Thoughts on the age of cars. |
More Reflections on Age I can remember that there used to be a meaning to the word “vintage,” in the matter of cars at least. It was very precise; although I don’t recall the exact parameters, vintage meant cars built before 1920 or thereabouts. There was another word for cars of the twenties and thirties; “veteran,” I think it was and there was something certain and soothing in these defined boundaries, the precision of the terms. Cars from the postwar period, the late forties and fifties, were “classics” and it seems strange to realise that my first car was one of these. A Morris Minor from 1954 it was, spoilt in the purist’s eye by its engine, an early Mini, just a later version of the same design, yet essentially I owned a classic. If only I had known how blessed I was. These days they use the word “vintage” as a coverall, a blanket description of anything older than your progeny’s car, for attendance at college. Borders are blurred, categories non-existent and vehicles we old fogies drove in our youth are creatures of myth and legend. Not for the first time, I must echo the words of Charles de Gaulle, “Apres moi le deluge.” Line Count: 32 Free Verse. Possibly. Otherwise, it’s just prose cut into separate lines similar in length. |