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This is the first of a series of stories on the changing car culture in America.

When you're a teenager, there are many things you desperately want to find: friends, fun, a future, freedom.

In American Graffiti, the iconic movie about teenagers set in 1962, the kids find all of that just by getting in their cars. The teenagers spend a whole lot of time tooling around in their cars — looking, cruising.

But the deep relationship between American teen culture and the automobile depicted in the film has changed. Young people are driving less, getting their licenses later and waiting longer to purchase their first new car.

The movie was set — but not filmed — in Modesto, Calif., and I wanted to see if any part of the city was like the movie. So on a hot Friday and Saturday summer night, I drove around Modesto.

With its downtown and long, wide streets, the city seems a perfect place to cruise. But that's not what's happening.

Celene Murrillo and her friends were among the many teens getting dropped off at the movie. Murrillo is 19, and she doesn't have a driver's license.

"If there was something that was out there forcing me to get out there and actually get my license I probably would," she says. "But there's, like, your parents, so you have something to depend on — and so maybe that's why."

She says her parents don't mind dropping her off around town — and she doesn't mind it either.

Blanca Correa, 16, doesn't have a driver's license, and she has no immediate plans to get one. "I've never actually thought it was that important," she says.

Movies

On Location: Cruising With 'American Graffiti'

Basil is growing thick and leafy in many backyard gardens throughout the U.S. right now, which means many people are thinking about pesto. It's one of the more basic sauces you can make — in addition to basil, all you need is Parmesan or Romano cheese, a little garlic, some extra virgin olive oil and Italian pine nuts.

But if you've looked for them at the grocery store recently, you know those little Italian nuts sport a big price tag. Hungry bugs and warmer temperatures have severely diminished harvests. Now it's not uncommon to see them selling for $60 to $120 a pound.

Julia della Croce, author of Italian Home Cooking, says it's a global problem.

"Even in Italy, where they're also very expensive, they keep them under lock and key in the shops," she says. "So even the Italians can't afford them."

More From Julia della Croce

The Salt

Unraveling The Mystery Of A Grandmother's Lost Ravioli Recipe

Basil is growing thick and leafy in many backyard gardens throughout the U.S. right now, which means many people are thinking about pesto. It's one of the more basic sauces you can make — in addition to basil, all you need is Parmesan or Romano cheese, a little garlic, some extra virgin olive oil and Italian pine nuts.

But if you've looked for them at the grocery store recently, you know those little nuts sport a big price tag. Hungry bugs and warmer temperatures have severely diminished harvests. Now it's not uncommon to see them selling for $60 to $120 a pound.

Julia della Croce, author of Italian Home Cooking, says it's a global problem.

"Even in Italy, where they're also very expensive, they keep them under lock and key in the shops," she says. "So even the Italians can't afford them."

More From Julia della Croce

The Salt

Unraveling The Mystery Of A Grandmother's Lost Ravioli Recipe

But here, the power of the passage is ruined by a graceless explication: "Whenever a single entity was paired with its opposite, the value of both became clear from the contrast — and the mutual association enriched the meaning of both." Kirino is a chronic over-explainer, and the constant commentary often mars the dark simplicity of the story.

One chapter ends with, "Saying nothing, she turned and walked out of the room where she worked — the room in which she determined each day which thousand people would die." The next begins with, "It was Izanami's task to select who would die — a thousand people every day." In some myths, repetition can be songlike and beautiful. Think, for instance, of the refrain of the Brothers Grimm: over and over again, Snow White has "skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony." But here, the repetition isn't enchanting — it just feels as though Kirino expects readers to forget the story from one page to the next.

If Kirino understood the value of suggestion, of leaving some things unsaid, The Goddess Chronicle would be all the more powerful.