Nothing Changes

When I wrote that I was ordering a new truck a while back, someone asked if I had considered the Ford Lightning, their new electric pickup. No, it wouldn’t meet my needs at this time. But it’s interesting seeing all of the feedback on electric cars on social media. I can’t count the number of posts that say you’ll have to have a tow truck come and pick up your electric car when the battery goes dead because there won’t be any place to charge it. Or that you can drive 200 miles or so and then you have to charge it for hours and hours if you can find a charging station.

In doing research for my Tinder Street historical family saga, I read a lot of old newspapers from back in the early 1900s, and one of the common thoughts about the new horseless carriage was what were you going to do when you ran out of fuel? You would have to have a team of horses to pull it back home. Many people were convinced it was a wild idea, nothing but a toy, a passing fancy. Guess what? Technology expanded to meet the need like it always does.

There was a time when people believed radios and televisions were gadgets that would never catch on, either. 25 years ago, many people in the newspaper industry would have never believed more people would be getting their news online than from a newspaper someday.

I remember during my Army days back in the early 1970s, stopping in a little secondhand store someplace in New York and coming across a bunch of photography magazines from the late 1940s or early 1950s, and reading articles about how color film was never going to be taken serious by real photographers and would soon fade away, just like the color prints would. When digital cameras were first introduced, many of my peers in the newspaper business loved the idea of being able to do away with film and darkrooms. But the naysayers among us scoffed and said the first time that digital image disappeared from the camera between the story and the newspaper office we would all regret it. When’s the last time you bought a roll of film and had it processed?

Nothing really changes, does it? I guess that’s just human nature. In researching my same Tinder Steet books, I read a lot of editorials and letters to the editor about how Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s crazy ideas for Social Security and universal health care were no more than socialism and would never work in America. Why, he would bankrupt the country!

There are parallels today with the COVID-19 vaccinations. In the early, and even into the mid-1900s, people resisted getting vaccinated for smallpox, even after the government-mandated it in the interest of public health. Nobody was going to tell them you had to let somebody stick a needle in their arm and put that poison in their bodies! Sound familiar? When’s the last time somebody you know had smallpox?

So laugh all you want at electric cars, and solar and wind technology. I won’t be here 25 years from now to say I told you so, but I did.

And finally, here’s a chuckle to start your day from the collection of funny signs we see in our travels and that our readers share with us.

Be sure to enter our latest Free Drawing. This week’s prize is an audiobook of Buck Fever, the first book in my friend Ben Rehder’s immensely popular Blanco County mystery series. If you’re not a fan of Ben’s books you have no idea what you are missing out on. Wacky characters, great humor, and superb writing. Give them a try. You won’t be disappointed. To enter, click on this Free Drawing link or the tab at the top of this page and enter your name (first and last) in the comments section at the bottom of that page (not this one). Only one entry per person per drawing please, and you must enter with your real name. To prevent spam or multiple entries, the names of cartoon or movie characters are not allowed. The winner will be drawn Sunday evening. Note: Due to the high shipping cost of printed books and Amazon restrictions on e-books to foreign countries, only entries with U.S. addresses and e-mail addresses are allowed.

Thought For The Day – Don’t expect me to stop if you’re broken down alongside the highway. Someone called and offered to extend your warranty several times.