However, in two states laws forbid you from placing a pump inside your own gas tank and filling it up. In Oregon and New Jersey, gas station attendants do it for you. At least, that used to be the case. The new year has brought new laws to the state of Oregon, and now residents of the Beaver State are allowed to pump their own gas , at least in some counties. Distraught Oregonians have been complaining on Facebook that the new rule forces them to learn how to operate gas pumps and get out of their cars.
But beyond laughing at the hapless Oregonians, the news raises an interesting question: Why does Oregon even have gas station attendants in the first place? In , when Oregon first passed the law mandating gas station attendants, the rule made sense. The state was concerned about random, untrained people handling potentially explosive liquids. At the time, many states had similar laws on the books, but a lot has changed since , and gas stations and pumps are much safer now.
In most states, gas station attendants died out during the oil crises in and , when people were looking for any way to save a few cents at the pump. People who live in the West do not understand what has happened in Oklahoma and the Midwest. What began as a thin trickle of migrant farmers has become a flood. Families camp next to the road, and every ditch has become a settlement. Amid the deluge of poor farmers, the citizens of the western states are frightened and on edge.
They fear that the dislocated farmers will come together; that the weak, when united, will become strong—strong enough, perhaps, to stage a revolt. A waitress named Mae and a cook named Al work at a coffee shop on Route Mae watches the many cars pass by, hoping that truckers will stop, for they leave the biggest tips. One day, two truckers with whom Mae is friendly drop in for a piece of pie. They discuss the westward migration, and Mae reports that the farmers are rumored to be thieves.
Just then, a tattered man and his two boys enter, asking if they can buy a loaf of bread for a dime. Mae brushes them off. She reminds the man that she is not running a grocery store, and that even if she did sell him a loaf of bread she would have to charge fifteen cents. From behind the counter, Al growls at Mae to give the man some bread, and she finally softens.
Then she notices the two boys looking longingly at some nickel candy, and she sells their father two pieces for a penny. The truckers, witnessing this scene, leave Mae an extra-large tip. As the Joads set out for California, the second phase of the novel begins: their dramatic journey west. Almost immediately, the Joads are exposed to the very hardships that Steinbeck describes in the alternating expository chapters that chronicle the great migration as a whole; the account of the family provides a close-up on the larger picture.
Thus, in Chapter 13, at the gas station, the family encounters the hostility and suspicion described in Chapters 12, 14, and The attendant unfairly pegs the Joads as vagrants and seems sure that they have come to beg gas from him.
The apologetic attendant confides in the Joads that his livelihood has been endangered by the fancy corporate service stations. He fears that he, like the poor tenant farmers, will soon be forced to find another way to make his living. The system in force here works according to a vicious cycle, a cycle that perpetuates greed as a method of sheer survival. Before the family has been gone a full day, Grampa suffers a stroke and dies.
Because Grampa was, at one point, the most enthusiastic proponent of the trip, dreaming of the day he would arrive in California and crush fat bunches of vine-ripened grapes in his mouth, his death foreshadows the harsh realities that await the family in the so-called Promised Land.
Still, even in this forlorn world, opportunities to display kindness, virtue, and generosity exist. The story of Mae, in its simplistic illustration of morality and virtue, functions almost like a parable, and considerably lightens the tone of these chapters.
0コメント