Some has-beens still evoke strong emotions

There's not a lot of traffic on the street in front of our house, so when we see a car passing by we tend to take notice.

Which is how I came to be watching, the other day, a particular car that stood out for a couple of reasons.

First, it was an old car. Not a beat-up old car. A classic old car. I can't tell you the make or year. I stopped being able to tell one car from another along about 1990, which is why my wife's 2006 Saturn Ion with about 12,000 actual miles on the odometer looks, to me, like many of the 2018 cars I see every day on our streets and highways.

Second, the car passing in front of our house had something you don't see much anymore. It had whitewall tires.

When was the last time you even thought about whitewall tires?

There was a time, of course, when whitewall tires were found on most cars, especially sedans. On expensive cars, whitewalls were frosting. On otherwise ordinary cars, whitewalls were a display of flair and elegance.

Remember?

And then whitewalls disappeared. Poof!

Now all the attention given to automotive wheels is focused on rims and hubcaps, which come in assorted shiny metals and designs. Would you believe a set of four fancy rims these days cost way more than we paid for the first car my wife and I purchased after we were married?

Some of the cars my folks drove when I was growing up had whitewalls. But not our first family vehicle.

Our first family car wasn't a car at all. It was a two-ton flatbed logging truck. "Two-ton" referred to its load capacity. "Flatbed" meant exactly that: there was a flat bed over dual real tires attached to a cab.

We were a farming family, not a lumbering family, but there was (and still is) quite a logging operation in the Ozark hills over yonder. A two-ton flatbed logging truck was, and is, an essential piece of equipment for -- what else? -- hauling logs.

But for a farming family, a two-ton flatbed truck had many uses. For example, it was used to haul bales of hay. And with a custom-made 6-foot livestock rack, a two-ton flatbed truck could haul hogs or cattle to the stockyards in East St. Louis.

Or a load of school kids on an all-day outing to the world's largest spring over by Van Buren. Safety issues? Tell me about it. But I don't think the truckload of children ever got over 40 miles per hour.

One thing, for sure, that our two-ton flatbed logging truck did not have was whitewall tires.

But the 1953 Chevrolet sedan my folks bought new when my mother started her career teaching in one-room schools -- Shady Nook, Mill Creek, Otter Creek, Dale, King -- had whitewalls as white as a fresh snowfall. Which probably was not the smartest thing for a car that had to be driven on a dusty or muddy -- or both -- road to go anywhere -- anywhere at all.

No more.

Whitewalls joined the ranks of buggy whips just about when my wife and I became car owners for the first time. By the time we had purchased our third or fourth car, all the attention was on rims.

Some rims or the hubcaps tires used to have are, by most reasonable standards, expensive. We had as our family car for a while a Buick with fancy hubs. We didn't buy them because they were fancy. They came with the car. But while my wife took our sons to Kansas City to see "Annie" the fancy decoration on the hubcaps proved to be a strong lure for thieves who removed them -- so as not to be such a strong temptation to other no-goodniks, I suppose.

Cars today have such expensive rims that they are fastened to your car with some sort of locking system that can only be undone with the special key the dealer pointed out when you bought the car but now can't remember, exactly, where it is. Every time I have the tires rotated I have to do a key search first.

Buggy whips and whitewalls are just a tip of the iceberg. I know that. Goodness knows what else is on its way to oblivion. Look at VCRs or movies on videotape at Blockbusters.

I have no reason to suggest, or even think, that something with so little practicality as whitewalls should make a strong comeback.

But, gosh. That car that went by the house the other day. It looked sweet.

Really sweet.

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Missourian.