True, Kathy, Visa and MasterCard started spreading in 1966, but as someone who grew up in a small town in Colorado, they simply didn't exist in our area, particularly since our banks and businesses were locally owned rather than nationally affiliated. (Although we did have an A&W Root Beer stand that might have had a national affiliation, and a Safeway grocery store that certainly had a state-wide affiliation.) So while I'm sure someone in a city could use one of those credit cards at that time, it couldn't be done in a small town.
And as far as surety for the car went, I don't remember using anything. In small towns at that time, people basically trusted each other. What I do remember is being astonished the first time I discovered that I had to have a credit card to rent a car. Of course, that was in a city (in California, IIRC
), so I should have expected it.
When I got my first driver's license in '71, it was laminated and had a color photo on it, so it didn't look
that much different than the ones we have now. At least not so different that it couldn't be passed off as one of those new-fangled licenses from Metropolis
, which was decades ahead of rural Kansas.
As far as the date problem goes, I figure either Lois held her thumb over the date or Clark used a bit of pressure or heat vision to smudge the decade so you couldn't tell that it was a 6 instead of the 3 it would logically have to have been. Heck, he's Superman. There are ways around these problems.
I enjoy reading about the problems people have with the show, though, because it allows me to imagine the throwaway line that would explain it. For example, in Lois's explosive denunciation of Clark as a liar, she just adds one more line: "And that whole story you made up about the birthdate on your license, that was just another big fat lie." "Lois, he wouldn't have let me rent the car if he saw I was born in 1966."
