Flashback

When I was younger, I noticed how older people reminisced about things in the past.

Now that I am older, I understand why. For older people the future is an unknown, sometimes frightening thought, but the discussions of the past will most of the time stir memories of things we admired or just plain loved.

Me, I'm a car guy. I just plain love cars, or as older people will say, I loved cars you could look at, identify the brand, the model, the horse power, and the year it was made.

Those were the days when the new cars hit the dealers' showrooms everyone rushed to their lots to see the new models so later that night you could join in conversation with all your other friends because they had checked them out as well.

Those were the days when cars were a statement, cars with an identity.

For my female readers that may not understand any of this, cars for the most part have always been a guy thing.

Us guys wanted our cars and our girlfriends to be hot and fast.

Straight from the factory, cars had fins, wings, bullet tail lights, twin head lights, stripes, spinner hub caps, white walls, baby moons, side pipes, tear drop spotlights, continental kits, fender skirts, curb feelers, mock antennas, rag tops, tuck and roll, bucket seats, bench seats, retractable hard tops, removable hard tops, portholes, 3 deuces, dual quads, a three on the tree or maybe a 4 on the floor, hydromatic, push button automatic, ram air, scoops,and a smorgasbord of cubic inch engines developing horse power that slammed you back in your seat.

Those were the days. The cars had trunks large enough to sneak 5 of your buddies into the drive-in theater and back seats big enough for you to passionately make out with your date while parked at lover's lane.

Cars of today have no distinction. They all look alike, clones.

As far as I am concerned, there only needs to be one large dealer that sells all the brands of cars.

Car shopping would be easy since they all look alike. You walk in, tell the salesman how much money you have to spend and what color you want.

Then the salesman gets on the loud speaker and says bring up #93582408659 in red, customer waiting.

Then as the new owner of #93582408659, as you pull out on the highway no one even turns their head to look at your car because it looks just like all the other cars on the road.

Do you think anyone will write songs about #93582408659?


















In my lifetime, I have been fortunate to be able to own enough cars that if I still had them all, they would fill up a car lot.

Of all of the cars I have owned, several of them were real high-power, gear-slamming, sit-you-back-in-the-seat muscle cars that had style and class.

So yes, now that I am old, I do flashback a lot to the past.