Originally posted by: Perknose
Thoughtful, interesting topic, bozack. While I'm as materialistic as the next person, I long ago realized that the wanting and the getting can far exceed the joy of having. Desire is a moving target, as far as I can see. When I was young, I worked and saved one entire summer to buy the stereo components of my dreams, which were seperates but would be solidly low/middle end by today's standards. Yet, because I worked so hard for them, I truly appreciated my system more fervently and deeply than I would anything I might choose to acquire today.
We are awash in a sea of goods, but I don't think they bring much happiness. I come out of a time and an ethos when people used to save for years for the things they truly wanted, then really appreciated them when they got them. Even the old line truly rich used to disdain conspicuous consumption.
When I was 30, I lived with and was engaged to a blue blood. Her mother was a Wharton, her father a Lippincott. She herself was worth 14 million, but her parents had way over 100 million. You know what kind of car they had? A Dodge Dart sedan! Her car was a deisel Golf (yeah, the head went). It used to be considered gauche to overindulge. Now, people seem to consider it their right.
When you have less, you more fully appreciate what you have. I'll soon be 54. When and where I grew up, the consumer society hadn't yet been fever pitched to kids. We wore tees, standard Lee/Levi/Wrangler (then Bell) jeans, stupid limberjack style coats in the winter, and black high top Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars, and that was that was that.
Sammy Sgro. His family name probably originally had a lot more consonants and syllables. For a couple of years, we walked home from our hideously overcrowded Catholic grade school together, so we'd stop and play in his yard until 4:30, when his Dad came home and they would eat supper, and I'd walk the last block and a half to my home. He had a bunch of brothers and sisters, mostly sisters. For some reason, his Mom was really fond of me.
Sometime around '63 or so, I remember Mr. Sgro finally parting with his black, beaten but unbowed, 1949 Chevy sedan. It was big news. I starkly remember Mr. Sgro coming out for one last look at the car that had served him so long and so well, and the guy nearly had tears in his eyes, his eyes welled up, because he'd loved and deeply apprciated his faithful companion. That somewhat small, dark skinned, soft spoken man scarcely ever had much to say, but this afternoon, his voice nearly breaking, he put his arm around Sammy and me and quietly talked about how much that car had meant to him, and how reluctant he was to let it go. I'll never forget that.
And if I have just one thing in my life that meant as much as that old Chevy meant to Mr. Sgro, then I'll consider myself a rich man indeed.
