Perspectives
ruminations about nothing much
15 - March - 2025
The north facing deck on my shack here in Alberta looks out over the river and down onto the Pro Shop parking lot. Nice and shady in the summer.
The other day, a nice warm March afternoon, as I sat pondering, I noticed, not for the first time, that no one seems to buy colored cars anymore. Oh, there are a few, but not many.
When I was a kid Television was black and white. Parking lots were color. Now my TV is so bright and clear and colorful I can see the little dimples on the golf ball and count the grains of sand when Jordan Spieth blasts out of a trap. Modern TV is amazing. As a contrast parking lots are now dull and lifeless. Black, grey and white. The odd silver tossed in from Germany.
In 1967 Cadillac offered an astonishing 21 various colors on its de Ville line up. Names like Capri Aqua, Pinecrest Green, Baroque Gold and Admiralty Blue. If you opted for a Pontiac Muscle car, the G.T.O. let’s say, there were almost two dozen shades for you as well: Crystal Turquoise, Expresso Brown, Carousel Red (orange) and more.
Over at Chrysler the Plymouth brand and the Dodge brand shared colors but had differing names. There was an orange that Plymouth called ‘Vitamin C’ and the Dodge boys called ‘Go-Mango’. The purple (yes, they had a purple) at Plymouth was ‘In-Violet’ and at Dodge ‘Plum Crazy. Pink (?) in Plymouth speak was ‘Moulin Rouge’ while over at Dodge you would order ‘Panther Pink’.
The Ford Pony Car, Mustang, could be covered in Grabber Green, Gulfstream Aqua, Indian Fire Red, Meadowlark Yellow and more and more and more.
Why no more colored cars? Were people happier fifty or sixty years ago? Yes, they were, but can that explain such variety of color? Is it less expensive to paint a truck black rather than blue? Do people like depressing colors? Have people become dull?
I am baffled.
29 - March - 2025
There are no new letters in my stories. I stuck with the same old 26 that most writers use. The same is true for most of the words. There may be a few you don’t recognize, ones I made up, but for the most part they are just everyday words.
Some of the sentences are borrowed as well. I doubt if I am the first person to ever write ‘She looked at Sammy’ or ‘If there was one thing most could agree on, it was the burning of the autumn leaves.’
Where I hope to add value is in the arrangement of the letters and the words and the sentences. The stories. The people.
In the ‘Somebody Else’s’ series the characters are imaginary. But they live in a real world, a world of chaos. The late sixties and the early seventies were an odd time. Much happened. The question I pose is, ‘How would an almost normal town full of almost normal people react to a changing world while going through the inevitable downs and ups of everyday life’?
The ‘Somebody Else’s’ books are not commercial in nature. There is no format, no template, no blueprint. You will not find a slightly flawed hero, along with his faithful sidekick, solving crime or questing after some personal Holy Grail. Each book is a year in the life. A set amount of time. What happens happens. That’s it.
This fictional world is interrupted every so often with the news of the day. There are riots and airplane crashes and assassinations and, the proverbial elephant in room, Vietnam. Or, as Captain Sammy’s wife Becky would say, Viet-Fucking-Nam.
Which brings me neatly to my ‘Reader Warning’. If you lived through those days, as I did, you might, if you are honest, remember the common use of homophobic and racial slurs. And foul language. We were a backward lot. But slowly, we grew.
I hope you enjoy the trip back in time.