I know I’m not the first person to say something like this, but regardless: “Things were simpler when I was a kid in the 1950s and ’60s.” There, I’ve said it again, anyway.
A reminder of how simple things were occurred to me the other day as I sat in the car waiting for my wife, who was shopping. I was sitting in the car because I don’t shop, although I have nothing against men who do. What I usually do, when there’s shopping to be done, is sit in the car outside the shopping center, read the paper, guard the valuables in our car and keep an eye on things going on in the lot.
It occurred to me that I couldn’t name one of the fancy vehicles around me in that sprawling shopping center parking lot. There were dozens of different types of cars and vans and trucks and so forth – all with wild colors and fancy shapes – and I couldn’t give you the name of one of them.
I’m old enough to remember when there were only about three or four automakers in America, and they each made about two or three different cars. In those days I could name every car on the road because almost everyone owned either a Ford, a Chevy or a Plymouth. An oddball in those days was someone who drove a Studebaker, but we didn’t have any of those types in our small town, and I was in my teens before I saw my first Studebaker up close. It was a memorable experience for me.
Despite the fact that there were only a few different kinds of cars and trucks around, it seemed that every family had a distinctive vehicle, whether it was a certain kind of pickup, an oddly dented sedan or a station wagon of a certain color, so every family car was easy to identify, even from a distance. It was a big help to the nosy people in town who always liked to know whose car was in whose dooryard and for how long.
Sheriff’s deputies liked the fact that there were only a few different kinds of vehicles to keep track of. They always knew who was out and about that way. They knew all the drunks, of course, and if a usual suspect was out late on a Friday or Saturday night the deputy was safe in assuming the driver was “operating under the influence” and could be cited for drunk driving.
If the deputy had recently cited the all-too-familiar driver for drunk driving, he knew that he could soon add operating after suspension to the reckless driver’s long list of offenses. And he could do all this just by glancing down Main Street and seeing the silouette of a well-known vehicle.
I don’t think that kind of thing can be done any more. There are too many different vehicles, too many different shapes and sizes and models and colors. Too much.
Anyway, years ago families stayed with the same brand of car generation after generation. If you were born into a Ford family, you bought Ford cars, Ford trucks, even Ford tractors. Although you might have a few Chevy or Plymouth owners among your wide circle of friends, you never really got too close to them. After all, if someone could go buy a Chevy or a Plymouth, who knows what else they might be capable of doing?
In those days, a person would change his politics or his religion or his spouse before he’d change from a Ford to a Chevy. A fella might date a woman from a Chevy family, but when it was time to settle down, he’d seldom marry her.
John McDonald is the author of “A Moose and a Lobster Walk into a Bar,” “Down the road a piece,” “The Maine Dictionary” and “Nothin’ but Puffins.” Contact him at Mainestoryteller@yahoo.com.
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