Once the world climbed into the driver's seat and stepped on the gas, it hardly ever looked back. Art Buchwald wrote, "Americans are broad- minded people. They'll accept the fact that a person can be an alcoholic, a dope fiend, a wife beater, and even a newspaperman, but if a man doesn't drive there's something wrong with him." Automobiles became more than just toys for the rich, they became a part of day-to-day living in, from, and to the work place. And it is in America that the long ride has been the zippiest, the zestiest, and the zaniest, because it is in America that automobiles started a social revolution almost as revolutionary as that of the motorized industry itself.
One of the first social changes cars brought about was in mating habits. It didn't take young people in America long to realize that there was a lot more they could accomplish in a backseat than on the front porch. Besides, it would be more private and a good deal more comfortable. Motorized courtship had been established even before the Model T offered a love nest within everyone's price range. Gus Edwards' popular "In My Merry Oldsmobile" contained two very provocative lines: "You can go as far as you like with me, In our merry Oldsmobile." Ford's Model T just gave the merry Oldsmobile an enormous amount of company at prices the common person could afford. In 1944, John Steinbeck noted in "Cannery Row": "Most of the babies of the era were conceived in the Model T Ford, and not a few were born in them." And it wasn't just in America.
A survey of 6,000 British girls by the London "Woman" revealed that half of them regularly make love in parked cars. In Los Angeles, a business called "Tail Dating" became popular. The motorist paid a fee to receive a bumper sticker in popular day-glo colors. If one driver spots another car on the road with a driver that sparks his or her interest, and also sports the bumper sticker, the license number can be phoned in to "Tail Dating" to set up a meeting. The automobile manufacturers had no qualms about using sex appeal to sell their product. In 1924, a Jordan firm named one of its models the "Playboy." Its ad campaign showed a handsome cowboy and a beautiful girl driving "somewhere West of Laramie." A Brewster used the same tactics when they produced a heart-shaped radiator grille. Some car companies turned out models with seats that folded down to become a double bed. Things haven't really changed much, except the fold-down seat has become a more comfortable van with all the luxuries of a motel.
Automobiles opened up the possibility of farm children going to town schools, where they were provided with better facilities and greater educational choices. It also gave farm communities the ability to shop at will, rather than once or twice a year. Town was within shopping range and there were also clubs, theaters, and numerous other activities that the average farm family had previously been denied. If one got tired of it, he could always get back to the quiet of the country.
The feminists' movement, which had been dragging its feet ever since the 1820s, had a rapid growth from the automobile. In 1898, Genevra Delphine Mudge drove a Waverly Electric in New York to become the nation's first known female motorist. The following year she became the country's first female racing driver by competing in a Locomobile in a New York race meet. She skidded into five people standing on the sidelines, knocking them down, but not seriously hurting them. She's now only a footnote in automotive history as the first American woman to have an automobile accident. It was also in 1898 that Chicago began requiring licenses in order to drive, and one of the first to be licensed was a woman. The Women's Motoring Club of New York was chartered before Henry Ford had even begun to produce the Model T. In 1909, the president, Alice Ramsey, and three members left New York in an open-bodied Maxwell-Briscoe and drove to San Francisco in 59 days. Women were not a real part of the automotive scene, however, until
Henry Leland produced a self-starter in a 1912 Cadillac. Eliminating the physical strain of hand-cranking, he removed a large physical bar from women drivers and, perhaps, men as well, since he was prompted to this creation because his friend died of injuries he had received from the kickback of a hand crank.
The automobile gave America a new look and something new to look at as well. Escaping railroad schedules and the fixed routes of public transportation, Americans could go wherever and whenever they wanted and stay or leave at will. They took advantage of this opportunity by the thousands. Overcrowded hotels and stage stops developed into road-side cabins and then courts and finally, into motels for the convenience of the motorist who was on his way to someplace else and only needed a stopover to rest for the night.
Businesses looked around and saw the multitude on cars on the roads and followed after them. First there were a smattering of service stations; then they spread across the country like insects as more and more people owned wheels. Every junction of the road had a gas station, and eventually they were on each corner of the junction. The speed of the vehicles picked up sharply and station owners were soon watching them fly by to the next stop, so they started building eye-catching structures, and because man does not live on gasoline alone, they erected diners and cabins and assorted other roadside businesses, which now provide everything from swimming pools and paper, disposable swim suits to breath sprays.
Some salute the car for improving the American breed by providing such extended mating territories. This may be argued, but the car surely did alter the pattern of movement. People began to leave the beaten path, which had previously been unknown. The car introduced a country to itself, enabling travelers to discover and to understand regional differences and common values.
The placid beauty of the open road and the changing scenery began to be spoiled by old tires, food wrappings, pop and beer bottles (and then cans), by bodies of animals who could not outrun the charging vehicle, by deserted service buildings and finally, by road signs designed to catch the motorist`s eye several miles ahead of his arrival, so that he had time to consider stopping before he had already sped past.
One advertising man instituted the now famous Burma Shave jingles, which were spaced out to match the speed of the traffic. Tourist cabins were upgraded into more lavish courts, and then into motels. Diners began to improve and highway food chains made an appearance with some control over menu and sanitary conditions.
Unfortunately, the lure of money brings all kinds of money makers, some of them not so desirable: beer joints, hot dog stands, "wild animal" shows, fortune tellers, souvenir shops, and now automobile scrap heaps lining the edges of every town and city. Signs became bigger and some were lighted in flashing neon.
People trying to get out of the congestion of the city fled in droves to the suburbs. Somehow they envied the farmer who could come in and shop and return to the solitude of the country. They breathed the fresh air and cooked on open grills, and talked about the country life, encouraging more people to move into the suburbs, all bringing their outdoor grills, lawn mowers, automobiles, boats, trailers, and other paraphrenalia, until there was eventually as many people in the suburbs as there were in the city. Then the "suburbanites" demanded some of the advantages of the city. They needed churches, schools, fire departments, markets, drugstores, hardware stores and gasoline stations, until there was soon as much congestion and stress as they had left behind. Shopping malls sprang up everywhere, serving everything from french fries to wedding gowns, and electric rails swept the population into the city in the morning and back to the suburbs in the evening. They finally began to realize that they had not escaped the city at all; they had merely moved to the "residential area."