Actually, being as I'm deep into transit and automobile history at the moment, I think he has a point, although I'm not sure it's the point you think he's making. For one thing, there's an awful lot of difference between "lack of automobiles" and "lack of technology" and the alternatives weren't "cars" or "subsistence farming," either. In some ways, the non-automotive transport forms of the time were higher technology than the cars.
I don't think he's talking about "a past that never was," either, so much as a disappearing present, since the world he lived in was changing rapidly, in large part thanks to the automobile and automakers, and would be almost completely gone a mere 35 or 40 years later.
I'd be more suspicious of someone who was born in the 1950s invoking that time or earlier, since they weren't there to see it firsthand.
(no subject)
I don't think he's talking about "a past that never was," either, so much as a disappearing present, since the world he lived in was changing rapidly, in large part thanks to the automobile and automakers, and would be almost completely gone a mere 35 or 40 years later.
I'd be more suspicious of someone who was born in the 1950s invoking that time or earlier, since they weren't there to see it firsthand.