RUDIMENTS, pt. 253
Making Cars
Sometime around the 1970's
era, some genius had the idea
of beginning to change over
ordinary street lamps and parking
lot lighting into what was at first
I think called Mercury Vapor
lamps, Arc Lighting, or one of
those then-modern names. The
crime-stopper idea behind it all
was a broader, more-steady and
wide illumination, and far better
candlepower. Maybe from the
dull-ass angle of insurance or
an insurance investigator or an
accountant, cop, or mayor it
made some sense, but to the
actual person on the street it
began ruining everything. Have
you ever seen Reality in the
throes of death? Well if you've
ever seen a city street or avenue
or a parking lot done up in this
kind of lighting, you have.
Thankfully, whoever's toilet-seat
idea this was was laughed out
of town in about 10 years, and
the lights were all done over
again - but for those 10 or 12
years it was Moon-like and
horrid. A sort of greenish-glow-
blue-amber haze, distorting
every evening hue, and throwing
the streets into B-movie horror-scene
vagaries, beyond recognition.
You know how men stand around,
at bars and places, and talk
about women or sports? Well,
it was so bad for a while that
people would stand around
talking about how crummy
the new lighting was.
-
Sometime around then the same
years, gradually, everything just
became unrecognizable. It was as
if I had a mental home, but nowhere
real at all to call home. I can pick
probably a hundred things that
signaled it, and one by one they
each became equally important.
In 1967, the Feds instituted that
rule for those little side-markers
on cars. Usually, they started out
as small lights, so that, I guess the
weird thinking was, you'd 'see' the
approaching auto from the side,
or whatever. The first two or three
years, they were just as add-ons
to the car design, small, rectangular
(GM, ugly), or Chrysler, (nice,
slick, circular). Then, they got into
the swing and just began to design
tail-light fixtures that made the
angle and came around the side
of the car, with design aspects too.
Which meant that a basic tail-light
replacement went from, let's say,
a 20 dollar fixture to a 110 dollar
one in about two years. (Now
they reach 5 and 6 hundred).
And then, the rule got passed
that no longer did headlamps
have to be simple, round lights.
So they began that hideous era of
rectangular headlamps, usual duals.
Hideous mistake, destroying the
design aspect of the car - which
is mostly made up of curves, arcs
and swirls, representing movement
and dynamics, and, of course
reflecting the round tires and
wheel-wells. The dead gimmickry
of rectangular headlamps and
nacelles made absolutely no
sense. And then, in the same way
as tail-lamps, the rules were changed
so that the auto-illumination was
all that counted. As long as the
candlepower was correct, the shape
of the headlight no longer mattered. So
it soon got integrated into the body-lines
and design - twisted, elongated, bug-eyed,
whatever. So, in the same way the 12 dollar
head-light bulb became a integrated lumen
plug-in at a 110 bucks. AND, then they
went whole-heavy into seatbelts, and
airbags. Truly a disaster. Seatbelts
are a dismal, dumb, intrusion to
most people's driving. I'll leave
it at that, except to say I never
wear mine and when I do it's
usually under duress (or under
your dress?)....
-
This entire car-design episode was
just indicative of the way the world
was resonating. They actually took
the nice, round word Esso, in about
1972, and turned it into Exxon. Of
course, NIXON was President, so
he was probably flattered. They
endlessly played radio and TV
ads of the Esso Tiger singing
some lazy old 1920's song, 'There'll
Be Some Changes Made' (1921,
by Benton Overstreet and Billy
Higgins), to introduce the new
name to the American public, or
as I usually called them, Mr. and
Mrs. Dimwit from Hollowhead
Junction. It was a very strange
Winter that season. People seemed
willing to just fall into place, give
it all up, and let others rule their
ways. It was a harsh thing to
witness. The world was a different
place from today. No computers,
No dollar stores. No coffee shops at
every corner. McDonald's, Burger
King, maybe Howard Johnson's and
Sambo's. That was, outside of the
highway stuff, Bob's Big Boy and
all that, the limited expanse of
choices until, in a few years, other
things began popping up. The
original gingham farm-dress Wendy's
and a few others joints. Sambo's
(there was one in Elmira) was actually
a sit-down cheap restaurant on the
order of, say, today's Denny's or
Perkins, and their featured character
was this dumb-ass Steppin Fetchit
type black-boy slave. It was pretty
incredible how they got away
with that, and they did for
some 20 years. I could never
believe it. It was a bonafide
chain of restaurants, at least
out that way, from Binghamton
and Scranton and Elmira and
that part of those two states.
-
You learn and you live -
hopefully doing both together.
One of either without the
other doesn't bring much sense.
I always called the arc of life
'Paradise or Paradox.' Kind
of the same personal choice of
everyone, from Saul of Tarsus
to Charlie Manson. I guess I
opted for paradox.
-
Funny thing, today I saw a guy
in a pickup-truck, an older Ford,
maybe '95 or so. I saw it from the
back, and what I saw brought back
reams of memories and good feelings,
for something you never see anymore.
The guy was young, maybe in
his mid-twenties, and I figured
he must be in his glory and I
wondered if he knew how singular
it looked. The old truck must have
had a bench seat, long ago and far
back - no console, no bucket-seat
stuff - and there, right next to him,
head to head, was his girlfriend, all
snuggled and close. You used to see
that a lot, everywhere, in fact, when
cars and trucks had bench seats. It
just doesn't happen much now.
And it was really sweet.
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