'64 Avanti
The most recent version. 1996?
Posted on 06/11/2005 5:22:21 PM PDT by Nasty McPhilthy
I’m sitting here trying to figure out how to reclaim the future of my youth. It was a future of optimism and of science, and it was stolen by the Socialist ideologues of the Left, the spoiled flower children of the 60’s and the Leftist professors who brainwashed so many of them..
The time was the mid-fifties to early sixties (pre-Beatles). Donald Fagan immortalized it in the album “Nightfly.” It predicted a future of Eames designed furniture and décor, characterized by smooth flowing lines, tapered legs, futuristic “space age” tables and chairs. Everything was and would be from then on clean, efficient and modern, colorful, playful, and never soulless. Plastics abounded, we had melamine “Melmac” dishes, molded Eames chairs and lots of plywood, bent or otherwise (Okay, so maybe it wasn’t of the highest quality, but it sure was great looking stuff). It was a time that was characterized by faith in God and faith in Technology. Science was going to solve all of our problems. America was on a “rocket ship to the future.” Cars had big bold fins, big V-8 engines and streamlined profiles. Raymond Loewy designed a Studebaker, the Avanti, which outlasted the car manufacturer by twenty years. Nuclear energy was going to solve all of our worries about having sufficient power. We even had a nuclear passenger liner, the U.S.S. Savannah, and she was a beauty, fast, sleek, and clean. In movies, the good guy was always the hero to be admired, and the bad guy was, well, the bad guy.
Optimism was in the air, everyone was going to be an engineer or a scientist, or a Doctor. We were all going to be wealthy, beautiful, and generous. It was a time also, in which America ruled the world not through force of weapons, but force of invention. Driven by competition with the “enemies of freedom,” scientists were driven to be the best and do the best. It was the time of Kennedy’s “New Frontier,” and Space was the word on everyone’s lips. America, in a period of eight years developed and executed a plan to, as Kennedy said it, “put a man on the moon by the end of this decade.” He made that statement in 1961 and Neil Armstrong took “One small step for man, one great leap for mankind” in 1969. Had America kept on that path, Stanley Kubrick’s visionary “2001 A Space Odyssey,” might very well have been a conservative prediction rather than the pie in the sky dream it became.
Women, well, let me tell you about the women. Women actually had bodies back then. The beautiful women were not some gay designers concept of a beautiful woman, resembling more a prepubescent ten year old (probably the last vision he had of a girl that turned his head) than a mature, vital, sexy, woman. We had Sophia Loren, Marilyn Monroe, and Senta Berger. Did you know that Marilyn was a size 14? Can you believe that in this time of anorexic models who look more like young boys with breasts than real women? Twiggy was the van guard of the moronic adoption of this soulless curveless gay vision of feminine pulchritude.
What about nuclear war? We all knew it could happen, but never truly believed it would. Oh sure, there were some who worried, mostly those who still worry, the over reactive, hyperventilating fear mongers of the left. You know, the same ones that were the “unilateralists” of the 70’s and 80’s…the umm…the…the…oh yeah…the Democrats, the same ones that spent most of the last fifty years trying to sell us out to, or surrender to, the Soviets. The diehard supporters of, and apologists for, the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss and the deconstructors of our security who oversaw the emasculation of our C.I.A. and military. I refer to such great Americans as Senators Birch Bayh and Frank Church. Do you remember the Church committee? They and their fellow Liberals are the real culprits in the 9/11 tragedy. They still exist today in the form of Jamie Gorelick and Madeleine Albright.
If you believe that good will triumph over evil that a benevolent God was watching over us all then worry was kind of pointless. Norman Vincent Peale was the Christian philosopher of the day with “Positive Thinking.” The conservative movement was just getting started by pioneers like William F. Buckley, challenging the group-think of the New Deal and soon to come Great Society left. Where did it all go? It was stolen by the Left, by the very socialist/communist agenda that Joe McCarthy so accurately warned us about.
The Optimism of Kennedy became the Pessimism of Johnson. Our golden future was mortgaged by the failed utopian, socialist, dream of his “Great Society.” America is still paying the price for Johnson and the Left’s folly. The absurd belief that by giving people money, you could give them self respect and lift them out of poverty led to the largest attempted redistribution of wealth in America’s history. It also led to the greatest spending spree, in pursuit of an unattainable dream, in the history of America. Today’s deficits are not the result of the war for freedom in Iraq, they’re not due to America's military spending, they’re not even due to the questionable practice of pork-barrel spending that vex us so often, they’re due to the horrible concept of “entitlements.” The unsupportable belief that those living in lesser circumstances are somehow “entitled” to a portion of the more affluent of society’s money.
But, what about segregation? What about oppression of the minorities? Good point, those were bad things, but they had nothing to do with the redistribution of wealth. The same laws and enforcement could easily have been carried out without the socialist agenda to which they were attached. Our Constitution guarantees equal opportunity, not equal results. Once you have equal access to our institutions of learning higher and elementary, what you do with it is your problem, not society’s. One of the things that really rankles me as a southerner, is the myth that the south was oppressing the blacks, but things were peachy keen in the north, where we all know bigots never existed. I’m sure that the riots in south Boston had nothing to do with race and bigotry. I’m sure that having the minorities gathered up in places like Harlem, Newark, East St. Louis, Chicago’s south side, and Watts, was just because the blacks preferred living there rather than in the Hamptons or Beverly Hills. I know about segregation, I witnessed “whites only” and “blacks only” drinking fountains. I saw blacks sitting in the back of the busses and trolleys in my youth. Thing is I admit to these facts, many so-called liberals still live in denial.
Okay, it wasn’t perfect but it was a heck of a lot better than what the Left gave us. Divorce was rare, parents knew their kid's friends and could discipline any of them if they got out of line with out worrying about being sued. Lawyers were in general hard working guys not out to screw anyone but trying to make a living, and those who were “ambulance chasers” were looked down on. Captain Kangaroo taught children to say “please” and “thank-you.” There weren’t any feminine hygiene ads on television and about as close as they got was ads for ban deodorant. News casts while still clearly slanted to the left, were nowhere near as slanted as they later became, and because they were envisioned as a service rather than a profit center, there was little sensationalism, and no blood.
A good way to begin to get back there is to get some more conservative judges appointed to the Supreme Court, and end the thirty year holocaust of innocent unborn children. It is the constant desensitization of our culture to violence, sex, and crudity that is the source of this destruction of the American Paradise. The return of God to the center of our society is the antidote for this destruction.
Copyright 2005 Will Malven
'64 Avanti
The most recent version. 1996?
Craftsmanship!!!!!
Those were the days, and they can return. Persevere.
This is very well written.
Darn right! He just keeps getting better and better.
Travel over to the Tin Ear, and let Will know you liked it.
http://mensnewsdaily.com/blog/malven/
I did.
Well, I remember those two ladies very fondly. Sophia was a living doll!! Jane was a dish!
I think you will appreciate this post.
Ah...the good ol' days...
Too bad I wasn't alive back then. I would've loved to be a kid growing up in the late 40s through the 50s.
>>The return of God to the center of our society is the antidote for this destruction.<<
Since He has been forbidden from entering our courts, schools and businesses, I don't think there is an antidote.
ps. I have both of those Monroe pictures on the wall in my reloading room. That's a room where the only Silicone is around the glass in the window. I got out my magnifying glass one day to look at those pictures closely and I do believe I could see a tiny spider on the edge of her dress.
Thanks for the ping Calpernia.
The most Marilyn ever weighed was allegedly 140 pounds.
At 5'5" and an hourglass figure, it is doubtful she would have ever needed anything more than a size 12.....usually she would have worn and 8 or a tight 10 at her average weight of 120 or so.
This is an urban legend often used to counter today's waifs...something Marilyn obviously was not in any event.
A great article too btw.
We could use this guy here on the forum.
LOL!
I was only 8 years old when an uncle of mine carried me down I-20 at over 160mph in one.
Completely irresponsible. He should have been locked up, and you sent for multiple sessions of trauma counseling... < \Sarc off >
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