Arvid Huisman.

Perhaps every generation has felt this way, but it seems to me that things are accelerating at an accelerating rate. Inside a few short decades, objects that were a normal part of our lives seem to have quickly faded out of sight.

Take typewriters, for instance. I began my news career typing on a wonderful old Royal manual typewriter.

Several years later, I graduated to an electric model.

For the past 30 years, my typing has been on a word processor computer keyboard.

Outside of an antique display, one is now hard pressed to find a typewriter. The few that survive are often used only to type mail labels or multiple-part business forms.

My mother did the family laundry for years with a Maytag wringer washing machine. While not nearly as convenient as an automatic washer, the old wringer washers were effective and efficient.

The last working model I saw was a restored gas engine Maytag on display in an appliance store.

White sidewall tires — now, there’s something you don’t see much of anymore.

White sidewalls were so important. When I got my first car, I bought a set of white sidewall “falsies” to put over my black sidewall tires.

I couldn’t afford new tires, but I could afford the white rubber rings that made my tires appear to have white sidewalls. It was a small price to pay for being cool.

How about a phonograph? For decades, we enjoyed recorded music from vinyl discs on a turntable.

We advanced to eight-track tapes and then to cassette tapes.

Now, the compact disc era has faded and many audiophiles store and play their music downloaded from the Internet.

I can’t argue with the trend, but I still believe that the old vinyl records produced a warmer tone of music.

Digital music — minus the scratches and clicks of vinyl records — can seem rather sterile.

A bit of good news: vinyl records and turntables are making a small comeback.

Something else that’s out of sight nowadays is the glass pop bottle. How long has it been since you sipped (or guzzled) a soda pop from a glass bottle?

The longstanding preferred container for such beverages has given way to plastic bottles and aluminum cans.

What a treat on a Saturday night, when Dad took his boys to Everett Thompson’s DX Station on the north side of Jewell and allowed each of us to put a dime in the slot. There, we’d pull out a glass bottle of orange soda or root beer from the pop machine.

Speaking of bottles, when was the last time you saw a laundry sprinkler bottle? Permanent press fabrics and steam irons have made the sprinkler bottle obsolete.

A sprinkler head with a cork or rubber-lined stem popped into a pop bottle or ketchup bottle made a nifty sprinkler bottle.

Does your car have a hood ornament? Not likely.

Sixty years ago, nearly every self-respecting automobile had a hood ornament.

Why? I’m not sure. Jet airplanes were in vogue in the 1950s.

My ’55 Chevy had a jet airplane hood ornament, as did many Fords and Oldsmobiles of that era. Up until the mid-50s, Pontiacs were adorned with hood ornaments bearing the image of Ottawa Indian Chief Pontiac.

Speaking of cars, how do you dim your headlights? Most cars today use a lever on the steering column to dim headlights.

Years ago, a foot switch was used. Haven’t seen one for a long time and I miss ’em.

Don’t get me going on the demise of chrome bumpers.

Outside of a wedding reception, when is the last time you saw a garter? Girdles (also nearly extinct) had garters to hold up women’s silk or nylon hose.

Men wore garters around their calves to hold up their socks.

Thanks to panty hose and better elastic in socks, the garter has gone out of sight, too. Thank goodness.

One of the things I am most grateful for being out of sight is the union suit — aka long johns, long underwear.

Wore ’em as a kid; never liked ’em. Stupid trap door.

If things really are accelerating at an accelerating rate, the demise of the union suit proves it isn’t all bad.