Re david's comment on my rose-tinted glasses with stars and stripes
pattern--I am neither especially nostalgic nor over-patriotic. I have
always been able to imagine the past, especially that of the period
1890-1940, very vividly. However, I am too aware of the many bad things
that were part of that past to over-romanticise it. Also I don't think that
nostalgia can properly describe a feeling for anything not part of one's
own experience, so mine could go no farther back than 1953--and I have very
little affection for the 1950s, if any. The feelings I have when thinking
about my own life are not the same as when thinking about times I never
experiences and never could. Furthermore, while I believe very much in the
value of knowing history and understanding the past in context (always hard
to teach), I am suspicious of nostalgia as an industry. I think Dennis
Potter's remarks on this are worth considering. There is something not
quite right about a headlong dash into the past in search of some kind of
safe haven or golden age that never really existed--which is what the
nostalgia industry feeds upon. This is the past as seen in TV commercials
and many products of the film industry--it has little to do with what was
really going on and more to do with the ways people want to influence the
present. This is the rose-colored and stars-and-stripes scenario beloved of
political conservatives, who think that if we could only repeal the 20th
century all would be well. And indeed, Reaganomics was simply 1920s
Republican economic thinking, proof they hadn't learned a thing. (On an
occasion in 1993 when I appeared as Theodore Roosevelt, it gave me great
pleasure to include his 1912 denunciation of trickle-down economics into
the speech I gave.) 

As for the stars and stripes, I was for many years more inclined to a
pro-foreign bias rather than a patriotic one. This was particularly true
where cars were concerned! At the time, I don't think anyone ever really
expected American industries to be endangered--and now consider the long
list of products which are no longer made in this country. Now I might
think more carefully about whether to buy the domestic or imported product,
if I have a choice--in the name of continuing to have one. 

I felt that the US auto industry had once known how to make very good cars,
forgot how, became complacent that they could sell anything they made to
the American public (and no other public mattered) and that the foreign
cars would never become a serious threat (indeed, the 'compact cars' were a
response to the VW Beetle and the 'ponycars' to the British sports
cars)--then when proven wrong, have since learned to do their job better. 

I find Henry Ford a fascinating though not always endearing or admirable
character (and my family does have a tendency to buy Ford products--I've
owned six of them myself). 

It has always been my belief that I should be able to appreciate the best
of anything regardless of when or where it originates. It is part of my
approach to music and other cultural legacies. Does it matter whether a
record was made in 1903 or yesterday, if the music it contains is still
interesting, meaningful and vital? Such a willingness to cross time
barriers is one I have rarely encountered. A woman I used to know told me
she couldn't listen to my old jazz records because "all those guys are
dead." I pointed out that they weren't when the records were made (indeed
not all of them are yet) and that in my opinion that was a form of
immortality, a time machine that works. Didn't help. Then I asked her if
she'd given up Beatles records after John Lennon died--"that's different."
You just can't get through to some people. No doubt she thought so too. But
she's long gone, and I still like to listen to all those dead people. 

So to get back to the point (having as usual given a long answer to a short
question), I don't think my view was either rosy or patriotic--just
something interesting I liked. I can tell as many stories about HFS Morgan
as I can about Henry Ford--or Ettore Bugatti, Mark Birkigt and a host of
others. 

Don White