sonora2sonoma

By Tim Konrad

It all seems so far away as I sit drinking a beer on this unseasonably warm November afternoon one hundred thirty-eight miles and a lifetime away in the spoiled and crowded wilds of Sonoma County. Twenty plus years living here haven’t touched the deep sense of familiarity I still feel toward the place where I spent my formative years. Some of the issues remain the same wherever one lives—traffic density, the disappearance of open spaces, over commercialization and the myriad problems resulting from the overemphasis on money that characterizes our culture.

I suppose every generation has felt some of the same things about the ways in which “progress” diminishes and cheapens our experiences by influencing the manner in which we interact with and relate to our surroundings. Every innovation seems to have its drawbacks and for every gain, something is lost. In the exchange, it’s usually the issues pertaining to quality of life that are the ones that suffer the most.

Yet, it’s in our nature as a species to want to reinvent the wheel, it seems, and each generation has its own take on how to go about it. The Roman historian Tacitus, in fact, lamented this process when he wrote his treatise, Germania, in 93 A.D.. The only constants, he noted,  are that change will occur and money will be involved. Precedent is eyed with suspicion in this enterprise, and history is almost universally ignored or disregarded, followed eventually by the usual (but certainly not in all cases) homage to the wisdom of hindsight.

In the Sonora of my youth, for example, one needed only pick up the telephone and dial “O” to get another human being on the phone. These days, not only experience and patience are required before one can reach an actual person, but also luck, and oftentimes, even specific knowledge of phone extensions.

The fruits of this so called “progress” are both large and small and can be seen in a variety of places. There was a time, for instance, when the shopping carts in the supermarkets were gathered inside the stores where they were more conveniently accessible to shoppers. I remember this being the case at my local Save Mart in Sonora where I used to shop. One day, presumably after the folks at the corporate office realized they could make more room for product by moving the carts outside, the shopping carts were relocated outside the building with the explanation that the move was made “for your convenience.”

A much larger, and more egregious bit of commercial propaganda was pulled off successfully by the oil and gas industry during the so-called gas shortages of the 1970s. Before the first gas shortage, people were accustomed to getting their tanks filled with no appreciable wait time at the pumps. It was literally taken for granted that all one needed do was drive up to the pumps to get their tank filled. Then, OPEC held us hostage (or, at least, that’s what we were told) and the next thing we knew, people were waiting in long lines for their turn at the gas pumps and, rather than feeling resentful at the inconvenience, they were actually grateful they were able to get gas at all. And at an inflated price to boot! A fancy bit of social engineering, and one that didn’t escape the notice of people eager to capitalize on the “herd instinct” aspects of human nature.

Not one to miss a beat, Madison Avenue was watching, and gaining deeper insight into the power achievable through the regulation of supply. Coupled with the advantages to be exploited by preying on the naïveté of the young, and taking into account the diminishing supply, thanks to attrition, of older folks who knew better, it wasn’t long before it became almost impossible to reach an actual person on a corporate phone call. What had once been taken for granted had now become outside of common experience and, hence, mostly a thing of the past. And for whose convenience???

To be continued: