And now, a word about Landmark Decisions: Boxy.
(No, not like the hyper vlogger, nor like those who boil down everything to thinking in-or-outside of that very same box -- but, well, squarish. You know, like a box -- not, um, square-ish, like not being hip or very uncool. Uh, to quote a Monty Python sketch: Wait, I'll come in again...)
As I has begun: Landmark Decisions -- no, wait, hang on, hang on. No running away in panic is required here. There'll be no airing of legal briefs, or any other kind, here today -- much to the relief of all concerned.
No, I was starting to warm up on the weirdly interwoven subjects of Time, Change, Culture, Cars, and Architecture.
Cars changed everything. (The vehicles, I mean -- although "Just What I Needed" surely shifted the landscape of the time a bit.)
As more Americans bought cars and became mobile, a sudden need bloomed for service providers all along their expanding driving routes -- restaurants, gas stations, places to sleep. The country went from sedate and, well, country-fied, to urgently urban, if not yet urbane.
The pace of change then was the beginning sign of just how quickly things were to continue changing in the decades and century ahead. Almost overnight, entrepreneurs and speculators streamed in to fill the need of these wandering carloads of spend-thrifts.
Here and there, a sense of advertising and brand identity took hold -- although it would be a very long time before anyone would define the notions as such, mostly because the need to defend a $699.99 pricetag on a pair of sneakers was still decades away.
On Monday, August 6, 1945, after six months of intense firebombing of 67 other Japanese cities,...
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