(This post was delayed due to technical issues: our printer has become extremely temperamental about scanning things, so I was forced to take pictures of this picture with my phone.)
This was my family's 1970 Plymouth Sport Suburban, which my parents acquired early in 1972, when this picture was taken. It was our "family truckster" for a number of years at a time when full-size station wagons were at roughly the height of their popularity.
Prior to getting this car, we'd had two Chevrolet wagons, a 1965 Bel Air in "Artesian turquoise" (which was closer to aqua) and a 1966 Caprice in white with wood siding (very much like this, but with a blue interior). The Plymouth also had the distinction of being the newest car my parents had owned up to that point.
Although this was Plymouth's top of the line wagon for 1970, it was not equipped with lots of the stuff we take for granted as standard on our cars today. It didn't have air conditioning, the radio was AM only, the windows were manual (except for the one in the tailgate); such luxuries were still optional on most cars at that time. Since it was a used car, my parents did not have the choice of whether or not to get the third seat; this car didn't have one. It was not strictly necessary, as we were perfectly content to ride in the "way back" sitting on the hard floor, but I'm sure if it had had the third seat, we would have made use of it.
I remember being pretty excited about it when we got it; about the only thing that I thought was cooler at the time was the new 1972 version, which I'd seen an example of either in the showroom at the dealership or on the lot, plus in the brochures I enthusiastically took home; even though I knew our budget would not allow for the purchase of a new car, I guess my young brain wanted to imagine the possibility of a quick trade of this car for an even newer one.
In hindsight the '70 was much better looking than the '72 (see for yourself). With the passage of so many years, it's become my favorite car of all the ones we had while I was growing up. That's partly because I like how it looks and partly because we went so many places in it: Disney World, Cape Cod, Lake Winnipesaukee. There's one other picture I was able to scan, from our Florida vacation:
That's my grandmother, who accompanied us on our voyage. This was taken at a rest stop/welcome center just over the border when coming into the state from Georgia on route 95. Taking family trips by car is one of those things that it seems people don't do as much anymore, but when I was growing up it was much more common than traveling by air, at least for average families like mine. (I did not travel on an airplane until I was nearly 21.)
Blog Archive
-
▼
2013
(330)
-
▼
September
(64)
- Seven
- To Infinity and Beyond
- This Week in Awesome (9/28/13)
- Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood, and I Took th...
- Twitter is a Bad Idea
- The Fire This Time
- Good Answer! Good Answer! Survey Says: Stupid!
- Reflections on Patrick O'Brian
- About Jesus
- Soccer > Volleyball, Swimming and Musical Theater
- Panda Rustler?
- More Basking and Awesomeness
- Finding the Right Monk Straps
- Let's Continue to Bask in Dave's Awesomeness
- Freedom
- Let's Bask in Dave's Awesomeness
- Car Stuff: Random Sighting #5
- Worst Song Ever
- The Most Annoying Thing I've Ever Said
- Antibiotics to be Replaced by T-cells
- Another Shortcoming of Mine
- Retro Video Unit (9/20/13)
- It's Time You Knew
- Someone, Somewhere Is Doing the Counting
- Where Are You, Past Dave?
- Thinking About Fall: Shoes
- It's True! (Sort of)
- Nostalgia For Stupidity
- Car Stuff: Weird Wheels
- Tolkien's Inspiration for The Silmarillion
- I'd Pay to Hear the Rest
- This Week in Awesome (9/14/13)
- Building Character (and Breaking Child Labor Laws)
- I Loath to Sell Low, and I Loathe Buying High
- Vampire Dream
- Orientation
- Grob is Over
- Vince Lombardi Would Not Approve
- Patrick O'Brian & Gore Vidal
- This is a really long sentence for a dumb joke
- Spelling It Out
- The Silly Sisters
- How to Merge in Jersey
- Very Pinteresting
- Car Stuff: Family History #2
- So Real It Hurts
- This Week in Awesome (9/7/13)
- Old Men Are Good at Something (Just Not Anything A...
- Dennis Rodman
- Do Things Happen in Threes? Do They Happen at All?
- Gore No Fount of Wisdom
- Retro Video Unit (9/6/13)
- Concussions Are Finally Hip
- Rooftop with a View
- Realpolitik in Syria
- A Question That Is Making Me Lose Sleep, Hair, and...
- Milestone
- What Did People Do Before the Internet? Play Pinoc...
- Dogs and Shakespeare
- Car Stuff: Random Sighting #4
- Plumbing the Depths of Modern America
- The DEA's Fishing Expeditions
- Sentence of Dave > Facebook!
- Chinese Roulette (I Dare You To Play)
-
▼
September
(64)
Popular Posts
-
I’m really happy with the way CBS is handling The Good Wife . With maybe the exception of Friday Night Lights , I think it’s the best networ...
-
For over a year, Jessica Chastain kept her role in Zero Dark Thirty a secret. Chastain plays Maya, a CIA operative who spends years of her ...
-
In recent years, premium cable channel Showtime has provided meatier roles for women than either Hollywood studios or network television off...
-
A couple years ago, the question which plagued the television landscape was: Can women be funny? Now a more relevant question would be: Wher...
-
Vera Farmiga is one of those actresses that sneaks up on you. She was Oscar-nominated for her role in Up in the Air opposite George Clo...
-
With all of the summer tent pole movies premiering, there's been outcry from audiences (and critics) for the studios to make superhero m...
-
Can you stand a few more words about shoes? Because I have them. Words. And shoes, duh. I've been lamenting this week's return to su...
-
I've been trying to be more aware of potential photo opportunities as I go about my mundane business. It has led to some interesting sho...
-
Canonical's decision to embrace Mir and abandon X and Wayland has consequences for Ubuntu derivatives such as Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and Linu...
-
(In case you're wondering, there was no TWiA this weekend due to a lack of suitable material.) The parking lot of our local Ocean State ...