Previous Files
July 24, 2007
May 28, 2007
May 2, 2007
March 1, 2007
January 10, 2007
October 8, 2006
June 26, 2006
May 23, 2006
April 25, 2006
December 6, 2005
October 14, 2005
July 22, 2005
May 10, 2005
April 20, 2005
March 29, 2005
March 16, 2005
March 11, 2005
Most Recent |
August 9, 2007
This
was the week in August, exactly a half century ago that my 17 year old self took
delivery of a new 1957 Chevrolet convertible. It strains my credulity to think
that since I proudly drove that car from the dealer's lot, 50 years have come,
been lived through and used up one by one, then slipped away into the past.
 The
world I saw through the windshield of that car bears little resemblance to the
one I now find myself in. The theater and the set is different, and so too is
the cast of players. It's a sad fact that most of the people that were living
when that car was new and I had 17 summers are not alive now. I ruefully think
that perhaps the world seems so different to me because there are different
people in it.
Strangely I seem to feel about the same, for the most part. Unlike the
car, which became a classic and is now worth 300 times or so what I paid for it,
I am just an older version of the same person. My interests and passions still
run along the same lines, but the hills and valleys that would trace their
waxing and waning have leveled somewhat.
 One
change I do notice is the importance that I attach to the car I drive. One day
recently I counted up the age of the red Volvo I now drive and found it to be 21
years old. I thought about the 17 year old me, and wondered how I would have
accepted driving through the summer of 1957 in a 1936 automobile. I think I
would have hated it and that makes me smile. Maybe, just maybe, I did learn
something from all those years.
|
