| From West by Northwest.org Voices of the Northwest Memories and Promises: It's Not Your Father's Ford Any More By Dianne Lobes Jul 19, 2003
Some memories from childhood are bittersweet and nearly hardwired into us. With both my parents gone now, associations to them are especially powerful and protected. While my mother was the one that I loved, I craved my father's attention and respect, and I wasn't sure that I had them until I was nearly an adult. Conflicted childhood memories that mess with one's self-esteem may be the ones that advertising can most profitably use to market "stuff". Such memories play at the edge of our consciousness, and beg for resolution, but we don't like to acknowledge them. They take time and energy. Advertisers tell us that such deep yearning can easily be fulfilled, though usually only narcotized, by "stuff", and we Americans seem to have bought this convenient fantasy whole cloth. It's dangerous to sell your soul this way, and the danger is personal as well as environmental. Our national codependent love affair with cars is a good example. The cues that cause us to buy one car over another may be primarily unconscious, but once conscious, they provide us with a new world of choice and freedom, and a way to help save our planet. I'll illustrate with my own example, which I call Escape from the Ford Family of "Fine" Cars. The 1950's might be a blur to me now, but I do clearly remember our round black 1950 Ford Deluxe "Fordor" sedan. I remember its smell (the most primitive and thus deeply affecting sense), its rough upholstery, its protective, almost womblike interior. I remember seeing its comforting hulk coming out of the snowstorm to pick me up from school as I waited, shivering, on the curb when school was let out early and the buses wouldn't run. I remember its inviting warmth, my mother at the wheel, and having her all to myself for the ride home. My dad was a gruff, frequently angry kind of guy, overstressed from his job in production control at the Ford plant. He came home cussing a veritable blue streak over his bosses and his "vendors", who plotted constantly against his equilibrium. My mom would be stuck in the kitchen making dinner, captive to his verbal onslaught, but we kids would be long gone before 5 o'clock and only reappear when supper was ready. My dad ate silently, having spent his rage. When he retired from Ford after 22 years, he became noticeably relaxed and more pleasant, more aware of us and the possibility of relating to us. But I was a young adult by then, conditioned to the "angry dad" persona, and it took me a while to trust the new, nicer version. When I was three, I hazily remember being taken to the Ford 50th anniversary celebration at the Ford plant by my dad, and meeting the Cisco Kid, which I really liked. There's even a photo of it somewhere. I'm smiling really big. One of the few times I ever saw my dad cry, and felt him being present to me, was when I won the Ford Motor Company scholarship, six years after my sister won it. The confluence of acclaim, money and pride, all handed to him by his loved/hated employer, were overwhelming to a guy who typically received little of any. Notice came through a very exciting telegraph on Easter morning, 1968, as we were getting ready for church. At least, this was the way it was supposed to come. We had actually found out the day before when Western Union screwed up and read the telegram to me over the phone, despite the prominent "DO NOT CALL" memo on it. But my memory is that the telegram made it real. Aside from the workplace celebrity this gave my dad for having two daughters who both won a highly competitive prize, each scholarship paid for four years at any accredited US university – tuition, books, 80% of housing and food. My sister and I used them well, I think. Carol became the head of Student Health Services at the University of Wisconsin and a college professor, among other things, and I became a psychologist and a writer. So I can fairly say that I was a Ford "brat". The shadow of Ford loomed large throughout my life, and I naturally veered toward Ford when I needed a car, just as my father had, just as the advertisers hope that we will. Accordingly, I've owned two Fords in my adult life – a used green Pinto, my first car, that fortunately was never in an accident and so never burned up on me, and a red Probe, my first new car and one I kept for 11 years with few needed repairs. I've recently learned Ford no longer makes the Probe, which was really a Mazda with a Ford emblem slapped on – one of the most efficient models they ever took credit for. But now I own a petite red Honda Insight hybrid that looks like a cool little rocket, gets up to 75 mpg on the highway and creates 1/6 the pollution that my Probe did. I won't buy another Ford, despite the Ford discount I could get, until Ford Motor Company makes good on its environmental promises to the public and to me. At a Greenpeace conference in London two years ago, Bill Ford, the current Ford CEO and great-grandson of the inventor of the Model T, touted his company's pledge "to go beyond the requirements of the law to preserve and protect the environment." He added, "Corporations should be a major force for resolving social and environmental concerns in the 21st century." Improving SUV fuel mileage was part of his promise. Last year, however, Ford ditched that promise by personally lobbying Congress against increasing federal fuel mileage standards, after producing new cars and trucks less efficient than the average for other major U.S. automakers. In many size classes, Ford's most popular models had the lowest fuel economy in the industry, according to a 2002 report by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Even the Model T got better gas mileage than today's average Ford vehicle. The average fuel economy of its new vehicles is at a 20-year low. It's gone backwards under Bill Ford's leadership. And this year the company reneged on its pledge to boost SUV fuel economy 25 percent, something which it could easily accomplish with current technology while netting consumers over $2300 in savings. Ford's own latest Corporate Citizenship Report revealed that the company had made no progress over the previous year toward their stated goal of improving fuel economy. And the report also warned that Ford's strategy to address global warming "will be tempered by our near-term business interests." So much for promises. "The true cost of offering the public inefficient, fossil fuel-dependent vehicle technology increases every day, and not just at the pump: escalating global warming; air pollution; increasing asthma and other respiratory illnesses; and risky dependence on foreign oil," said Elisa Lynch of the Bluewater Network. "Bringing clean, efficient vehicles to market – in all vehicle categories – would eliminate every one of these consequences." But Ford Motor Company has chosen "expediency over integrity and environmental responsibility". My sister and I both suffer from respiratory illnesses, as perhaps someone in your family does. And we all live on this fragile planet, the only one we have. Not only is fossil fuel destroying our atmosphere and large SUVs are tearing up our roads, but the world oil supply is believed to be past peak. So gas for guzzlers is just going to get more and more expensive, expected to start rivaling Europe's astronomical prices. Europeans drive small, very efficient cars. My inbred allegiance to and genuine gratitude for the Ford Motor Company is second to my allegiance to and gratitude for my planet. Accordingly I make purchases with the environment in mind, not the comforting or problematic half-memories of childhood upon which Madison Avenue preys. I used to think that I "had" to buy a Ford – consciously because of the discount, but unconsciously because of the connection to my father. I believe I honor my father more, and I get a better deal, when I buy a car that drives as lightly as possible on our earth. The Bluewater Network, Global Exchange, the Sierra Club and other environmental groups are pushing Ford to become the great company it could be, the great company that I believed it was as a child. Join our boycott against buying Ford cars until they come through with their promises to help turn around environmental pollution and to market safe, clean, alternative-fuel cars. It's a tough love gift for Ford's 100th birthday celebration going on during the summer of 2003, without Cisco Kid, as far as I know. It's a gift that will pay off for Ford, in returning buyers, and for our planet, in cleaner air, when we can remember Ford as a company that keeps its promises. A Ford advertising slogan is, "Making the impossible possible." Let's push Ford instead to "make the possible possible" by using the clean technologies that already exist today and that Bill Ford promised he would promote and use. Copyright © 2003 by Dianne Lobes Dianne Lobes, Ed.D., dlobes@comcast.net, is a writer/consultant and activist in Eugene working with the Bluewater Network to stop global warming. © Copyright 2000-2004 by West by Northwest.org |
