Futuristic presents from the past: West Palm Beach, Florida's fantastic mid-century transportation exhibit

In the 1950s, American car makers were on top of the world and autos couldn't be too heavy, aggressive-looking or laden with chrome. A vehicle was a status symbol and the more it looked like a rocket ship headed for Mars, the more we Americans liked it. Car makers would create fantastic concept vehicles with big fins, bubble tops and huge, jet-like dual exhaust pipes to test the waters of potential car buyers. If a dramatic chrome bumper treatment was a big hit, maybe next year's Buick Roadmaster would feature it. Armies of incredibly talented engineers, designers and artists put these one-of-a-kind vehicles on the auto show floor under strict top secret conditions. So top secret, in fact, that most of the brilliant drawings and models were destroyed, lest the competition catch wind of their precious ideas. Luckily for car buffs, transportation historians and mid-century hipster fans, a Mr. Frederic Sharf began preserving these items years ago and amassed an amazing collection of thousands of drawings and artifacts. West Palm Beach, Florida's Norton Museum of Art is currently exhibiting a fraction of of these pieces called "Going Places" and it features not just cars, but also planes, trains and even a hybrid car/helicopter or two, all with a tomorrow is here today theme.

The craftsmanship and technical virtuosity of the artwork is astounding...no Photoshop shortcuts for these guys. The illustrations are all hand-painted and drawn in a heightened state of super-idealized reality. The future seemed so bright in these pieces, with their unrealistically perfect people and dreamy sophisticated backgrounds. If this is what life could be like in the 1950s, then surely we'd all be wearing jet-packs and driving car-planes by 1965, wouldn't we? A portion of the exhibit also features original advertising illustrations of regular, less showy cars for sale at your local Chevy, Oldsmobile or Ford dealer and again, for something as seemingly mundane as a magazine advertisement, the technique of these artworks is extraordinary. The chrome gleams, the reflections on the finish and tail lights shine and the backgrounds are packed with idealized suburban scenes or sophisticated city folks on the town. I want to be there, I think to myself when I see these.

The show will be up until January 2016, so check it out if you're going to be in South Florida. Don't let the future pass you by.

Oh, and since it's the Norton Museum of Art, I simply couldn't resist adding this.

Taking the last exit: RIP Pliny the Forester and Old Red

 Pliny the Forester visiting Albert the Bull, Audubon, Iowa, and...

...the Bonneville Salt Flats of Utah, and...

 ...the giant arrows in Mancos, Colorado, and...

 ...the crossroads of Montana, and...

 ...Carhenge, Alliance, Nebraska, and...

 ...the Enchanted Highway, near Regent, North Dakota, and...

 ...the Cadillac Ranch near Amarillo, Texas, and...

 ...the Wigwam Motel of Holbrook, Arizona, and...

 ...the Launching Pad restaurant, Wilmington, Illinois, and...

 ...the Geographic Center of the U.S.A., Lebanon, Kansas.

 Among other faraway places, Old Red took us to Pike's Peak, Colorado, and...

 ...Independence Pass, Colorado, the highest paved crossing of the Continental Divide in the U.S.A., and...

...and on its final road trip outing last fall, it took in the sights of Shinnston, West Virginia.

 Old Red became a canvas of our collection of old-fashion travel decals, placed on the rear side window much the same as my family did on our '65 Ford wagon when I was a kid.

The end is near, my friends.

You can get very attached to a car, especially if you hold on to one for a long time. This is particularly true if you take a lot of road trips, and so it was not without a little bit of sadness that we bid farewell to not one but both of our durable road trip warriors in the same week. We've had our 1998 Subaru Legacy wagon, dubbed Old Red, for 15 years and took our first cross-country trip (to Yellowstone in 2002) in it. It also took us to Nashville, Niagara Falls, northern Maine and lots more. We've gone the most places in our 2004 Subaru Forester, which we dubbed Pliny the Forester, after Pliny the Elder, the early Roman Empire's author, naturalist and philosopher (too obvious?): three 9,000-plus-mile cross country trips to Los Angeles, Montana's Glacier National Park, and San Francisco from our home in Rhode Island, plus lots more shorter trips (Chicago, Atlanta, and Quebec to name a few).

I can say without hesitation I've had the best times of my life in these two cars and they've served us well. But since last December, both cars have been neck and neck in the beloved-old-car-turning-into-a-hopeless-moneypit sweepstakes. We've become close, personal acquaintances with their "check engine" lights and have been stranded on the side of the road in each car. We've poured way too much money into them, enough to buy half a good used car, only to have them back in the shop a couple weeks later for another $500 repair. The end of an era was approaching. We traded them both in for what we considered a handsome sum, considering how old and troublesome they'd grown -- almost enough to recoup our recent repair bills. And, true to form, Old Red's "check engine" light lit up on its final ride to the new car dealership. Now that's closure.

Farewell, old friends. God willing, we'll see you parked outside that big ball of twine in the sky some day.