Maybe it really is a jungle out there.
There seems to be no END to what the pampered class will do to protect themselves from the suburban jungles out there.
Whatever happened to crusing Route 66 in a ragtop Delta 88??
Today's commuters have heated-and chilled-leather seats, entertainment systems with satellite radio and TV, GPS guidance systems and more. Rear cameras have replaced mirrors. And you can't get a decent bumper sticker on the back bumper these days without screwing up your reverse radar.
Still, nothing... NO-THING comes close to evoking the suburban jungle like the armament you can slap on your SUV these days. Remember Daktari?!? Dr. Marsh Tracy. Careening across the African wild in his Jeep, treating the sick lions and beasts of the Wameru, and saving them from the ever-present poachers. This man feared naught.
But by today's standards, Daktari was a sap.
Take a look at his vehicle. What's missing? Good Lord, it's as plain as the nose on its face... No grille guard!
How did he keep the brush away from his headlights? How did he 
nudge the errant pachyderm out of his way? How did he protect himself from errant lacrosse sticks or tee shots??
The grille guard sprang from the lineage of the roll bar and its cousin, the locomotive cow-catcher. It's a survival necessity. Don't traverse the globe without it.
Nothing projects fierce rough-hewn brawn like the grille guard. Dr. Marsh Tracy didn't understand this.
Thankfully, today, there are Doctors who do understand. They're our fearless periodontists and podiatrists. They're the plastic surgeons who know how to keep the rhino in rhinoplasty... in their Volvos, BMWs and Lexus SUVs.
They know.
And I want to pay special tribute to the "Daktari of Danbury" I saw this morning, on his misison, no doubt, to deliver his daughter safely to her prep school. There I was, travelling at a safe speed and distance from other cars when suddently he appeared from out of nowhere, looming in my rear-view mirror, filling me with a sense of... of...
GRAM!!!!
Why say what I can show...
On your right: What his car looked like.
On your left: The "cat" glasses my Grandmother used to wear.
There is nothing more I can do to this man that his own lack of self awareness hasn't already done. I just wanted to thank him for reminding me of my sweet, sweet Grams!
Wryter
