Child safety seats sure have come a long way since 1967...not that it really mattered when you were in the back of a VW Bug - the 1960's was an era of Big American Cars and a VW was unlikely to survive even a minor collision with one of the popular behemoths of the period...I am not sure which Volkswagen this is- I remember one that had a large hole completely rusted through the rear floor and every once in a while we would lose a favorite toy on the highway.
Don't get attached to material goods was the lesson...
The space in the back of the car is where the beer cooler was kept. By the time I was six I could use a can opener ( you needed one back then) to punch two holes in a Schlitz can and hand it forward to the adult at the wheel.
After the adult had a few Schlitzes and the VW began weaving between lanes, my brother and I would watch the painted highway stripes appear and disappear through the gap in the car's floor. It was less frightening than looking out of the windows.
If we saw gravel or grass through the floor it was time to brace for impact.
In hindsight , it wasn't the safest childhood but at least we could go to school without getting shot (unless you went to Kent State) and almost nobody had to worry about getting gunned down in a shopping mall, as there were almost no shopping malls to be gunned down at.
Of course, if you were a young adult male , you stood the risk of being conscripted by the military and sent to Southeast Asia to stop the Communists from playing theoretical dominoes...eventually the Communists won- Communist Vietnam now makes cheap consumer goods that are exported to stores in American malls- malls which were just coming into fashion towards the end of the 'Nam war.
Ironic, isn't it?
8 comments:
So you're saying... Britney Spears is actually a very good mom?
hahahah to jp's comment...
that's funny...
I remember those car seats...I had one for David and we had a front seat with two seats and i had him in his hooked over the one seat and some schmuck pulled out in front of me and i had to slam on the brakes and david slammed into the radio knobs and cut his face..not bad, but I went redneck..even at 21 I was insane..I jumped out of the car, and grabbed the guy by his shirt and pulled him thru the window and punched him in the nose and cussed him up one side and down the other..scared the fuck out of him..found out later he was some '90 day wonder leut.'and he said he would rather go to nam and fight gooks(pardon the slur..his not mine) then have to deal with me again...it's a wonder kids lived back then..hell, i remember sleeping in the back by the window and getting slammed into the floor board when daddy put on the breaks...life was very exciting back then...
Yikes!
My dad had a car with a rusted out floor for a while. It really is disconcerting to watch the road go by beneath your feet. At least I never saw a painted line.
Considering all of the saftey precautions taken with kids today it makes me wonder how we survived our childhoods.
Shoot we could all tell tell stories for sure. I remember riding in the back window on occasion...
ahh the good old days.. how did we all make it??
I believe I was just carried on my mothers lap for any car journeys. Good thing she spaced out our births a bit. As we got older we were placed between mum and dad on the bucket seat no doubt with them both “alert” to fling out that restraining arm should the need arise.
We were bad-ass babies- we didn't need all this modern molly-coddlin'!
aaaalrighty then- so i'm not such a bad parent!!!
as for vietnam and shopping malls... i reckon it was a conspiracy!
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