Did you ever wonder what happened to yesterday, or the day before, or last year, or the era before the one we are now living in…? I don't mean what you did yesterday or he day before, or last year, or… You probably know what you did, though there is a good chance that you have forgotten it already.
What I mean is do you ever wonder what happened to the larger constellation, the ideas we then entertained, the feelings of awe felt, no even heard, as a shared sigh of amazement. From my fairly high position on the tree of life, a position where the branches are getting shorter and thinner, I have a commanding view of those awesome happenings and amazing developments: in my early years—primary school days—television started to project grainy black-and-grey pictures into our living rooms, and the neighbour in the house opposite parked his car a bit down the street so as not to disturb the kids playing (field) hockey and other games; he was the only one with a car in the whole street, and he might of course also have wanted to prevent possible damages to his car. That was The Hague, Holland, in the early-50s. Go there now and you will not see a single child playing. The street has become one-way and the two-car families are claiming parking space left and right.
My mother, who was born at the beginning of last century, listened in awe tot the first scratchy sounds coming out of a radio. Her mother, and now we are adding another lifetime, was taken to school in a horse-drawn carriage—a fiacre I think it was, as they then lived in Paris.
Both women learned to drive—my grandmother not very well—and used the car to travel widely and frequently.
For them these quantum leaps in transport modes meant an expansion of their freedom.
to be continued…
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