Sunday, June 8, 2025
Time: 11:25 AM
Song: Come on, Let’s Go
Artist: Richie Valens
Mode of Consumption: Playing at June Daze car show in Milledgeville.
Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/4cRfSR0QxDlXRHTKyEOu93?si=3fa5821b07ef423e
They came from all over the Sauk Valley and other parts of Northern Illinois. Shiny chrome of red and green and blue and purple and about every color you could think of. So bright you wonder why every new car lot is loaded with bland vehicles adorned in white, black and gray.
A stage was set at the main intersection of downtown Milledgeville. A band was setting up and doing sound checks. Down one street, tractors were lined on each side of street. It is a farming community, after all.
Before the band played, music played over speakers. Most of it from the fifties and sixties. The sounds of the era where muscle cars were the rule rather than the exception.
I’m not a car guy. Never will be mistaken for one.
I do wonder where we lost our way when it comes to vehicles. Not only are the new models generally blandly colored, but they are boxy hunks of plastic.
I realize this is the past that so many want to cling to. Of bright, bold vehicles made of steel and mostly constructed within the borders of this country. All designed so that a guy (or gal) could take a wrench in his garage and fix when needed without a lot of unnecessary action.
Now there are cars where you have to drop the engine out just to replace the headlight. I’d call it stupid design if it weren’t intentional. Nothing fixable without paying someone at a dealer shop $150 an hour.
That’s not even taking into the account the computer components of new vehicles, the shiny screen, all things that cost extra and even more when the inevitably stop working.
We’re enslaved to technology, most of it making us dumber and lazier rather than actually enhancing our lives.
None of it that can match a blue sky, a bright sun, a gentle breeze, and a small-town street a buzz with mechanical marvels of the past.
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