Local Trivia: We suck much more than our ancestors. At least in pictures.

While looking for images to carve stamps out of, I found this website for Local City's historic photos, comparing images of main streets in downtown Local City from 1899, 1950, and 2002.

I find it fascinating to look at how things have changed. Perhaps you'll find it less fascinating because you're not as familiar with Local City and are not (probably) sitting in Local City's public library while viewing them. But the thing that most strikes me, and that will be able to strike you even if you've never been to Local City, is the apparent change in the quality of life (and reflected in the increasing quality of the digital version of the photos): maybe 1899's horses and buggies aren't your cup of tea, but all the awesome old-tyme cars of the 50s crowding Local City's streets hold a certain appeal to me.

I wish this "Then and Now" listing also included a photo from the 80s, when I was growing up in Local City. Before Reagonomics set in, and before all the factory work moved elsewhere (not that I blame it), I remember downtown Local City as a happening place, with a sandwich shop that sold awesome milkshakes and a toy shop from which I made my first toy purchases: a doll and a marionette, both of which I still have (somewhere).

Local City now makes me a little bit sad, because I remember what it was, and what I was, and how connected I was to Local City. Maybe it's not that the 50s were better, but that the images of the recent past, as technologically advanced and populated with "normal" contemporary cars and people as they are, seem so empty and disconnected.