THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 3, 1994 TAG: 9406300514
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KEITH MONROE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 118 lines
``MANY INGENIOUS, LOVELY THINGS are gone. . . '' W.B. Yeats lamented in 1919. He didn't know the half of it. The pace of change goes faster and faster.
We are all used to hearing about Future Shock - the struggle to constantly adapt to the new. But equally challenging is coming to terms with the extinction of the old.
A way of life once lasted at least a lifetime, and landmarks for generations. Now they go up and down as frequently as window shades, as shown in a witty recent book, ``Going, Going, Gone: Vanishing Americana'' (Susan Jones and Marilyn Nissenson, Chronicle Books). It consists of 71 brief chapters, alphabetically arranged, that describe things - large and small - that have largely vanished from American lives:
Balsa-wood airplane models, carbon paper, card catalogs, drive-in movies, girdles, the milkman, paperboys, rotary phones, the smell of burning leaves, TV antennas, vinyl records.
Each of us has our own examples of a vanishing America. And it is with a weird feeling - halfway between nostalgia and grief - that we consider all the trappings of our lives that are going, going, gone. ``So sad, so strange, the days that are no more,'' said Tennyson. But it's the things that filled those days that we often miss the most.
I am old enough to remember glass milk bottles with those little paper caps that elementary school children unfolded to make into little flowers. I can recall streetcars and their network of overhead electrical lines, brick paved streets, black and white TV, Brylcreme and vacuum tubes. I remember monophonic sound, soap operas on radio, prop planes like the Constellation, a TV show called Colt 45 and records that revolved at 45 rpm.
They are all gone. And most of this change that we all experience is irreversible and inexorable. But it is hardly surprising that when a chance to resist comes along, people resist. The recent flap over the logo for the city of Virginia Beach is laughable in one sense. The old logo dates from no further back than 1963 - hardly a venerable relic. But 30 years old now qualifies as ancient.
Indeed, a fad a week old now constitutes a trend. A month and it's a tradition. And nowhere does the ephemeral nature of modern life manifest itself more clearly than in popular culture. If Louis Armstrong were alive today, he'd be just 94. He was born with the century. Yet the musical style he mastered in his teens has been dead far longer than he has.
The Jazz Age was quickly superseded by the Swing Era to be followed by bebop. All were swept away by rock, and many of its American inventors were wiped out in a British invasion. Where are the doo wops of yesteryear, one now wonders? Where are the punks of yore?
Once, popular artists worked in a tradition, and, having perfected a style, could look forward to a long career, could even hope their works would outlast them. In our time, a tenor saxophonist who was 20 when he joined a big band in 1939 might have played the Peacock Ballroom in Virginia Beach. He'd be just 75 today. Yet his style of music has been history for more than 40 years.
The loss of tailfins or steam locomotives is sad; the loss of whole livelihoods, lifestyles and traditions borders on tragedy. No wonder when air squadrons are eliminated, mock burials are held and tombstones erected. No wonder when ships are mothballed, sailors mourn. A piece of them has died.
And in a welter of change, no wonder we cling to things that link us to our earlier selves. That impulse helps explain the continuing popularity of a glorious throwback like Doumar's in Norfolk - a place that reminds us of the way we were, the way America was.
The Cavalier Hotel at the Oceanfront is another delightful local anachronism, a reminder of the way hotels used to be, before their Vegas-ization. Before glitzy atriums, science fiction elevators, electronic keys, too many mirrors and too much impersonality.
In the land of the wrecking ball, little is left behind from even the recent past. In Baltimore, Cleveland and other major league cities, new baseball stadiums have risen that consciously emulate the intimate parks of the past - like Boston's Fenway. But why not just retain the old? In the south of France, you can attend bullfights in arenas that have been used for the same purpose since the time of Christ. Of course, they don't have skyboxes.
America has always been a tear-it-down and rebuild-it sort of place. That's a tribute to our energy and optimism. But there's a flip side to the trait. We are careless of our heritage and wasteful of our past. Oswald Spengler once dismissed America because of this tendency, calling us ``a bunch of dollar grabbers. No past. No future.''
There's enough truth in the charge to make us pause. The debate over the placing of a Disney park (featuring Mickey Mouse history lessons) adjacent to Civil War sites is not a trivial one and is worth having. We are often too quick to eradicate our past.
Closer to home, in 1902 Lynnhaven Inlet was bridged, and by 1904 electric rail service linked Norfolk, Cape Henry and Virginia Beach in a loop. The service lasted almost half a century. The trestle was removed in the '50s. Many are old enough to remember it. In retrospect, many regret the loss of the light-rail line and would like to have it back.
The attempt to retain little pieces of our past - and with them, shards of our earlier selves - undoubtedly lies behind a lot of the collecting we do. It is connecting as much as collecting when we preserve our mother's silverware or wedding china, when we seek out coins our grandparents once were paid in or the clothes or furniture or toys we grew up with.
Baby boomers are now shelling out big bucks for the trash and trivia of their youth - baseball cards featuring the heroes of the '50s, Pez dispensers, a toy version of Yancy Derringer's derringer, Partridge Family lunch pails, Beatle wigs. A Froggy the Gremlin squeeze toy can bring a fast $400.
Each of us can offer his or her favorite examples of a vanishing or already vanished America. Things we miss and wish we could bring back. Large buildings like the Virginia Beach Dome - going, going. . . . Small domestic objects like lava lamps or vinegar cruets. Cultural artifacts like crooners or Nehru jackets. For my part,
I miss the time
When roadside signs
Made their points
With little rhymes.
Burma Shave. ILLUSTRATION: File photo
The Cavalier Hotel in Virginia Beach, established in 1927, is one of
Hampton Roads' delightful anachronisms. Here, the hotel sponsors a
horse show on its grounds in May 1935.
by CNB