Heels on Wheels

"There's a right way to treat our neighbors and, as the red traffic sign in this animation points out, there is a 'wrong way,'" Angus Brangus says. "The driver of that car is demonstrating the wrong way--by not signaling to the rest of us that he intends to turn the corner. He is saying to the rest of us: 'Y'all ain't worth the bother.'

"I hear tell," Angus says, "that some folks like to ask, 'What would Jesus do?' Now I never met the fella myself. I reckon he ain't from this neck of the woods. But I do know one thing that Jesus would do: He would give turn signals. When he was riding that donkey into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, don't you think he had more on his mind than most of us drivers do? And yet you know darned well he still had that left hand out, signaling his turns, yessireebob!

Angus Brangus in Old Blue. Old Blue is twenty-seven years old, bless its heart, but is still able to signal turns and lane changes, still has a quiet muffler, and still fits in just one parking space.

Angus also sees a lot of dead space as he drives. You know what dead space is, don't you? Dead space is wasted space: It's of no advantage to the person who creates it, can't be used by anyone else, and leaves less usable space for others.
"Our streets, our mall parking lots, our gas station service areas are only so wide," Angus says. "Why would folks take more than their share of space and leave the rest of us to squeeze past them? The world is a finite place."
Folks create dead space when they park two feet from the gas pump island, when they park one foot from the curb on a street, when they don't park their vehicle fully in the parking space, when they leave unusable space between their vehicle and a driveway opening or a street corner:

Folks take more than their share when they take two spaces on a parking lot. The driver who takes two spaces is saying he's twice as good as drivers who take just one space:

Some folks even park in a fire lane or other no-parking zone just to save a few steps:

"We be hillbillies," Angus says, "but even we know that when folks do that way they send a clear message to the rest of us: 'We'uns be better'n you'uns.'"

Angus Brangus also sees a lot of litter as he drives along country roads, out where the concrete don't grow:

One day Angus picked up litter along the highway outside Smack Dab:

One day Angus picked up just discarded cigarettes. He collected quite a few. "And cigarette filters are forever. I've fished 'em out of septic tanks ten years after the last smoker had lived in the house."

Then Angus compiled a profile of the average litterbug based on the litter he had collected. Angus concluded that the average rural litterbug smokes filtered Marlboros, drinks Bud Lite, and buys lottery tickets.
"And," Angus adds, "ain't a very good neighbor."
Angus Brangus reckons that folks who litter don't respect the rest of us very much. And even ol' Styrofoam Dome knows that if folks don't respect others, they don't respect themselves.
"Because," Angus says, "as my ol' pappy told me, in the great cosmic shebang of things, each person is just the other person in a different pair of overalls.
"I reckon the country would be a dern sight easier to look at without all that litter uglifying it:"