the good old days

If you’re rich enough to afford food and gas, but not rich enough to afford gas and a vacation, you’re probably taking the advice of news outlets anywhere and thinking of having a STAYcation. (Ha ha! It’s a pun!)

I found this one particularly, um, interesting: Make Your Backyard “Staycation” Central! It includes a $900 fire pit (admitting you can get one for $50, though), a $300 sno-cone machine, nearly $1000 in movie projection equipment, a $300 “beertender” (aka keg), and a $700 backyard waterpark. Congratulations, creative staycationer, you’ve saved spent an extra $3000!

Most recommendations I’ve seen — find local museums, parks, events, and so on — are more plausible. But if you’re really interested in budget vacationing, and your local attractions are simply crap (or have been staycationed by you so often that you could be the tour guide), gas prices probably aren’t the biggest cost on the trip. Hotel prices and dining are. Which puts me in mind of a couple semi-recent things seen on other retro-oriented sites…

My mother’s family used to do road trips; on the first one they stayed in a hotel, on the second they used a large tent (described once by my uncle as “incredibly awful”), and by the third they’d bought a camper trailer. The trailer would be used for decades afterwards for all sorts of destinations. A 1954 Popular Mechanics article described one couple’s modifications to their car to add a bed, with the headline SAVE $100 on your next vacation! (Saving $100 in 1954 is the same as saving over $750 today — no small potatoes.) It’s quite ingenious; they even put screens over the rear windows for insect-proof ventilation. Stopping in a campground is cheap, stopping at rest areas along the interstate is free; you do the math.

Want to save on food? Bring your own. There was even a name for it: Tin Can Tourism. (There’s a Tin Can Tourist club, almost as old as cars themselves.) Alternatively, since eating everything from actual tin cans gets rather… yucky… after a while, stop at grocery stores.

Picture of the mildly creepy tin can tourists at left is from Shorpy

Let’s say it’s 1956, you’re Ford, and you want to sell cars. How the hell do you do that when everybody already has a car? Sure, you’re selling replacement cars, but it takes years for the damn things to wear out…

The solution is easy! Sell them all second cars.

After all, walking is unthinkable…

It’s amazing how thoroughly that idea has permeated modern society. If you’re shopping at the grocery store and need to go to the pizza place next door, obviously you drive there and park again rather than just walk over and back. It’s simpler to sit in the drive-through lane (engine running, of course) for fifteen minutes at lunch-rush-hour than park and walk in. If I walk a mile to the library, people look at me like I’m bat-shit insane.

ANYWAY. This post is supposed to be about safety!

I like the sound of Lifeguard Design — y’know, like the car will jump in the pool to save you from drowning — but it’s actually just dull safety features

Spurred by Robert McNamara, the University of Cornell crash research program and the first year of Ford own crash testing (1955) the Lifeguard package included:

• Two standard features:
  • A safety “deep-center” steering wheel.
  • Safety “double-grip” door latches to prevent occupant ejection in case of a crash.
• Three optional features:
  • Front and rear lap only seat belts (first offered by Ford in 1955).
  • Padded dashboard and sun visors. The instruments were recessed to minimize injury potential.
  • Safety rearview mirror to reduce broken glass if shattered.

The buying public was unresponsive to the Lifeguard package…

I think all of these are now NHTSA regulated to some extent, although I’m not sure exactly what “deep-center” steering wheel even means. Probably something along the lines of “it won’t jam a steel shaft through your chest if you impact it during a crash”…

Image Source: McLellan’s Automotive

Here’s a novel thought… when there’s no man around, change your own tire. In college I had to change a flat when there were men around — simply because I’d learned how and they hadn’t. (They helped, of course, but they didn’t know what lug nuts were. Of course, they were Harvard boys, so there ya go.) We’d gotten the flat on the Mass Pike, and eventually a state trooper stopped — and he fucking stood there and watched while I was putting the spare on. Didn’t even offer to help. (Probably just wanted to make sure we’d stop blocking the shoulder of the turnpike soon. Ahhh, Massachusetts driving, how I loved thee…)

So, whether there’s a man around or not, it’s probably a good idea to learn how to change your own tires, check your oil, pump gas, and all those little things that keep a car moving. (Hell, just not driving over large metal spikes might help.) You’ll then be less likely to hike to a phone booth in your high heels.

What I really can’t figure out about the commercial, though, is why the narrator is talking kinda like a soft-core porn narrator when he first says, “When there’s no man around…” It sounds like he’s introducing a scene in a sorority house that involves underwear and pillow fights. Making car tires sexy just doesn’t really work.

Via Feministing.

For economic and technical reasons a mixture of alcohol and gasoline for automobile fuel is being recommended by farm relief advocates.

Use of the fuel by motorists would consume 680,000,000 bushels of corn a year, greatly reducing the crop surplus, it is said. The gasoline would be diluted with 10 per cent of alcohol. It is claimed the fuel results in greater power at considerably less cost.

Midwestern farmers, seeking adoption of the fuel, claim that it has a higher antiknock value, will start the motor more readily, give a faster pickup, form less carbon, will not increase oil dilution, and results in a cooler engine than ordinary gasoline.

Luckily for those struggling farmers, the ethanol lobby would gain great momentum SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS later.

Article is from the December 1933 Modern Mechanix. Many thanks to Modern Mechanix Blog for the scan.

I want a hydrogen car. Badly. If a hydrogen fuel cell car was biologically compatible, I’d have its babies. Words can not express how much I want a hydrogen fuel cell car.

So I was overjoyed to hear that Honda plans to lease 150 FCX Clarity cars this summer.

And I was horribly, horribly crushed at the qualifier

only customers currently residing in the Torrance, Santa Monica and Irvine areas who meet additional qualification criteria will be eligible to take an FCX Clarity home

I know this is because you need a hydrogen refueling station near you or the car can’t be driven, and that 2350 miles is a bit outside the vehicle’s range. But I can’t just call up my husband and say, “Honey, we’re moving to Southern California, despite your cushy professor job at University of South Carolina.” (or maybe I can, since USC also means University of Southern California… hmmm…)

Please, Honda. I would wash it every day. I would tuck it in at night. I would bake it cookies. I would take it to auto shows so it could play with other cars. I would take it to a gasoline station and show it how “olde tyme” cars were fed. Please, please, please build a hydrogen station in Columbia SC and give me an FCX.

Successful companies are ones that satisfy their customer’s wants, needs and desires. The data clearly show that if your customer base is global and diverse and you reflect their perspectives and their knowledge, you’re going to have a better chance for success. The closer you get to their emotional and intellectual roots, the better you’re going to communicate with them.

So what’s the business case for diversity? It’s the only business case we need—the only way to satisfy diverse customers is to include their perspectives inside the company. This is especially true for Ford, because we probably have the most diverse set of customers in the world.

From Ford CEO Alan Mulally, posted on Ford’s website.
Mr. Mulally might wish to have a discussion with J. W. Horne, who is apparently the advertiser representing the Kieffe & Sons Ford dealership to the public. (Note, anything in brackets are my comments, as are the ellipses. I didn’t want to bore you with the whole thing, feel free to go to the source and read it yourself.)

For those of you out there in never never land or la la land or maybe underground and under the radar [?] who are so called non believers, I am the man who wrote and recorded the Kieffe and sons spot. In fact I write and produce all of the Kieffe and Sons ford spots…. I am a believer and I am pretty sure that most everyone at Kieffe and Sons ford are also believers…. Believers do not have to justify their existence…. I support everyones right to think and do and live as they wish. I do not condem [sic] any American that disagrees with me…. if you were careful enough to listen to the entire spot you would have heard me say that to the good people at Kieffe and Sons ford “everyone one is welcome at the dealership whether you are a believer or not, you are still welcome…. We do business according to the rules of the good book.. if you are offended by that, then you are offended by the truth…. If you are offended, well like I said in the commercial.. thats tough.

Even disregarding factual errors in the radio spot and Horne’s masturbatory self-justification, he’s missed the point that it’s not just atheists who are angry; there are plenty of Christians who heard it and were disgusted (not to mention the non-Christian-non-atheist population of the country). Horne’s non-apology insists that Kieffe and Sons will still welcome anybody to the dealership, meaning the ad (paraphrased) told non-Christians, “Sit down and shut up. Then, come buy our cars and we’ll pretend to respect you!” How open-minded of him. Flaunting majority status while deigning to take a minority’s money is not an apology, nor a way to gain business (except from bigots).

Owner Rick Kieffe paints a different picture, however.

This statement is provided in response to reaction prompted by a radio commercial that Kieffe & Sons Ford recently ran referring to issues of God in our schools and on our money.

For 15 years, Kieffe and Sons Ford has run ad campaigns that focus on current events. We have chosen to do this rather than presenting typical car sales ads. We do this through an agency that develops the material and sends us a package of commercials to review. From this, we select commercials that we distribute to area radio stations…. Regrettably, the commercial that has prompted the current objection to religious sentiment (”Under God”, “In We Trust”) was not closely reviewed by our dealership before it went live. The commercial has been replaced. We apologize to all who were offended. It is Kieffe and Sons’ intention to support America and the freedoms that make this country great.

All he’s done is replace the commercial? What I want to know is whether Kieffe intends to continue using Horne’s advertising company. If so… well, it’s not a sign of real concern, is it?

The fact that this fiasco was started by one short-sighted bigot in Oklahoma who’s not even a direct Ford employee is disappointing. UPDATE: Turns out Kieffe is, actually, quite happy with what Horne said, and was “forced” to apologize by Ford corporate. So, it’s a direct Ford employee making himself look like a bigoted ass, and making Ford look like it doesn’t believe in a diverse customer base.

Ford has a lot bigger problems to solve, and needs to get this off their backs, or it will continue to degrade their public image.

• Like I said, I am in the market for a new car…. I have not thought about dealers yet, though I’m looking forward to the next generation of hybrids. But I do know who I won’t be dropping $30K with. –Way of the Woo
• I certainly will never buy a car from him and would certainly not recommend him to anyone. –Underground Unbeliever
• There’s not much we can do, except boycott Kieffe and Sons Ford, and heck, boycott Ford altogether — Ford seems unconcerned about the fact that one of their dealerships is using bigotry to sell cars. –Pharyngula

It’s not just Kieffe and Sons that will feel fallout (including rude, stupid, shortsighted people calling them up and swearing, does that help anything, jerks?) — it’s also hitting Ford.

I hope to see something from Mulally reinforcing the apology, perhaps even [UPDATE: hard to reinforce Kieffe's non-apology] broadly emphasizing that Ford as a corporation DOES want to have a diverse customer base. Without that, he’s making it very hard for me to justify leaving Ford vehicles on my list of possible future purchases — and I really, really want American-made cars. I don’t live in Mojave and have no way to personally change the income of Kieffe and Sons, but I do patronize my local Ford dealerships — or, at least, I have in the past.

Should I continue to give you business, Mr. Mulally?

It’s been a looong day of useless work and it is only going downhill. So here’s a little rant:

If you have just complained about gas hitting $4.00 per gallon (and haven’t we all?) don’t follow up closely thereafter with any of the following…

• Talk about how you think alternative fuel proposals (e.g. wind power) are a load of bunk
• Brag about how you drive 20 miles to this great gas station in the middle of nowhere which charges $0.05 less than anyplace in town (thereby losing three dollars or so)
• Laugh at my hybrid and tell me how long it will take to pay itself off
• Extol the virtues your brand-new SUV or RV (seriously, man, you bought that NOW?)
• Smoke (a bigger budget-buster than high fuel prices)
• Leave the engine running while you sit in the drive-through lane at McD’s during the lunch-hour rush
• Leave the engine running while you run into the store
• Leave the engine running AND LEAVE YOUR PRESCHOOL CHILD IN THE CAR while you run into the store

I am sick of this behavior anyway, but when you prelude idiocy with crying about the price at the pump, I have no pity for you at all.

I think it’s the last two that get to me the most. Even if you don’t care about the gas you’re wasting, it’s a big advertisement that you want your car (and/or child) stolen. I have to really fight the temptation to just reach in and turn it off.