Don't Hate Us Because We Were More Beautiful than You Are

Tomorrow morning, the Cranky Girls will take off their city-girl hats and put on their farm-girl ones. Changing venues has a time-warp element at times, since the CGs stay in a house furnished by a person who graduated from high school in 1938. We have brought some modern touches, such as wiring without frayed insulation, but we'd like to think that these changes are in keeping with sensibility of Meta Cranky's mother. Kap would have been pleased to serve Norm Abrams a piece of her pie, but, for reasons of economy and aesthetics, she wouldn't have let the This Old House guy touch her knob-and-tube wiring or her '70s Formica kitchen counter.

The Crankies' home place is a venue where, as in Faulkner, the past is not only not dead, it's not even past. In preparation for another exercise in time-travel, Meta Cranky would like to consider some vintage elements of style and engineering that perhaps work better--or at least look better--than their modern-day equivalents.

MC's auntie's piano teacher and her students are pictured above. MC has been to her share of piano recitals over the last few years, and children have become more casual and squirmy than the ones pictured here. Is it the ladies' hats that give this group its air of confidence and savoir faire? The groovy bamboo frame around the picture certainly adds a jaunty touch. You might be able to take this picture with your iPhone and send it to a gazillion of your Facebook friends, but would it be as charming without the bamboo frame? MC thinks not.

Here's another one that kills in the style department. The exposed stairs from the tarmac to the airplane. Would Dad's Cousin Margaret have had a lovely honeymoon if she boarded her United flight on a Jetway? Undoubtedly. But would she have looked as good or made such a dramatic entrance? Not even close.

Extra points for the shawl collar, and for marrying Lan, who did very well for himself in the Southern California car-storage business.

Next: No thinking person would trade a keyboard for a fountain pen. MC has done a few transcriptions of 19th century documents, and the act made her want to impale herself on her British Museum library card. But think of how your handwriting looks on the average sticky note, then look at the back of this photograph:

Readers, are we weeping in shame over our undistinguished penmanship? Hazel had an 8th grade education (OK, there was that incomplete post-grad nurse's training) but her handwriting kicks your doors in.

And finally. MC has always admired this picture of her granddad, which has many stylistic fillips to recommend it.
Students of vintage automobiles, like MC's brothers, would provide the years and models of the vehicle with the googley headlights and the truck with the roundy window. For MC, however, the What-Have-They-Got-That-I-Ain't-Got elements are fenders and running boards. Watch and learn: fenders and running boards turn your vehicle into a conversation pit. True, they don't have cup holders, but could you look this good in a recliner or a lawn chair? Maybe, if you adjust your hat, tie, and cigar just so. On second thought, nah. Are you listening, GM? I'm giving you free advice here: the American public might buy more American cars if the product made drivers look like Grownups with Brains, not like teenagers with 12-packs in the trunk.

Excuse me while I go pack my spectator pumps.
--MC