Repairing the Arc of History

Someone stopped by the bus the other day to talk about it. I answered his questions, and then, as he was getting ready to go, he said, “hey, thanks for keeping it going, I love knowing these things are out there, still running.” He was the second person in as many months to say that to me.

That evening I was at the grocery store and there was an early 1970s Ford Bronco at the gas pump. Maybe it was late 60s. I’m not a huge fan of Broncos. I’ll probably never own one, but it was my kind of car — well used with plenty of patina in the finish. It had been around and I thought, you know, I too am glad it’s out there, still running. Thanks for keeping it going.

What is it though? I don’t think that statement is about the car. Or rather, it’s about more than just the car, it’s about what the car represents: the past. Thanks for keeping this tiny thread of the past alive in the present. That thread becomes a way back, a way home for some. Thanks for keeping these things going, because in doing so, the memories we have of them also keep going.

Some might call this nostalgia. Usually as a way of dismissing it. That doesn’t wash with me. Why is nostalgia a bad thing? First, there’s nothing wrong with nostalgia. It’s a valid thing to feel. It even used to be a more serious thing.

It’s in the history of the word. The word nostalgia did not always have the modern meaning, “wistful yearning for the past.” The original meaning cut much deeper. Nostalgia used to mean a feeling of “pain, grief, and distress.” Nostalgia was the pain, grief, and distress that comes from trying to “reach some place, escape, return, get home.”

Pain at the loss of home. Grief for something you cannot return to. A desire to escape.

Wouldn’t do to have a word that so neatly encapsulates a very common feeling about the modern world. Best water it down to “a wistful yearning.” No, you don’t really feel pain, that’s wistfulness. Here, take a soma, have a new car.

The word nostalgia comes from two Greek words, algos, which gives us the pain, grief, distress, and nostos the reaching for some place or returning home.

Nostos is the part that interests me. Returning home. It has an Old English cognate, genesen, which means “to recover.” There’s also the Gothic ganisan, which means “to heal,” which is getting much closer to what I think is actually at work here. This is the thread I think of when I see the Bronco, or a cast iron skillet, or an old wood plane, or a pair of well worn boots. The feelings evoked by all these things are not a wistful yearning for another time, they’re a feeling of pain at the loss of beautiful things that had meaning and value, both to the people who made them and the people who used them. It’s a distress born of realizing that we need to recover those elements of the past that were better than what we have today. Not nostalgically better in our mind’s eye, but tangibly, demonstrably better, obviously so to anyone who has used both the things from the past and those made today, which is to say, all of us.

It’s not nostalgia in its modern definition. There’s no yearning. It’s more serious than that. Or maybe we are yearning, yearning to heal the present. There’s a book I’ve never read because I think all you need to know is in the title. It’s by Neil Postman and it’s called Building a Bridge to the 18th Century: How the Past Can Improve Our Future. I assume the text covers the details. I also assume that on those I’d probably differ, but the idea that the way to a better future is through the past, strikes me as about right.

I didn’t say anything to the Bronco. There was no one around. Maybe the iron and steel understand, I think they do, but talking to a car in an empty parking lot attracts attention. Besides, it’s the person who’s maintaining that connection that matters. It’s their struggle to keep that thing working that is healing the present, building those bridges through the past into the future.

All those people laboring to keep those bits of the past working in the present, that’s what matters. Without them the objects are just rust and decay. Someone has to maintain them, recover them, repair them. This is the bond to the past, recognizing that kindred spirit in the person behind the car.

In a culture that prizes the new and chucks the old without a thought, those of us who appreciate the old, the time-tested, the well-worn are anachronisms. We’re out of pace with the world and it can be lonely to be left behind by your culture¹. It helps to know there are others out there like yourself. The things, the cars, the trucks, the buses, they’re talismans perhaps, so we anachronists will know each other when we see each other.

Those who keep things going understand them, understand where they came from, why they work the way they work, and what that means. You have to, otherwise you’ll never be able to keep whatever it is working.

This process is a way of communing with the past. If that sounds too hippie for you, don’t worry, that communication with the past often goes like this, “what #$%@ idiot wired this together with electrical tape” or words to that effect. We know what it’s like to bang our heads against a problem for weeks. We know the pain of seeing that white smoke coming out the valve cover vent. We understand the sense of victory when it starts up and purrs after hours of work.

This used to be a more common experience. One there would be little reason to even talk about. Most things prior to about 1995 were made with the implicit understanding that they would at some point in the future need to be repaired. This was an understood part of the design process, even if the designer assumed the repair person would be a “professional”.

Go back a bit further and not only are notions of future repair part of the design process, there’s no assumption about professionals. The assumption was that the owner would be doing basic maintenance and fixing things themselves. Read any car manual — not the repair manual, but the in-the-glove-box owner’s manual — and you’ll find the manufacturers’ assumed owners would change the oil, repair the brakes, and perform other basic maintenance.

Somewhere in the last 30 years, this culture of repair was lost.

No. Lost is the wrong word. I believe it was a concerted effort to destroy not just the ability to repair things, but the culture of repair, the idea that repairing things is something you could and should do.

Today we live in a world where even professional mechanics can’t repair some vehicles. It’s so bad that Massachusetts passed a law requiring vehicle manufacturers to allow third-party repair and the United States federal government initially suggested that car makers not comply. Even when they backed off that stance, the primary effect of the law is that car makers like Kia and Subaru decided to disable reporting systems completely for Massachusetts drivers. The logic, if you can call it that, seems to be “if we have to give it to you, we’ll just not have it, then we can’t give it to you.”

This is why, in 2069, no one is ever going to see a 2024 Subaru at the gas station and say, “hey, thanks for keeping it going.” The 2024 Subaru is going to end up in a landfill with every other car made since around 2012².

This is where the claim that we’re all just nostalgic for some lost past starts to piss me off. I don’t want to go back to the past. Today is great. What I want, what people like us want are tools and skills from the past. We want stuff that works, stuff that’s made to last, stuff we can fix with our hands and a few simple tools.

Once you get past aesthetics (the Bronco of 1970 looks better than the Bronco of 2024), past the fact that it’s much easier to repair, you get to the part that matters: the Bronco of 1970 responds to individual human agency. Anyone, with the right manuals, mentors, and patience can figure out how it works, what’s wrong with it, and, with a few simple tools, make it work again. That is empowering in a way that the 2024 Bronco will never be. That is an object that respects the toolmaking origins of humanity.

That is what I think people mean when they say thanks. Thanks for doing the work. Thanks for the reminder that it can be done. Thanks for keeping it going.