As a follow-up to last week’s narrative on living in the world of the Jetsons, a new experience came my way, which ironically gave me a great continuation what the VFTB started last week.

On a recent trip to Virginia, where we flew rather than drove, to spend a week watching our granddaughters while Jon and Erica were on Long Island for a wedding, I had the pleasure (?) of using their fairly new (2019) car which had many of the new featured bells and whistles, which redefined driving to this old man. First of all, it featured a keyless ignition, but you had to keep a fob in your pocket to be able to wirelessly allow the keyless ignition to work. After starting the car and putting it in reverse to back out of their garage and driveway, I went for a short ride inside the car as the seats automatically adjusted and the side mirrors realigned themselves, apparently so I could see the nicely paved driveway before the car beeped telling me I had reached the street. When putting the car in drive, the mirrors moved to level street position, a screen flashed the tire pressure in all four wheels, which by the way, changed constantly as I drove, and we proceeded to drive the girls to their day care center, to keep them in their regular daily routine while mommy and daddy were gone. On the short jaunt to their center, the car beeped and flashed a light when cars approached on either side of my vehicle, signaling another car was approaching either side of our car. After dropping the girls off at the Day Care, as I restarted the car, the mirrors again angled down to the ground, even though I was on a level surface, so I found myself sliding down in my seat to be able to see objects at my eye level, not at ground level. The car also had automatic lights that came on and went off as the car deemed necessary.

As I continued to drive this vehicle throughout the week, I began feeling like the airline pilot who got us from Buffalo to Washington, and the one who got us from D.C. to Virginia, having to continually read screens, dials, gauges, and mirrors as I drove what I considered a space-aged vehicle.

Remember, I drive a 2002 vehicle, complete with a cassette tape player, an AM-FM radio, lights I have to turn on, a Satellite Radio, which I installed, an auxiliary speaker, which I installed, a USB port, which I have to first plug into an adapter, which then gets plugged into a cigarette lighter socket, and front seats and mirrors which have to be adjusted by hand. Point of interest, I love my hands on car, as it allows me to set things to my comfort level, and keeps me responsible to pay attention to the road and my surroundings.

Gizmos, Gadgets, and Gimmicks are fun, but not at the expense of luring us into the security of believing that we don’t have to do anything to keep ourselves safe, that the gadget will do it for us. It’s the same with new-fangled kitchen appliances, with power tools, with other large pieces of equipment we use in our daily lives. Me, I prefer being in control of the machine, and not have the machine control me.

I’ve often referred to one of the earliest Gimmicks, the Veg-o-matic, created and marketed by the King of Gimmicks, Gizmos, and Gadgets, Ron Popeil, and one my mom used to use in our kitchen back when we were kids after it had just come out on the market. I thought that was a great little gizmo and was advertised so accurately with its ad, “It slices, it dices, and so much more.”

See LOMBARDO, Page E2

Lombardo

From Page E1

Thing was though, the user still had to put the vegetable in position, adjust the blades to what you wanted it to do (slice, dice, etc.), and then push the top down to create what you wanted. The responsibility was on the user, not the machine.

We live in a world where we’re looking for everything to be done for us. We want to get in a car and “set it, and forget it.” (Another of Ron Popeil’s taglines for a later gimmick of his). It’s in everything we do now-a-days. Kids have no idea what the Dewey Decimal System is, or what a Dictionary or Thesaurus is, or what an Encyclopedia is, or how to cook on a stove, or bake in an oven, or how to drive a car, the old-fashioned way. Easier life, maybe, sense of self accomplishment life, not so much anymore.