7

Many nights I've drifted off to sleep with the hum of an engine under me and the interstate swooshing past underneath. I've spent some of my most sound nights of slumber passing from one state to the next at speeds unfathomable to my ancestors, cradled comfortably in a cozy cabin, riding smoothly through the night.
On October 1st, 1908 Henry Ford gave every future American the chance to go to sleep in one area of the country and wake up in the next--quite literally, he made it possible for the average man to travel in the blink of an eye. Though maybe these intense speeds and widespread availability weren't so instantaneously achieved, what Ford introduced was a start, and a huge one at that.
When Henry Ford introduced the Model T, he meant to make it available to the common man, and that he did. This was the beginning of a revolution of American transportation, which would literally carry us into a new society and way of life. For the future, faster transportation meant easier coordination, it meant a social rearrangement--not only the rich could go places and alter their futures, it would soon be the poor too who could get out of a dirt-poor home and find work elsewhere.
Both in small communities, and all over the world it spoke many things, but most of all this new technology uttered one word: opportunity. In Jack Kerouac's On the Road, how else would Sal Paradise get around? How would he get out west? What would would the west be, if not for the broad availability of the motor vehicle? The culture that erupted from this new found freedom and opportunity is a beautiful one. Sure, pollution skyrocketed and that's something we've got to figure out. But for me, getting my license is something I look forward ecstatically and I think as a whole, we can all say we've benefited from the good ol' car.