Why do many old car guys think that only really old cars can be the vessels of our fondest memories?
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| Does it require sepia tones to be authentic history? photo source: Unsplash |
Black and white toned scenes float by in our memories. But how many of us were born in the era before color photography? How many of us have grown up in the digital age, where images are rarely, if ever, consigned to hard copies?
You can think of the cars from your formative years. Unless you are well into your 80's, the cars of your memories are likely to originate from the 1980's and even later. I was born in the mid 1950's, my family's cars spanned the last years of the 1950's, then were from the 1960's. During the years of my early childhood my Dad bought only newer cars. They were either bought brand new, or only a few years used. Our parents had lives to live, and families to raise. They needed good cars to get things done. I know that during my childhood, my folks needed a good car to take care of business. There wasn't any nostalgia expended on an old car, they were just tools.
As a child growing up within your family, these are the cars that you rode in as a child. Cars that were driven on family vacations. For many of us growing up in the 1950's and '60's, it was a station wagon. These were eventually replaced by minivans, and those were ultimately eclipsed by the SUV and Crossover. They were usually also the cars that you learned to drive in.
Then there are those cars that you owned as a teenager, or as a young adult. For many of us they were the old family cars, handed down to us by our parents or relatives. If you were already a real "car person," they were the old cars that you bought for yourself. We either worked during the Summer, or during the year at a burger joint or gas station.
These are the cars of your past, they will probably not match the cars that are celebrated in popular culture. Like in American Graffiti or Happy Days. These are not the cars that authors like Thomas Murray like to use to draw the connections between the events and experiences of our lives, memories, and family.
But memories are being built all the time, right now in the present! "The Good Old Days"are occurring every single day, for someone who is experiencing Life for the first time.
While it's fun to reminisce about the cars of the old days, it's important not to overlook and devalue those that we are using to make our memories, right now.
Using rose colored glasses we are looking back fondly, we forget the bad times. Oftentimes certain incidents take on a greater importance now, in retrospect, than they did when they actually occurred in the Past.
It's a trite expression that childhood has an expiration date.
So does Old Age! but it's not nice to mention it, or to remind others!
The vehicles that we owned and used during our own family's childhood years, probably play a bigger part in our kid's memories, than in ours.
These were usually vehicles that we bought because we needed them, the four door sedan, the station wagon, the mini van, the SUV. Oftentimes, buying these required the selling of a favorite car. But family needs and responsibilities had to take priority.
They were not always what we would have preferred to spend our money on, but they were what we needed at the time.
I was reminded of this by events of the recent past
A three day road trip with my two grown kids including my son's fiance.
Five now current adults in my new Ford Flex.
It's a bit sad to think that we will be moving apart as they build the rest of their lives together. My daughter will also start to build a future of her own.
I accept and even welcome that, my wish is that they will all be able to establish their own lives, and they need the freedom to do that.
I suppose that twenty years into the future we'll look back fondly on those trips in the Flex. The present will have become our collective Past.
Many times the actual perceptions and emotions that we are experiencing in the present, are quickly replaced by what is being anticipated. It is easy to dismiss the present as unworthy of the savoring, because we have become so focused on future events that we anticipate will be of more value. This can tend to lead us to "fast forward" through the present.
The same thing can happen with the recent past, we might feel that the events that occurred yesterday aren't "vintage" enough, and are instead considered commonplace. But it's these events that constitute "our" history. Thinking about the mid 2000's doesn't seem historic, but it certainly comprises a portion of our own personal history.
Recently I attended my 50th. high school reunion, I'll save you doing the math. I graduated from high school in 1973. So it's been awhile.
A lot has occurred in my Life since I walked onto that stage to receive my high school diploma. Most of it has been more interesting and a lot more fun, than before I walked off that gymnasium stage. As an adult I became responsible for determining the direction of my own life, and later, that of my family. It wasn't always easy, and it didn't always turn out as well as I expected, or had hoped for. But overall I think that I've come out ahead.
Whatever my Life has been, it might not have been epic, but it was mine. I guess that's enough.
Minivans full of memories, nothing wrong with that.
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