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My
New 1957 Chevrolet
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.
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