From the Confessions Archive, Oct. '05

I’ve been thinking about how much has changed since 1956, the year my Chevy was new. That was the year I stacked a bunch of boxes on top of my Western Flyer, climbed atop the boxes, and coasted down our street. The street was really steep and, if I’d made it to the bottom of the hill, I’d have been right smack in the middle of the busiest intersection in town! I didn’t make it to the bottom; I didn’t even make it as far as our house. The wagon swerved into the curb and launched me and the rest of the load into a ditch. I don’t remember if the wagon was hurt, or the boxes, but I broke my arm. I’d like to think I’ve gotten a little smarter in the fifty years since then!
Something that surprises me about change is how much things remain the same in the midst of it. Folks in the fifties figured we’d all be getting around by personal jet-pack a half a century in the future. Or, at the very least, in personal transportation modules that would whisk us wherever by voice command, automatically avoiding hazards and zooming around obstacles. Nope, cars still need the same kind of driver input they needed in ’56. That’s good, I’m not sure I’m up for flying around in a jet-pack and I sure don’t want to trust myself to some auto-pilot thingie on 270!
For the most part I think things have gotten better in the last fifty years. It’s easier to get things and there are a lot more things to get. Although stuff is a lot more expensive, in a lot of ways it’s more affordable. As expensive as houses, cars, most stuff, is, we have a lot more and have less trouble getting it. We certainly must have a lot more money to spend.
Today we shop online for many things, never leaving the comfort of our PC. Many of us carry our phone everywhere we go and some never put it down. We know what’s happening anywhere in the world, as it’s happening. We hop a plane and fly across the country or around the world as readily as folks in ’56 took a bus across town.
Many, most, things are a lot better today than they were in 1956. Although my car is still on the road and in pretty good shape, it spent most of its life parked in a garage. Today’s cars, at least the mechanical parts, have a much longer life expectancy. They don’t even need tune-ups for 100,000 miles! They get good gas mileage, perform better and they have better paint jobs. On the down side, periodic maintenance on some new cars costs more than some cars cost new in 1956; and need someone with a degree in computer science to work on them.
I don’t know if I like many of the things we have today that folks didn’t have in 1956, things I mention above. But I do know I’m damn sure glad I’ve got them and would really think I was in trouble if I didn’t have them.