Traveling in our 53 Chevrolet
Posted by snowgoat on October 15th, 2006
The earliest car I can remember is our Woodland Green 1953 Chevrolet. It had a three speed transmission, with the shift lever on the steering column. This was called “three in the tree” back then. The only other transmission option was an automatic, and back then only women and lazy guys had those. It was a basic car, only used by my father to drive to and from work. It was equipped with the 108-h.p. Thrift-King engine and the standard Synchro-Mesh Transmission. It had no radio, or power steering, too expensive for a service man’s pay. I don’t believe there were any other options available for this car. Key-turn starting, heavier body and frame and one-piece windshield were new features for that year.
The information above was researched, the memories I have about this car mostly involve the long trips we took in it, with me in the back seat, trying to pass the time as we traveled to Greenville, NC to visit our relatives. I was an early reader, and Mom would make sure I plenty to read, either story books or puzzle books. Coloring books were tried, too, but eventually I tired of them all. Then the sandwiches came out, peanut butter and jelly, or sometimes chicken salad if the trip wasn’t too long. We didn’t have a cooler back then and Mom was always afraid the mayonnaise would go bad and give us food poisoning. As it turned out, this wasn’t the real threat to me at all.
We discovered that I was susceptible to motion sickness during these trips. We would be riding along, and when I said, “I’m sick,” Pop had about three seconds to pull over and get me out of the car before I got rid of everything I had eaten since breakfast. After a few episodes where he wasn’t fast enough, or traffic intervened, I was put on a liquid diet while traveling. I also had a small pail as my traveling companion.
My parents tried several remedies; making me lie down so I couldn’t see the scenery going by; making me sit up, so I could see the scenery going by; letting me stay up so I’d sleep during the drive; and my favorite, putting a suitcase in the back seat with me sitting on it so I was at eye-level with my parents. Sitting on the suitcase gave me a terrific view not only out the side windows, but through the windshield, and the back window as well. None of these had any noticeable effect on my illness.
By the way, I wasn’t in a child seat, those were only used for convenience back then, not as safety devices. They were for babies, made of sewn plastic cloth, for easy cleanup, and had a flimsy aluminum tubing frame that just hooked over the seat back. In an accident, a baby in one would have sailed through the windshield just as fast as I would have from my perch on the back seat suitcase. No one had child seat belts. Why would you, when the adult’s didn’t have any?
I grew out of being car sick, to the relief of us all.