Rusty Old Car

The charging ram hood ornament on the 1949 Dodge speaks of power and freedom that once carried a family down the open road to visit grandma.  She now sits slowly sinking into the world around her.  I wonder what color she was in her prime for there is not a speck of paint anywhere to be found. All that is left of the seat cushions are rusty springs.  Trees now hold the trunk tightly closed.  The chrome handles and key covers are all that have not given way to the elements....it must have been really good chrome back then.

Every time I see this rusty old car at the farm, the flat tire scene from “A Christmas Story” pops into my mind.  In the backseat are three, not two, boys whose ages are all less than six years apart.  They are spitting at each other, pinching and giving the knuckle punch to the bicep area.  Dad is in the front seat saying a few choice words about their behavior and telling them if it doesn’t stop “your going to get it when we get home”.  Mom is sitting there with the smile of Ralphie’s mom thinking “my little darlings, oh how cute you are”.

The parents are smoking away – Dad has his pipe and Mom her cigarettes.  The air is so thick with smoke that the boys have rolled the windows completely down even though it is winter and the freezing air makes them shiver even though they are wearing their plaid wool coats and leather bombers hats with the earmuffs turned down over their ears.  Perhaps, that is why none of them ever smoked.

There were no seatbelts, no automatic or childproof door locks, no DVD players, and no video games to entertain the restless energy of three young boys.  There was only teasing, taunting, and road games.  We used to play all kinds of games to pass the time like -- who could spot the first black cow or John Deere tractor.  When we played those games we looked out the window and we observed the world around us. When our parents had enough of our acting up, we learned to sit quietly and just entertain ourselves by counting fence posts or making faces at each other. We saw how other people lived. We watched people at work and at play.  We saw poverty and prosperity.  We saw all the seasons change.  We saw nature at its best and worst.  We saw life as we traveled over the miles.  We went to visit relatives, the State Fair, to sell eggs in town, to church, to funerals and shopping the weekend before Christmas.  Shopping then was for necessity not for entertainment for most people.

Kids today miss so much with all their gadgets that parents buy to keep them quiet.  They miss life.  They miss family connection.  The teasing, the being picked on and the conversations of a road trip are what I remember now.  I guess what they will have to remember will be the high score of some game or a song from some movie playing on the player built into the back seat….. if you have more than one kid,  you get each a player so each can watch what they want with earbuds pushed into their heads so they can isolate themselves and not have to be tolerant of others or share anything.

So I wonder, with all our technology are we just creating generations of “me” people who will only know what is important to them?  Will they learn about life by observing it or will they only live in their world of getting what they want all the time?  I will take my childhood in an old car without seatbelts, DVD players and gadgets any day over the way things are now.  I hope society doesn’t wake up some day and say….. “Oops we really messed up”.

 ...........

"The trouble with so many of us is that we underestimate the power of simplicity.

We have a tendency it seems to over complicate our lives and forget 

what's important and what's not.  We tend to mistake movement for achievement.

We tend to focus on activites instead of results.

And as the pace of life continues to race along in the outside world,

we forget that we have the power to control our lives

regardless of what's going on outside."

Unknown, posted of Positively Positive's Facebook page