“Mobility is as much about freedom and new vistas as it is about capitalism or the free market, and the young were taking up the former while the elder worried about the latter. Mobility in the 1950s meant prosperity, but it also meant the ability to communicate more widely, to be exposed to different lifestyles and different views, to get into a car or a bus and experience the country like Jack Kerouac’s character in ‘On the Road.’ Mobility brought adventure, both physical, emotional, and mental. By funding the building of national interstates, the American government was thus connecting the country in unexpected ways. And there would be consequences.”
— Andrea Hiott, Thinking Small (2012, p. 337)
RE:SOURCES
- Hiott, Andrea; 2012. Thinking Small: The Long, Strange Trip of the Volkswagen Beetle. Ballatine Books, New York, NY.
Also see ‘Automobile in American Life and Society is valuable but badly needs updating’
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