This is one of a box of police photos of automobile accidents from the 1950s, seen at an antique mall out in the suburbs the other day. Take a gander at that hefty grille and that windshield – two separate sheets of glass. I bet this was before the days of safety glass.

I’m one of those people who periodically catches some collecting disease. For a long time, I had the vintage hat disease.  Then I had the flow blue disease.  I successfully fought off the antique mirror disease, because mirrors – huge.

The thing about studying the past, collecting examples of the past, is that ultimately you never can know that much about it.

No matter how much you study it, no matter how smart you are, you will never know as much about living in that world as the dullest fools who actually lived in it. Even they know more of their world than you ever will.

Also, I can’t help but wonder if this was a not very successful test drive of a product from the used car lot there in the background. If so, oops.