Dad didn’t believe in seat belts. He was wrong about that, but he had his reasons, and he was happy to tell them to you, whether you asked him or not. Dad was very smart and very right about very many things, but not all things. Fortunately, for The Man and The Legend, I didn’t realize that until I was at least thirteen. He was wrong a lot for a few years after that, but then he got back on track, for the most part.
But not about the seat belts. He thought they made the driver overconfident and careless. Besides, he had that karate side-arm thing going to keep any kid in the passenger seat from sailing into the windshield. Being whacked in the chest might have hurt if he had been at all athletic.
Seat belts didn’t really appear on the landscape until about 1964, by which time we already had our Peugeot 304, so it wasn’t a bother until we got the 1968 Volvo, and by then we had to have three-point belts, which were and are a pain in the ass. Seems to me the first ones you had to adjust to your own personal girth and snap in, and it wasn’t until later that you could (for instance) lean forward to get a map out of the glove compartment. Then, since you could, people spent a lot of time testing them by snapping their bodies forward to see if the belts caught. Just about when we figured they would, they changed them so they only caught if the car stopped suddenly, and there was then no way to personally test them that didn’t scare the crap out of the driver behind.
Anyway we didn’t have seat belts for my whole childhood. It was grand. Seems to me now the back bench seat of our Studebaker was a continent wide, and if Dad took the corners too fast, you could travel the whole country. I always took the Atlantic side and I’d pile into my sister on the Pacific with a hard left. There was a huge hump on the floor in the middle, and that was my seat if there were three in the back, because I was smallest and too young to vote. The hump was also helpful to keep you more or less in your quadrant when you knelt on the floor, facing the seat, to read comic books during the ride. Or just plop your head on the seat for a nap.
The other part of the Studebaker that you could really take advantage of in the days before seat belts was the ledge in the back. The Canada, if you will. It was huge. If you had toys you could kneel on the seat and play with them on the ledge. One evening, though, we were going somewhere, headed east. I know that because the sun was setting right in the middle of the back window. And I know this because I was kneeling on the seat, with my arms folded on the ledge, staring out the back window directly at the sun, and trying not to blink. I did it for probably a minute. It hurt a little, but the purple after-image of the sun was vibrating against the yellow sun itself. It was neat! My eyes kept flicking away but I directed them right back. If my Dad had been aware I’m sure he would have intervened.
I can still see it. Literally. To this very day I have a ribbon of sun-spheres burnt into my retinas that trail across my vision. Permanent streamers.
And that’s why you should wear a seat belt.
My mom had a ’56 Studebaker Sky Hawk all through my childhood, and your description of them brings back memories. I remember playing Barbies in the back with my best friend, Diane, when we came along while mom was running errands. Sometime during my adolescence, seat belts became the law, so mom had those waist ones installed. I have trouble with the 3-point belts, as I am very short and they are designed for taller people. The top strap cuts over my left boob and into the bottom part of my neck. You’d think they would be adjustable. But I use them.
I think my sister Margaret, who was no doubt much shorter than you, generally pulled the diagonal belt under her armpit or something. You CAN get a new lower anchor put in, I think.
I once tried using a large-ish kilt pin to cinch the straps together so that it would fall in my cleavage and not try to strangle me. Pin came loose one day and stabbed me in the boob. I’ll take strangulation.
You and your Studebakers and family photos in front of the cars, pre seat belts. Probably to document what everyone looked like before their gruesome disfigurement post flying through the windshield. Glad you made it through the danger years, Murr, or we’d never have met and I wouldn’t have had that fine chuckle this morning.
The real danger was my father’s driving. Oy. He had his head out the side scanning for mushrooms half the time. BTW, that is my sister Bobbie in the photo. I don’t think I’d been cooked up yet.
Ah, those were the days! We had some kind of Studebaker when I was very young and sat in one of those flimsy kiddie seats that went in the front seat with the steering wheel you could play with and “honk.” (Think Maggie in the Simpsons). I think that one was the one with the “suicide doors.” I’ve seen pictures. We had a later one after that, which was two-tone green, as was popular in the mid-50s.
I remember many a long ride in the back seat where I could stretch out and sleep, or read a book, etc., while we went to Cape Cod on our annual trips, with my parents singing old WW II songs and classics like “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad,” to pass the time. The car didn’t have a radio, lol.
I remember our little dog Pekingese dog, Suki, liked to sit up on the back ledge in our 1962 Ford Custom 500. One time we were in a minor accident and we all got stiff necks the next day, including the dog.
My husband went cross-country with his folks 3 times when he was growing up and he spent the whole time on the hump in the back seat, looking over his parents’ shoulders and instructing them on when the next motel with a pool was coming up.
Glad we have seatbelts now but we certainly had a great time back in the day.
POOL FREE TV VACANCY VACANCY VACANCY
To the Cape? That’s where we went every year too — except for once to Maine and Canada and once to Winnipesaukee (whose spelling the spellchecker can’t get comfortable with). Where on the Cape did you go? I never felt I was really on the Cape unless I was in Wellfleet or parts north of there.
Obviously, you all needed to enter Brewster.
No seatbelts in cars when I was a kid. First seatbelt in any car I personally owned was installed by me (well, more likely The Husband) when we had ourselves a kid and needed something to strap the kid seat in with. That would have been late 1975.
Meanwhile – I was confused by the Atlantic/Pacific hard left, until you mentioned Canada and then I realized I was visualizing the back seat country the other way up. Or something.
Did you really burn your retinas looking at the sun? Seems like that should be something they should mention to children really early on.
I really did, and they didn’t mention it because MOST KIDS would never do that. It’s not comfortable.
Can’t forget the ’53 Chevy BelAir with the huge (to me, then, anyway) back seat. Also my Dad, when my older brother and I got into physical squabbles, reaching over with with his right arm to swat us indiscriminately.
We drove from California back east with our 3-year-old daughter in ’79 in a ’76 VW Rabbit. We had taken out the back seat and replaced it with a carpeted playpen full of soft luggage, pillows, and toys. In that beer can with wheels, none of us would have survived in a collision anyway. Great trip!
A little attrition wouldn’t hurt the world any at this point.
Have you ever thought the sunspot streamers might be one reason for your constant tipping over?
I’m short and the neck/chest part of the seat belts annoy me so I hold it for the whole trip just far enough out that it isn’t scraping my neck.
I think that at my height the consequences of tipping over are so slight that I never developed a good protocol.
The dreaded middle hump in Daddy’s ’55 Buick… and that thick elastic snappy rope thing that we four girls always thunk thunked against the driver’s seat. Never knew what that was for. No seat belts, no a/c. My parents were saints for taking us anywhere in that car.
I don’t recognize the snappy thing. Anyone else know what it was for?
My dad worked for the Navy and one night he came home with the car’s rear window shattered, apparently due to a fighter jet doing something remarkable. I remember kneeling on the back seat and picking safety glass fragments out of the window liner. That would probably have been in the late 60s. I don’t recall needing to wear seatbelts until we got a Pinto. The car wouldn’t start until the seat belts were fastened.
I belatedly got the habit of wearing a belt when I started driving a half-ton van for the post office and needed to be belted in so I didn’t fall out the window leaning down for a mailbox.
Glad you didn’t get rear-ended in that Pinto. And hold on just a minute. “Due to a fighter jet doing something remarkable?” NOT ENOUGH INFORMATION.
In New Zealand we didn’t get compulsory seat belts until the 60’s 1966 or thereabouts. But growing up in the mid 50’s I recall my father driving my mother, my brother about 2 or 3, me, plus 2 or sometimes 3 girls my age to marching competitions in a pre-war Ford V8. Seat belts? Nope. Fast forward to mid 60s…still no seat belts and I have scary memory of being driven far too fast down a mountain road in the rain in a convertible by a guy who was doing his damndest to impress my friend, a girl he fancied. In a clunky Ford Zephyr convertible with the top down. Shit! Billy Joel could probably explain it.
Have you ever sat back and recalled how many times we should’ve died but didn’t?
The snappy thing on the back of his seat may have been holding a driver’s whole-sized seat cushion in place. I recall some had coils inside to keep air between the driver and the seat, pre air conditioning.
Nice! We definitely didn’t have one of those.
There were 11 of us in a two tone green 3 seat station wagon. Probably could not have been launched anywhere in a collision as it was a very intricate stacking job getting in….
You have to hope sheer mass foils the velocity problem.
There was a time when getting into someone’s car and fastening your seat belt was an insult, plainly telegraphing that you didn’t trust the driver. Sometimes I take a little comfort in thinking how our society eventually was able to do away with that way of thinking–gives me some slim hope for our future.
I’d like to feel uplifted, but that’s mighty slim!
We always had the hideous old station wagons. No snazzy woody sides, just ugly old things. Nice wide back seats, though. Favorite memory: Lying down on my back looking up out the window being mesmerized by the telephone poles whizzing by.
Literally Mesmerized. It’s hypnotic. Good thing it didn’t give you seizures.
I remember the karate chop to the chest. Any time the brakes were applied with a greater than normal force. I don’t remember any pain from it, but I was usually startled out of my daydream.
Dad definitely did it, but he was a small man, and probably adequate to the task of keeping a thirty-pound child alive in a sudden braking–but still I wonder how he could have thought so little about the physics of it. He wasn’t stupid.
Yeah no seat belts in my childhood either. And thinking back on my Bay Area life in the early 70’s, it’s a wonder I and my then baby daughter are still here. I have a vivid memory – OF, not HOW – I managed to hold the baby to nurse her while driving my stick shift VW bug up and down the hills of San Francisco one day when I had promised a ride to a friend. And it never even occurred to me that there might be a problem. No babyseat then either.
I assume your baby did her part by holding on!
I remember a PSA encouraging people to fasten their seat belts. It showed a pretty woman getting in her car, saying she wouldn’t fasten her seat belt because she didn’t want to wrinkle her dress. In the next scene, she’s in a wheelchair as a nurse smooths the blanket over her lap, saying, “Let’s not have wrinkles, now, dear!” smiling tenderly.
Subtle. Actually I think I saw that one. Beats the hell out of “This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?” ….um, yeah.
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