I Miss the Old Automats* and the Slower Pace of Life…
…and wish that fast food, fast Internet, and the fast lane would simply go away
Wikipedia image
*Horn & Hardarts opened their first Automat in New York City in 1902. They only got better until they disappeared. Have a look.
I don’t lament much, contrary to what this article may appear like to others.
I don’t sit on the stoop late into the evening, wondering what things would have been like if my father hadn’t died young, if Brooklyn wasn’t taken away from me when I was seven.
And if the Mets hadn’t won the World Series in 1969.
I visit the past and do it on a regular basis, but I leave it where I find it. Back in 1960 or 1973, it doesn’t matter.
While I remember listening to the Beach Boy’s Good Vibrations for the first time in the summer of ’67 and worried about what my life would be like when the Beatles broke up a few years later, I moved on.
Thinking of the past fondly, even obsessing about it every once in a while, doesn’t mark the onset of dementia or of anyone losing touch with reality. It’s simply where we lived and grew up and formed the personality that shines through today, even if others don’t quite see the beauty in it.
I’m old enough to have ridden in old subway cars, seated on spring-cushioned rattan-covered benches, and recall being gently rocked to sleep as I made my way into New York City.
Those trains were not high-tech. They were electric though, so that’s a plus.
They were also noisy, never stopped swaying, held the heat in the summer and the cold in the winter, and wouldn’t win any awards for ergonomics, but there’s something nostalgic about them that I miss.
When you stepped onto one you knew where it was going. You knew how long it would take for you to get there, and no matter the weather, time of day, or demands of the job, the stress you felt was manageable.
Even if it doesn’t make total sense, what we felt was somehow shared by everyone in that car. So, the burden never seemed to overwhelm anyone. Nowadays, the dreaded last straw is always near, waiting for the right moment to alight onto someone’s back and bring them down.
No end-of-world consequence hovered over your head or at least we were blissfully unaware of it. There was no hurry to catch a podcast, or the release of some video about the wars dotting the globe.
And the “rush” of information that greeted you every morning came from the daily newspaper and if it sat unopened on your lap the whole trip, so what? Who cares.
I miss being able to ignore what I didn’t need to know. Turning off the radio and TV for days. Sitting against a fence in the schoolyard waiting my turn at double-wall* with my only concern being lunch and what I could get with 95 cents.
It wasn’t a perfect life.
There were troubles enough waiting just outside my door most days but I was able to move past them. Get to the other side in one piece and whether it was school or work or toking on a joint, fretting about the draft, I felt content in my corner of the world. And I think many others did as well.
If you took a moment to view the video above, you now know what an automat was and you got a glimpse of Horn & Hardart’s version that my mother and I went to, every time we ventured into the city.
Drop in a quarter, open the small glass door, and out came the coconut custard pie I favored. It was fast food 1961 style, but it worked.
Mothers and grandmothers were working behind the wall. Slicing pies. Assembling sandwiches. Chatting with hairnets wrapped around their heads, hands always moving.
Food always being pushed into slots along the wall. Busy but not frenetic. No one got grey hairs because the line wasn’t moving fast enough, and yet everyone got served.
It was all comfort food. It was all fresh. It was served at the speed of the ’60s and there really was no visible reason for it to be any faster than it was, except perhaps to make more money. There was always that.
But today’s fast food; the stuff we crave, grown in Idaho, packaged in Milwaukee, and shipped to Arizona in freezer trucks. Cooked up in seconds and kept warm under lamps has lost its reason for being eaten.
It’s tasty for sure. It’s cheap, even compared to buying the stuff at Costco or Sam’s Club and putting it all together ourselves. But the idea of taking one’s time to savor it, look at it for a moment from all angles while thinking of the days ahead now seems foolish.
Fast food, like ten-second pitstops at the Indianapolis 500, has one main function - to keep us moving forward. Always moving forward.
In the past, information seems to have been less prone to error than it is today, perhaps because there was far less of it to put together and distribute.
If you were in a hurry in the newsroom or the studio, what went out to the masses could be accurate and soothing and just what we needed to hear or just a bit off and upsetting.
Two questions were asked for every one answered and if Channel 4 got it wrong then Channel 2 came in with a follow-up. And if they got it wrong too, we waited until somebody figured out what was going on or we just forgot about it.
And we could do that in the past. We could forget about the fires north of Vancouver or the storm raging off the Carolinas because you only heard it once or twice before the entire newsroom shifted onto something else. Dwelling on problems came in shorter news cycles and then you were done.
Today, however, the Internet is like one massive rapacious machine sucking up every bit & byte and retelling it a thousand times each day.
If you missed the first or fiftieth iteration, no worries, it’s heading back around and can be seen in the weekly roundup.
And if you weren’t stressed and brought to tears sufficiently the first time around, don’t worry about that either, those algorithms will get a second and third chance to strike at the heart.
It’s not that ignorance is bliss and being forever in the shadows wondering what that noise was is the best place to be, it’s just that not everything is ours to consume. Peru being short on coffee this quarter is a troubling fact, but we have a shelf full right here, so why are we worrying about it now?
If the Middle East is threatening to blow up again, three billion people around the world know about it. Are fed pictures and audio feeds 24/7 and if there is truly nothing 99% percentage of those people can do about the problem — well, shoot, they can at least stress about it like those without a choice.
Being in the know was someone’s motto, probably News at 5 somewhere in the country but it was only a ploy to get eyes on the television which meant eyes on the Ads, which meant revenue for the station and good salaries for those dishing it out.
We didn’t really need to know about it.
We didn’t need to worry about Biafra in the ’60s but we did. The famine and war were heartbreaking. It was avoidable. It or something like it was happening all around the globe but everyone in Des Moines or Tallahassee apparently needed to be informed, so they were.
And that philosophy has carried forward into the ’90s, 2000s, and to the present time, but in spades. Today's information, sizzling hot and fresh off the grill is coming at us at breakneck speeds. Small heat-seeking missiles pierce the ever-weakening barrier around us until we’re reeling from information overload 24/7.
But that’s just the way it is. Who knows what today would be like without it?
And where does it all lead us? Have a listen to The Eagles, Life in the Fast Lane, I think they said it as well as anyone could.
It’s what we’re all about these days, even if we never agreed to it. Life moves a lot faster than it did in 1964. Can’t say it’s the traffic on the roads or the trucks hauling goods to the market. But it’s out there. Just stand on a corner, any corner, and look around. What do you see?
Perhaps the better question is what do you feel?
We’re in a hurry. Have to be. What we need and want is racing out in front of us, always a step or two ahead. If we slow down, if we get distracted, someone else will get there first.
I don’t think 2024 is any better than 1974. I don’t see it being bigger or stronger or more fulfilling, it’s just different.
You can call home while sitting in your car or burying your feet in the sand at the beach. You can hold a Zoom meeting at the end of a pier or sing a lullaby to your daughter while camping at 10,000 feet on your latest climb.
Or not.
We didn’t before and got by. There’s no denying hearing your daughter say, “Goodnight daddy,” while wrapped in a sleeping bag halfway up the Matterhorn is rather cool, but is it worth it?
Is all the technology and pace, the never-ending need for faster, better, and more efficient worth the toll it takes on us?
We stress about the stress as we head out to our second job.
We think deep thoughts about the world at large while feeling that the chaos in that parliament all those miles away is right next to us.
Then we’re asked to think, donate, or do something about it, while we’re sliding our time card into the slot and worrying if we can put in a full eight hours today.
I liked the ease of automats. The gentle hum of conversations and plates clattering and whispers coming from behind the glass wall — “Did you hear that Becky is moving to Jersey.”
When I watch movies and occasionally see an automat filled with people as the B-movie actors move into the next scene, I get all excited and shout to my wife, “I was in that one. It was in downtown Brooklyn. I was there.”
She smiles and says, “I know. You told me that the last time we watched this movie.”
Most times the past is well and truly the past and is best left where it belongs. But sometimes. Every once in a blue moon or equivalent, the past should be brought forward, held up against a bright light, and without any bias or nostalgia, compared to the present.
Then ask ourselves did we try to improve on something we got right the first time around or are we really better off now?
*Double wall was a game played between two walls in my local schoolyard using a stickball bat and rubber ball requiring quick reflexes to track and catch a ball ricocheting back and forth. It was a blast.