Born to be Modern

I came into this world in 1961, what some called the Space age. You could say that I was born to be modern, and so was all my thinking and taste that followed.

Futurist car art by Syd Mead for U.S. Steel.

As a young child I used to watch the Jetson’s color cartoon every Saturday morning and just gaze into the television screen and image how it would be some day for me living in the future, how fantastic it would all be! Then I entered Junior high and then high school in late 1978 and ’79 watching “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century” and thinking how wild of a future would be ahead of me and that I just couldn’t wait until I was living there. Well, I really couldn’t wait, so since I couldn’t transport myself to the 25th century, I could certainly transform the world around me I was living in by making it much more “Modern”.

I convinced my mother that my bedroom needed a paint job and with that, I proceeded to paint my space light blue, adding metal and chrome accessories with earth tones from the 1970’s. Well, at least my cat at the time got a real kick out of it all. My mother on the other hand said, “fine job son, now come on down and eat your spaghetti!”. So from then on, there was no stopping me. My quest to live in the “future world” was on!

Buck Rogers

My first car was something that my good old grand dad found for me at an auction. A 1962 Ford Galaxy. I was kind of embarrassed to drive it to high School at the time, so I parked it far away! However, it wasn’t until later that I found out that the car was featured at the futuristic Ford exhibit at the 1964 Words Fair and that guest actually road in them on a kind of ride at the time, called the Ford Motor Company’s Wonder Rotunda! Yeah, now that was styling. Not. I ended up giving the car to my brother and told my Grandpa that I needed a much smaller car to be able to navigate my way around town safely! So he actually found that car for me and this was my first real car, a Datsun B210, in yellow! Of course I had to customize the paint job, being the artist that I am, by taping off the lower part of the vehicle and spray painting the lower half of it all black making it look like some futurist flying pod from the “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century” TV show! Buck would have been proud of me, or at least Twiki would of. I even had my hair styled the same as Buck for a while—long. That is until the 1980’s dictated shorter hair in the back with sweeping long front bangs, and cargo flight paints with an air force “Tom cruise” flight jacket—standard dress for all the cool kids. I had hoped to be a cool kid, however, I wasn’t popular in High school or college. It wasn’t until my forties did I really get my grove on and not take any crap from anyone. Oh well, so the story of a young man’s life goes on, in the search of the future in a modern world.

So, born to be modern I was, however, I was born too late! Remember when we thought in the year 2001 things would be sleek, fast, and futuristic looking? And now it’s the year 2010 and we have ceramic chickens, cows and flowered reefs on our front doors (well not my front door), and there are old world furnishings and homes that look like mini European mansions along with people wearing blue jeans as the everyday clothes on the street and for work!

Where is Buck Rogers to save the day! Where is the above ground monorail that we were promised from Disneyland. Where did Monsanto go? Where?