One thing is for sure in life, and that's change

Jacobson’s is long gone? Fresh Seasons and Shaman Drum have vanished? General Motors and Chrysler went bankrupt? How can such things be? Why can’t I continue to come downstairs every morning, grab my morning paper off the porch, and listen to that announcer I like so much while I make my coffee? I’m wearing a Michigan Radio sweatshirt as I write this. It dates back to the early ’90s, not long before WUOM and its sister stations morphed from a stagnant backwater in the National Public Radio empire that played classical music for a handful of fans to today’s wall-to-wall and hugely popular yakfest.

As one of that handful of fans, I wasn’t happy about the change, but even then I could understand why the people who ran the enterprise were eager to make it. That announcer I liked so much, along with most of the rest of the on-air staff, was summarily dismissed to clear the decks for the new format. Now he’s a dear friend, who I see at least once a week when I host a four-man Scrabble game at my house that’s become as important to us guys as I’ve heard a regular poker session can be for some other fellas. I’m planning to tug on his chain a bit by wearing this shirt next time.

I hope he’s amused. That would be a better response than bitterness and nostalgia, those fraternal emotional twins that too often accompany being old enough to have seen a lot of change. Better still is learning to stay light on your feet, a hallmark of aging gracefully, or at least bearably.

Of all the wrenching changes of recent times, none shocked me more than Toyota’s fall from grace. Who could have predicted that a company whose enormous success was rooted in being the gold standard for quality, whose methods were studied and parsed and taught in countless workshops and seminars, would almost overnight become a late-night TV punch line?

I drive one of their pre-crisis products myself. It’s officially a 1999 Prizm, but as my son the mechanic, who sold it to me, says, it’s really a Corolla wearing a Chevy bow tie. I’ve never been happier with a consumer decision. At roughly 107,000 miles, I feel as if it’s just nicely broken in. It still gets more than 30 miles per gallon and, in the eight and a half years I’ve owned it, has never failed to get me where I wanted to go, or needed a mechanical repair.

I have to wonder how many of the politicians who’ve hopped on the Toyota-bashing bandwagon, perhaps to satisfy the more jingoistic elements among their constituents, understand not only how many Americans are employed by this enterprise but also how salutary its effects have been in pressuring the domestic industry to pay attention to quality?

That said, it’s clear that even Toyota will have to change. I just hope it still finds a way to prosper, and stay a little lighter on its feet.

Jeff Mortimer is a freelance writer and editor who lives in Ann Arbor.