I first encountered Claude Cooke on the internet, when he and his wife, Joyce, briefly became viral sensations. In a YouTube clip viewed more than three million times since it was posted, in 2007, they dance down a suburban Houston street to a rap song while their canary-yellow car slowly glides—driverless—between them. “Ghost Ridin’ Grandma” would have been a classic of its genre, if there were a genre of such videos. Cooke was 77 years old at the time and danced with youthful enthusiasm.The second time I encountered Cooke, he called out of the blue to talk to me about fracking. This was a few years later, amid growing concerns about whether the use of hydraulic fracturing would lead to widespread water contamination. When something went wrong…
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