Walking isn't a lost art–one must, by some means, get to the garage.

Evan Esar (1899–1995) was an American humorist and aphorist known for compact, wry observations about modern life, many of which circulated in mid‑20th‑century quotation collections. This line riffs on the automobile age’s tendency to replace walking with driving, suggesting that even people who rarely walk still have to take a few steps to reach their cars—“the garage” standing in for car-dependent living. The joke fits Esar’s typical style: a mock-defense of a traditional virtue (walking) that collapses into a punchline about contemporary habits and conveniences.

The quip satirizes the claim that “walking is a lost art” by redefining what counts as walking in a car-centered society. Esar implies that modern people may congratulate themselves on not being entirely sedentary, but their walking is often merely incidental—done only to access the real mode of transport. The humor depends on anticlimax: an elevated phrase (“lost art”) is undercut by a mundane necessity (“get to the garage”). Read more broadly, it’s a small critique of technological dependence and the shrinking role of simple, self-propelled movement in everyday life.