False Nostalgia?

Just a thought and I am sure that I am not the first to think of it-LOL

Recently I was at my inlaws for Christmas eve dinner. My dad in law's brother sent him a DVD that was comprised of a series of old 8mm movies that their dad had taken of the family over the course of many years. My inlaws made the remark about how old cars were better made than today's cars. I did not object to the remark, but it made me think. Today's cars are faster, safer, more agile,more fuel efficient and far better equiped than any car could have been in the 50's. Most did not make it 100K miles before giving out. Also modern robotics ensure that the tightness of the fit and finish of modern cars are far better than could have been achieved back then.

My dad and I have had many conversations about life back in the 50's and 60's and told me how he thought things were better then and people were happier. I asked what about African-Americans? Homosexuals? who were marginalized and descriminated against.

I am even guilty of it. I get nostalic from time to time about old games from the earlier nineties and fire up the old Genesis. I start and realize, damn, these things look like crap compared to the HD wonders on my PS3.

For those of you who have been arround for a bit, do you all catch yourselves remembering the past in a better light than it really was?

I have no trouble at all realizing that I am living the best life I've ever lived right now, here, in 2010.

Cars were built of very heavy metal and got terrible gas mileage. People thought they were built better because the heavier metal required heavy-duty welding and other types of construction that made the vehicle more "solid". You could even "hear" it when you closed the door. But those cars cannot compare to today's engineering. I laugh at my husband because he described some of the very strange vehicles he drove in England in the 1960's, one even split in half across side to side right behind the driver's seat. Very odd.

The day after I got my driver's license in 1968, I was driving to the dime store to buy more Christmas wrapping paper and a woman ran a stop sign and hit me at a 90degree angle. I was driving an old 1963 Pontiac Star Chief. She had a new Dodge something with a lot of grill work. She lost all her grill work and dented her hood badly. I had a small scratch on the chrome ring around my headlight. Nothing ever came of it because she was in the wrong and I had a witness and people weren't sue crazy. But my car was like a tank. Hers was very fragile.

Things have changed a lot.

I guess the more "things" we have in our world, the more we see in the grass on the other side. But it never is greener, just more cluttered.

Actually I see the 60's & 70's a slower pace for me individually, society was more unusal back then - streakers, emphasis on: free speech, & constitutional rights. I do remember the Atlantic Ocean was not blue. It was black. I love the ocean but when I went to swim back then I came out immersed in black oil, I couldn't get off. I was determined that was going to change. Now when I go to the Jersey Shore, the water is a gorgeous blue. I take notice, give thanks, and I am thrilled every time.

Thanks,
Holmes

I find it weird when I go to a classroom and the students spend all their time at a computer..it's almost scary...not at all the way it was when I was a high school student..or when everyone I grew up with just 'pops' up on my facebook page...only completely different with a family of their own now..

Technology is a good thing, but something to get used to...my facebook page is not the real me at all......feel like I'm still trying to impress these folks twenty years later arrrgghh

We certainly have not built a better peace.

Somethings Happening Here
Buffalo Springfield

There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware

I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind

I think it's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side

It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away

We better stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, now, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

Actually it's titled "FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH"

There's a positive and negative to every era.

But as we make way for progress, we must sacrifice some of what was "good" to make room for the "better". But sometimes that sacrifice isn't always progressively positive and the good things of the past are gone forever (and usually to worse things) all in the name of "progress".

I'm all for progress. Can't avoid it. I just think it's a crying shame that what good there is seems to usually be sacrificed in order for that gain.

Shangrala

Progress is good, but the fast pace and stress in our world today isn't so great. I don't have the fast pace as I'm a stay at home wife with too much time on my hands, but I see it when family visits....the grandkids all know all the computer stuff.

While they visited recently, the oldest, 16 has her own lap top, my daughter has her own laptop, our laptop was also in the family room and there were the 3 of us all on our own laptops, doing our own different thing! It was our 'quiet time' from each other! The other 2 grandkids had their computer games/Playstation dance thing...they were having their 'noisy time' with each other!

I liked the kind of dances we used to go to ... the sock hops in high school... with records and all the kids danced the night away. No drugs, no booze...just a good time.

What I miss about the good old days is the safety we had. We could play outside without fear of being taken...I grew up in a city of about 40,000. You could go out after dark or walk home from your friends house without even thinking about bad stuff happening. My folks didn't have to lock the doors at night!

I'll grant you more fuel efficient, but if you got into a fender bender with a car from the fifties it didn't cause three thousand in damage to the vehicle. If something went wrong with a vehicle then or in the 60s or 70s it took a trip to the auto parts store and an afternoon in your own garage and the car was right as rain once again.

The first new car my parents ever bought was a 67 mustang, its still running fine and in pristine condition. My uncle bought it from them when my dad went into the service and now refuses to drive it in the winter (salt on the roads).

I do believe many products were made much better. If you bought a shirt in the 50s or 60s the odds of having a missed seam were non-existent.

If you're my age (or older) think of your first tonka truck or wagon. Those things may not have been child safe (metal and sharp corners) but they certainly lasted longer than their current equivalent.

I do miss soda in a glass bottle, but I don't miss shampoo in glass bottles. I can't tell you how many times the Prell hit the cast iron tub and shattered. But the tub brings up another thing I think was made better. My parents house was built in the 40s. The tub is original, it's never even had to be refinished. It looks as good now as it did the day it was installed in the house.

It's hard to say "than it really was" as I only have my life and my experiences to compare to? There are many things about the 1950's and 1960's (and other eras) that I feel were "better" than today but there are also many things that were not. The cars back then you could work on and fix yourself; one can't do that anymore. I even had a job interview where I was asked if I fixed my own car and was proud to explain to what extent I could do that. Now I can't even change a tire because I have an SUV and the nuts are put on with pneumatic drills so Superman would have a tough time getting them off :-)

One thing I try to remind myself is that when one is living in a certain time/place that's all there is. It's comparing apples and oranges to try and literally compare 1955 and 2010. BUT, my feelings and experiences are all mine and all of a piece and I can enjoy something from 1955 and/or something from 2005 more or less than the other. Feeling cars were better is not the same as their actually "being", physically better. One is comparing how something made one feel, not how it functioned.

One cannot tell if the 1950's/60's were better or worse for a particular homosexual or a person of color, etc. unless one was living that life, then. They did not have now to compare to. Things are what they are and we feel as we feel when we're feeling it :-) I would not have liked to have been my great grandparents without running water, sewers, etc. but I don't have to be them and I imagine they enjoyed their life as I'm enjoying mine; with all the joys and pains (three+ children dying before puberty) inherent in living.

I think people in general were more polite before.

I do agree with you, AAAAA, that the cars were definitely simpler. My first car was a '65 Mustang. White with black interior. I did all, and I mean ALL, the maintenance on that car myself because my father, after his morning job as a rural mail carrier, was a mechanic and he taught all of us kids, boys and girls, how to maintain our cars. He even taught me how to set the gap on the spark plugs by EAR. No feeler gauge needed. You put the plugs in, cap them, start the engine, and LISTEN. If it sounded smooth, like it was firing evenly, then fine. If not, take out the plugs and look at them and find the one that was off. Then fix it and put them back in and go again. The stuff he taught me was amazing. Now days, they let computers do that stuff.

Once after college, my driver's window fell down inside the door. I had to drive home to my parents' home at Christmas 300 miles in freezing weather, all bundled up. When I got there, I ordered a part to replace it. When it came, I asked my dad what to do. He said, I don't know. I looked at him like he was crazy. He said, tear down the other door and look at it. So, I took apart the passenger door and saw how it was supposed to look. I learned how to properly install a window regulator in a '65 Mustang.

Needless to say, I wish I still had that car.

What I find frustrating is that my daughter's car has been in the shop many times in the past 12 months. The computer only reads a generic error code so the mechanic was systematically changing everything in the car (points, plugs, stuff) over and over again. 10 months and 3k into her dad figured out she lost a piston (greek to me) and brought it over to the mechanic and TOLD him what the issue was.

BUT once this was repaired, three days later her cruise is still dropping out, her service light is back on and still just the generic error code. Now we've used this mechanic for years, for both our warranty work and vehicles not under warranty, and we always thought he was honest and fair. But I'm now in the market for a new mechanic. We bring this car in every month and the bill starts at $250 because this is the fee for putting it on the computer. Whatever happened to the philosophy that you don't pay for a service unless they actually FIX the problem?

There are times in the past that I remember fondly but I don't think I idealize the past in the way that some nostalgic folk do.

I miss my grandparents. I enjoyed some things like being in the choir and band but I still remember being picked on and called names.

Yes, my 1977 Camaro was awesome to drive but honestly I prefer my 2005 Audi with front and side airbags and antilock brakes and seat belts. Did you wear seat belts growing up? I didn't.

Since 1975, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has been recording the number of fatalities on U.S. roadways and in 2008 there was a drop of nearly 10% over the previous year and the largest reduction in both number and percentage since 1982

There is one thing that I am definitely NOT nostalgic about and that is restrooms. Growing up my grandparents did not have running water. They also did not have toilet paper. We used an outhouse and a Sears and Roebuck catalog.

Isn't it odd the things that we just accept these days? I remember when air bags first came out, a co-worker HAD to have them. Shortly after she had a fender bender in the parking lot at work. I have to say seeing that air bag deployed was one of the worst things I've ever seen, it broke her glasses and her nose, she had two black eyes and a concussion. I said at the time "I'll never have one of those!" When they became standard, I purchased older vehicles to avoid them. To this day when I ride in my husband's truck I make him turn the passenger side air bag off.

These days I have no choice but to comply, but I resent it.

Fav nostalgia quotes:


If you're yearning for the good old days, just turn off the air conditioning. ~Griff Niblack

People seem to get nostalgic about a lot of things they weren't so crazy about the first time around. ~Author Unknown

Things ain't what they used to be and probably never was. ~Will Rogers

Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory. ~Franklin Pierce Adams

True nostalgia is an ephemeral composition of disjointed memories. ~Florence King

I will give you the flip side on that one. When I worked for a snack food company years ago and spent alot of time on the road. At one intersection I watched a guy run a red light and hit another car coming across the intersection. The guy was going at least 50 by my guess. His car's front collided with the other car. The car's airbags deployed and he actually got up and walked a few seconds later.

Had he not had the airbags he would have been hauled off in a stretcher with severe head injuries.

I have no doubt that in severe crashes they are a helpful safety feature, and if I am to believe what is reported they've made strides in the sensors that deploy the air bag. I still think this should be an optional feature in the steering wheel.

I'm with your parents, Tim. With cars back then, you could understand what was under your hood. When your car broke down, you could fix it yourself or have it fixed for a decent price. You could open the hood and understand how it works. With so much of it computerized now, just about everything has to be done by a professional and it usually costs a lot of money.

I remember it in a better light because I felt a deeper connection to the real world, its people, and myself. It appears the more we become connected to our computers and gadgets, the more disconnected we become to the real world, it's people, and ourselves.

I'm not tempted by fancy bells and whistles, and I've never been a fan of new and improved. I prefer simple, tried and true. I don't need more - I only need enough.

As for games to pass the time, they don't hold much importance to me - they are pretty far down on my list of priorities. I can't imagine what one would think as they lie on their death bed, pondering their accomplishments in life. I'd rather work on mastering the levels of the real world than any game one could create.

Hi I just want to thank everyone who has replied to my post. I appreciate all of the different perspectives that have been so beautifully articulated here.

All of you add to my knowledge and for that I am greatful.

T

I think you and my Mom in Law would get along very well, this almost sounds like something she might have written.

Outdoor toilets in the olden days were a time-saver, especially in winter.

I HATE HATE HATE outhouses! Most beaches and rest areas in this area STILL have outhouses.

I loved the red and white '57 Merc that my friend's boyfriend had. It was totally cool. Her parents owned an Edsel (spelling?). My folks had a '57 Chysler with the shifting on the dash as push buttons! That is when I was 16-17 in like '64-'65, but it was fun to drive!