds and driven away with a gourmet latte creamier and more full-bodied than any I’ve sipped in a coffee house. I have bought a glazed doughnut from a drive-through shop, eaten the doughnut and suffered indigestion, all in 124 seconds _ the time it takes the average consumer to find a parking place, set the brake and apply The Club.

I have seen the future. It is very convenient.

I know this because I spent most of a day rolling through drive-through lanes, idling only long enough to pass cash through my driver’s-side window and collect goods and services in return. Not once did I get out of my car or cut the engine, and not once did I wait more than a couple minutes in line. If Nirvana has a drive-through lane, I came close to idling in it.

Drive-throughs are popping up everywhere. They are being added to cleaners and constructed with gas-station car washes. They are being built alongside coffee houses and included in colorful, super-speedy pharmacies. Drivers now can drop off prescriptions for Valium, speed off on another errand and rush through the drive-through minutes later to collect a full dose.

Here’s the theory: The more quickly we can accomplish laborious tasks such as shopping, the more leisure time we’ll have. Drive-ins required too much time. Drive-throughs can make our lives easier and give us more time for life’s fun stuff, like in-line skating and needlepoint.

I set out to learn more.

I piled into my pickup truck on a recent morning with the newspaper and a dirty jacket and headed for The Daily Grind, a drive-through coffee shop in Seal Beach.

The Daily Grind isn’t the kind of place where goatee-stroking graduate students sip exotic java from developing countries while debating the merits of Nietzsche. There’s no room for that. It’s more like a shack where coffee and sandwiches are packaged into spill-proof containers for frantic commuters who didn’t hear their alarms go off.

You couldn’t walk into The Daily Grind if you wanted to.

Doors have been replaced by drive-through windows.

I motored up to the window and ordered a raspberry latte and a bagel with salmon-flavored cream cheese.

An air of anxiety pervades all drive-through transactions, a tacit understanding between driver and attendant that we are all accelerating toward death and that no matter how fast the transaction is completed, nothing can alter that fact.

The urgency is exacerbated by the rumble of the car engine, the automotive version of a tick-tock reminding us that fuel is burning and natural resources are being depleted by the millisecond.

Worker Lori Pohl handed me the latte and bagel.

She told me that women waiting for their coffee often focus intently on their rear-view mirrors, applying mascara or lipstick.

A man once came through brushing his teeth.

“That’s gross,” I said.

Lori agreed.

I took a gulp of foam and sped off, wired on convenience.

I kept my eyes peeled for other drive-through shops, maybe a drive-through dentist or a drive-through tattoo parlor.

I sneered at businesses that did not offer drive-through service, especially ones with the nerve to include “express” in their names.

I not only wanted convenience, I demanded it.

I swallowed my last bite of bagel and accelerated toward Best Cleaners in Rossmoor.

A sign in the front window announced: “Drive-up window for your convenience.”

My truck screeched to a halt at the window.

I watched a clothes rack spin inside and waited for an attendant.

I reveled in high-speed, drive-through anxiety.

I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel and surfed news radio stations for traffic reports. I counted the nickels in my ash tray and picked bagel crumbs out of the creases in my pants.

A woman approached the window. The next 25 seconds transpired like this:

I told her I would like my jacket cleaned. She nodded. I passed my jacket through the window. She accepted it and asked when I wanted to pick it up. I suggested Monday. She nodded and handed me a receipt. I drove off.

I felt cleansed.

There is a certain satisfaction that comes from completing a business exchange with a minimum of spoken words and no wasted movements.

It is Zen-like. Haiku-like.

Drive-throughs offer this kind of opportunity.

I resolved to have my car cleansed, too. I made a beeline for a drive-through car wash in Anaheim.

I pulled up to the wash, situated behind gas pumps.

Drive-through car washes like this are no luxury baths where drivers rest under shady palms as their hub caps are buffed.

Think giant squeegees.

I handed $3 to an attendant who guided my car onto the track, then ordered me to keep the gear in neutral and avoid touching the steering wheel or brakes.

I stared into the mouth of the beast, a spitting, belching cavity where water and rubber rule and cars are reduced to helpless Hot Wheels.

I rolled up my window.

The track pulled me forward toward huge, swishing cloth sheets that mark the entrance like filtering plates on a baleen whale.

They swathed my car, jostling me from side to side as I rolled further into the dark cavity. I passed giant, spinning, brush-like organs. Finally, I rolled into huge squeegees that wiped my car dry.

The beast had consumed me and expelled me in less than two minutes.

I motored into the sunlight, admired my spotless hood and headed for the pharmacy.

I felt lonely.

Drive-throughs are super-convenient, but they offer little in human interaction.

We cannot commiserate with others about the slow service or the rain or the blistering sun if we are alone in our cars. We cannot make faces at restless babies bouncing in their mothers’ arms. We see life only through the frames of our windows.

Drive-throughs appeal to the monks in us.

I passed a drive-through McDonald’s and a drive-through Burger King. I saw men engulfing Whoppers as they waited for signals to change. I saw women talking on cellular phones, sipping artificially sweetened sodas as they steered down busy boulevards.

I pulled into a Walgreens Rxpress, the latest in car-friendly pharmacies, and stared into the drive-through window.

I asked the attendant for a bottle of super-speedy,

headache-relieving drugs, the kind that come in convenient capsules in plastic containers with child-proof but still easy-to-open tops. I wanted a cup of water, too.

No can do, the attendant told me.

They only deal in prescriptions and film at the drive-through window. To buy nonprescription drugs, I would have to get out of my car and walk into the store.

No way. I needed a drive-through doctor.

I motored off, lost in drive-through disillusionment.

I bought and ate a drive-through doughnut, which I soon regretted. I idled at a drive-through photo shop (next to a drive-through Taco Bell) and purchased a roll of film for no reason other than that I could do it conveniently, without exiting my vehicle.

I dreamed of drive-through therapy.

I decided to finish my drive-through day with a meal low in fat but full of complex carbohydrates, a meal that could be bought in a fine restaurant but that also could be passed through a drive-through window with no shame.

I went to El Pollo Loco.

The place was hopping. Late-model sedans. Old, beat up pickups. Hip new sport utility vehicles. I pulled up behind an old Buick.

I waited to yell my order into the plastic box.

I observed and celebrated drive-through democracy.

At drive-throughs, each motorist must wait his turn. There is no opportunity for short cuts, and there is no preferential treatment. Mercedes idle behind Hondas. Porsches wait behind Pintos.

Drive-throughs are the great equalizer.

I took comfort in this as I sat in my super-clean, plain pickup.

Finally, two burritos were bestowed upon me. I would consume them while driving home, jockeying for position, listening to traffic updates.

I motored away with my left knee balancing the steering wheel, my right foot on the gas and my burritos by my side.

I popped open two cups of drive-through salsa.

My mouth watered. My stomach growled.

I could practically taste the zesty mix.

Then, in one brief moment, all that changed.

I hit a bump in the road that sent the salsa flying.

In an instant, I saw the future.

It is very convenient, but my car is parked. I am wearing in-line skates and I am rolling effortlessly toward a coffee shop under the bluest of skies and I am remarking to strangers about the perfect weather and they are smiling and there isn’t a car in sight.