The More Things Change
If you’re among the contingent of old-fashioned car folks who think push-button gear selectors are too modern, and things just need to go back to the way they were, you may be in for a shock. Push-button transmission controls were prevalent in the Good Old Days. As strange as it sounds, they coexisted with carburetors.
Plymouth used pushbutton controls to convey convenience and modernity in 1956. The first V8-powered Plymouths had been released in 1955 (buyers had their choice of 241 inches of displacement and 157 horsepower, or 260 inches and 167 horsepower), and a mild facelift the following year included pushbutton controls for the optional two-speed PowerFlite automatic transmission. If you long for the good old days of American Iron, when a mildly modified Plymouth Fury with a 303-inch V8 hit 145 on the sands of Daytona Beach, perhaps pressing “D” for Drive in a new car will leave you contemplating nostalgia and innovation, legacy and ignorance.
At least one wise thinker in the Bible contemplated these things. After noticing how unfulfilled he felt after pursuing some new idea or experience, and how the ideas and experiences from long ago became forgotten overnight, the author of Ecclesiastes (almost certainly King Solomon) wrote “There is nothing new under the sun.”
“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, ‘Look! This is something new’? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9-11)
A lot of new things have happened since Solomon wrote those words in the 10th century B.C. Just think of the events surrounding the 1956 Plymouth: In AD 1620, a sailing vessel would dock at a harbor later called Plymouth Rock. This monument would be the inspiration of a 20th-century car company. By 2022, car folks could read about all of this on a website, and perhaps some would think, “Well, some things do indeed seem new.”
Yet the overall human experience hasn’t changed. Suffering and longing were as familiar in Solomon’s day as they were in 17th-century Massachusetts. Solomon’s realization of his own futility to correctly and perfectly perceive life is no different from Plymouth executives watching their declining market share and ultimate closure in the early 21st century. The pride and conquest in the hearts of some Plymouth Rock settlers would be shared by some greedy people throughout America’s history who pursued profit above other important things, like environmental impact. While considering America’s complicated past with its abundant natural resources, some Plymouth Rock tourists today may look at the increasingly submerged landmark and echo Solomon’s ancient words: “What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun?” (Ecclesiastes 1:3)
Solomon’s reflections on futility can be inspiring, if they inspire you to look for meaning outside of yourself and your experience. Those old feelings of confusion may have survived for centuries, but so have his words of hope for salvation through God. If you’ve felt that nothing new is entering in your life, or that too many new things leave you with the old feeling of being overwhelmed, consider Solomon’s “remembrance of men of old” and remember people like Solomon, Ruth, Mary Magdalene, Paul, and countless other people in the Bible. Their stories may be old, but perhaps they can inspire you to consider a new relationship with God, who makes all things new.
By 1960, you could walk into a Plymouth showroom and order Plymouth’s first (and only) electric car: the Fury Jr., a 1/3-scale fiberglass promotional toy driven by a small electric motor. It had fewer buttons on the dashboard than a normal new Plymouth, and, interestingly, fake exhaust pipes. See, the American car-buying public wasn’t ready to buy a car without exhaust pipes. That just seemed too new.
