Feel like I was born too late sometimes

[Sherlock77]

This isn't entirely negative, or as much it might sound like

Besides my photography I love classic cars, have never had enough money to buy one... But my favourite era of classic cars is 1960's to 1970's European/British/Japanese, and unfortunately I live in Alberta where there aren't many of them, even in the current car show scene.

There are times when I wish I was an adult back in that time period, because there are so many neat cars I will probably never see, just photos of them

Tonight a friend of mine posted photos he took in Alberta in 1979 of ice racing, it looked like a blast, plus cars rarely seen anymore, this was back when they were much newer, I was in Alberta in 1979 (born here) but was only seven years old

Now here I am in stuck in 2021, it isn't memories of what I personally experienced, but looking through those 1979 photos I can almost feel myself being there, the atmosphere, but it's only wishful thinking

 

[Thinx]

Yes, but I feel grateful I was born too late to be most at risk from polio or TB, Diphtheria and so on. In my parents generation, these were commonplace. Ok we now have covid to remind us that nature is powerful, but vaccines are so much better understood too. I mean, many of us were born with a really good likelihood of survival and ability to enjoy some time on earth, though there can be sadness too. Mostly I am grateful.

I agree the old cars were great. We had a Riley when I was a child. Also later, a smokey blue Wolsey with light blue seats that had beautiful walnut picnic trays that folded down from the backs of the front seats, like you get in trains now, but with a beautiful walnut veneer and silver metal circle for your cup. And walnut veneer on the dashboard too.

 

[Neonatal RRT]

I was a child of the late-60's to early-80's. My father ran a Ford dealership. I was always around cars. Rebuilt a few of my own over the years. I have a workshop full of tools. All I can say about those "classic" cars,...they were, for all their looks and design,...all pretty much crap. LOL! They were unreliable, needed constant maintenance. Sorry to burst the bubble. Now, having said that, my favorite domestic muscle cars of that era were the 1967-1970 Mustangs,...not the fastest, not the best handling,...but overall, the best combination of both for the era. I am a "car guy", at one time, one might say I was a "grease monkey" or "gear head". I appreciate any high-performance car,...import, domestic, turbos, blowers, nitrous, etc. I still wouldn't want to own one now that I have my two Teslas. I run both of those for free with solar panels on the house,...a "fuel station" on my roof. Old cars and old houses,...perhaps nice to look at, but you don't want to own one.

As far as "the good 'ol days",...no such thing,...it was just different. I am just the opposite,...I keep looking forward and have no problem being an "early adopter" to any new tech.

 

[OkRad]

Because each person has to stare over right from scratch, the human race just keeps doing the same things over and over.

Here's an interesting video about the way humans learned next to nothing with last pandemic. The Wikipedia article goes further and shows how this was not exclusive to the US. All over the world it seems we started right over.......And it's not just pandemics. It takes humans a very long time to even marginally change. So I am sure going back would have been quite the same, maybe even worse for a whole lots of people depending on gender, race, location, gvt, etc.

Spanish flu - Wikipedia

 

[Mia]

Like that I grew up with so may different kinds of cars around. There were so many unusual shapes and sizes, nothing like the present where all the cars appear to look the same.

Girlfriend's father was a car mechanic and she drove all kinds of cars, once she had a Humber super snipe that he kept in working order for her for awhile. Have great memories of that car, the seats were so comfortable. We once managed eleven people piled into it as we drove around. She taught me to drive her brother's old toyota corolla with the holes in the floor as well as a skidoo.

Recently I came across an unusual car in the parking lot of my local grocery store in October, it was an early peugeot that looked like this:

The doors were really odd-looking (there were no locks, just handles), unlike the car doors we see now. I was all over it, wandering up and down. I almost touched it, but the owner was coming out with a big smile on his face.

My husband knew what it was right away, but I had to have a closer look. He's memorized all the car brand symbols and can identify them on sight.

 

[Sherlock77]

Like that I grew up with so may different kinds of cars around. There were so many unusual shapes and sizes, nothing like the present where all the cars appear to look the same.

Girlfriend's father was a car mechanic and she drove all kinds of cars, once she had a Humber super snipe that he kept in working order for her for awhile. Have great memories of that car, the seats were so comfortable. We once managed eleven people piled into it as we drove around. She taught me to drive her brother's old toyota corolla with the holes in the floor as well as a skidoo.

Recently I came across an unusual car in the parking lot of my local grocery store in October, it was an early peugeot that looked like this:

View attachment 65572

The doors were really odd-looking, unlike the car doors we see now. I was all over it, wandering up and down. I almost touched it, but the owner was coming out with a big smile on his face.

My husband knew what it was right away, but I had to have a closer look. He's memorized all the car brand symbols and can identify them on sight.

That's incredible! To see a Peugeot like that, this particular car was never sold here, yet another car I've never seen before, there are many...

 

[Sherlock77]

I was a child of the late-60's to early-80's. My father ran a Ford dealership. I was always around cars. Rebuilt a few of my own over the years. I have a workshop full of tools. All I can say about those "classic" cars,...they were, for all their looks and design,...all pretty much crap. LOL! They were unreliable, needed constant maintenance. Sorry to burst the bubble. Now, having said that, my favorite domestic muscle cars of that era were the 1967-1970 Mustangs,...not the fastest, not the best handling,...but overall, the best combination of both for the era. I am a "car guy", at one time, one might say I was a "grease monkey" or "gear head". I appreciate any high-performance car,...import, domestic, turbos, blowers, nitrous, etc. I still wouldn't want to own one now that I have my two Teslas. I run both of those for free with solar panels on the house,...a "fuel station" on my roof. Old cars and old houses,...perhaps nice to look at, but you don't want to own one.

As far as "the good 'ol days",...no such thing,...it was just different. I am just the opposite,...I keep looking forward and have no problem being an "early adopter" to any new tech.

I hear you, my biggest thing is that I think modern car design is rather boring, it certainly doesn't inspire me, and the only cars with interesting designs are built for people who are far richer than me... I do own a 12 year old Hyundai Accent that is rather average, but it does have stick shift at least

I do have a tendency to be a slow adopter of new technology in general, not just with cars...

 

[Misery]

As far as "the good 'ol days",...no such thing,...it was just different. I am just the opposite,...I keep looking forward and have no problem being an "early adopter" to any new tech.

To be completely fair though, it can depend on what specifically is being looked at.

For cars, yes: even I know that the things are dramatically safer now than they used to be. I mean heck, we've even got cars that can automatically stop themselves when backing up if something crosses behind it... stuff like that sure couldnt be done back then!

But then there's... other things.

Like, for instance, I'm into video games right? Always have been. I tend to ramble about the "old days" myself, in relation to the hobby, but there is an actual objective difference with it. In the "good ol' days", when you bought a game, you got the game you freaking bought, and that was it. Now though, buy a game from any of the major companies, and you'll get maaaaaayyyyyybe half of the game it said it would be (at full price!), and then the game itself will specifically be designed to get you to A: buy the bits that were cut out seperately, or B: get you to do what is, well... it's gambling. I could try to explain it another way, but it's freaking gambling. The corporations that publish the sorts of games you see advertised on TV, they started realizing both what they could legally get away with, and HOW MUCH of it they could get away with. There's a million stories out there of things happening like kids emptying their parents' bank account buying stupid crap on some mobile game, or some guy getting REALLY addicted to FIFA (a sports game where you can spend real money to MAYBE upgrade your players, but maybe it also wont work, but hey that's lost money either way) who spends like $5000 over the course of 6 months on that one game (which is supposed to cost just $60) because the addiction mechanisms got him hooked. Just as the thing was designed to do.

In that sort of case, the "new" is not only objectively worse then the old, but it takes something that used to be harmless fun and makes it actively dangerous, preying upon kids and those who have issues with addiction.

That's just stuff in relation to that hobby... there's other stuff too. I could go on and on and on and on about what's wrong with freaking computers these days, and it's kinda similar to that. Older machines: fully under your control. PCs these days: DEFINITELY not under your control. You cant be sure what they're doing at any given time, and when given a command, they may listen... or maybe they wont. And I think most of us know what data harvesting is. That kind of crap sure didnt happen "back then". After all, it wasnt possible... Computers went from strictly being useful and stable machines (if rather weak), to powerful but extremely unstable and vulnerable. I mean, good grief, I need like 3 layers of security programs just to browse the bloody Net (and then 3 layers of adblockers on the browser itself), and I'm STILL not 100% sure that there's not some shenanigans going on despite that wall.

That's enough about computers though, that subject just makes me irritable lately.

Anyway, I think this sort of concept is in some cases why people tend to ramble about how good things "used to be". Sometimes it's just nostalgia speaking, but other times... well, some things just get dumber over time. Or they just get more "corporate", which is probably worse.

Also this all is coming from someone who is indeed fast to dive into new tech. It's just that I've learned to be extremely suspicious of all of it.

 

[Sherlock77]

To take it to a new level, perhaps 1915, somewhere in rural Alberta, in many ways life would have simpler, but in many ways harder... This photo is part of my collection of found vintage photos, I have over 50 other photos from the same source, young people who drove around the Alberta prairies to all sorts of places in 1915 - where there were barely any roads at that time... But they did enjoy life, it's evident from the complete collection of photos... This photo might be my favourite from the set

 

[Au Naturel]

The good old days weren't always good
And tomorrow's not as bad as it seems.
----- Billy Joel, "Keepin' the Faith"

It is good to remember the good times of the past but bad to do so to the point where you live in the past. When you get older it becomes more difficult because you have a longer past to look back at and a shorter future to look ahead to.

It's really tough to say you'd be better off fifty or a hundred years ago because you would have grown up in a different environment facing different risks. I grew up in the 60s. The world was not so tolerant back then.

 

[sotto voce]

Because each person has to stare over right from scratch, the human race just keeps doing the same things over and over.

Here's an interesting video about the way humans learned next to nothing with last pandemic. The Wikipedia article goes further and shows how this was not exclusive to the US. All over the world it seems we started right over.......And it's not just pandemics. It takes humans a very long time to even marginally change. So I am sure going back would have been quite the same, maybe even worse for a whole lots of people depending on gender, race, location, gvt, etc.

Spanish flu - Wikipedia

Trevor Noah - Smart, did his research. LOL several times. Thx!

 

[Finder]

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

I have no desire for old cars. They were unsafe, unreliable, and inefficient. The past always looks better with some years between now and then. Just imagine you were born in 2080 and some freak of nature sent you back to this period. Now you can be living with the classic cars you would like 60 years into the future. Problem solved.

 

[Sherlock77]

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

I have no desire for old cars. They were unsafe, unreliable, and inefficient. The past always looks better with some years between now and then. Just imagine you were born in 2080 and some freak of nature sent you back to this period. Now you can be living with the classic cars you would like 60 years into the future. Problem solved.

I have a few friends who would disagree with you on that And I don't like modern car design anyway, far too bland, I blame computer based design programs

Just today on a winter day, I met a guy driving a 1976 Pontiac full-size station wagon, clearly a favourite car for him

There will always be collectors, but they will be in the minority anyway, not just cars... I have friends who still take photos with 100 year old cameras, and we all know the popularity now of collecting records...

There is better quality out now, but some people like older items for the imperfections they have

 

[Fino]

If you were born at an earlier time, your sensibilities would have been formed as you grew up by the things around you and you would very likely not end up with the same preferences, possibly not noticing these cars or even deeming them as commonplace and ordinary.

 

[Owliet]

I think it’s pretty common in ASD to feel like you belong to a different time period. I know I’ve had times of feeling nostalgic for things that I actually have never experienced. But I think that’s a disconnect from the ever changing social situations, so it creates wistfulness. Thing is, no matter how much you long for the nostalgia of your immediate past or of a difference time period, That’s all it is.

 

[MyLifeAsAnAspie]

I'm too much of an engineer to have ever been satisfied with the dangerous, unreliable and environmentally deplorable cars of the past. That's not to say I didn't appreciate their beauty. Electric vehicles are the future of motoring and I have made them a special interest. It is a brave new world and I wouldn't miss being in the middle of it for anything. If I was younger, I could see myself working for Elon Musk. I have never owned a Tesla but understand the EV thing wouldn't be happening like it is without them. Can't wait to see the day when people are looking at their car and saying "what is wrong with me, I'm driving an obsolete POC from the last century". I'd say 2 centuries ago, but oddly EVs were the biggest sellers at the end of the 19th century.

 

[FreeDiver]

Sorry! I just had to do this.