Ingram Brothers Ford Motor Cars Garage and Sales Room, Interior View, Anaheim. Image via Calisphere.
I know I’ve seen this passage quoted a couple times before – where exactly, I can’t recall right now – but I still find it worth repeating:
Someone should write an erudite essay on the moral, physical, and esthetic effect of the Model T Ford on the American nation. Two generations of Americans knew more about the Ford coil than the clitoris, about the planetary system of gears than the solar system of stars. With the Model T, part of the concept of private property disappeared. Pliers ceased to be privately owned and a tire pump belonged to the last man who had picked it up. Most of the babies of the period were conceived in Model T Fords and not a few were born in them. The theory of the Anglo Saxon home became so warped that it never quite recovered.
– From John Steinbeck’s “Cannery Row” (1945)