You’re ‘of an age’, you might remember some of these. Maybe fondly, maybe not…LOL
It was amazing how many you could cram in a station wagon back in the day!
Woolworths used to have a great diner in their stores…
They actually did check everything, and you got Green stamps too!
Not necessarily ‘fun’, but it beat hitchhiking!!!
Back in the day, the stewardesses were young, pretty, and actually liked their jobs!
Sigh…
yeah… well… as you say, sigh…
I actually have a 2 screen drive-in about 2 miles from me in Stephens City, VA. Saw a big family stuffed into an old Buick Roadmaster wagon, about the size of a DE.
Every blessed one. Yep, am getting “old” but the memories and experiences keep us going.
– East coast travel with parents in 57 Belair – check
– 65 Chevy Impala wagon with 3rd row seat – NY college car – check
– Starlight drive in theater 1979 – check
– Diner at 3 AM in Rochester NY 72-78 – check
– Cross country in Greyhound 1970 – check
– Real airline service and trim – 1962 and 65 with PanAm – check
– Gas 25 c /gal with gasoline wars on the 3 corners in Rochester – check
– Best deal on canned beer Wegmans – 25c per can – check
Sure do remember. What really gets on my very last nerve are the airlines. Back in the day, you got dressed up if you were going to fly. The people were glad to see you, or at least they were convincing. You got fed, and the food was good. You could get a decent cocktail. The seats were comfortably spacious. Of course I was a bit thinner then, but we are not going to go into that.
Then deregulation hit.
Now we get herded into the cheap seats like cattle being loaded into a cattle car. If you’re a gimp or have crotch goblins with you, you get loaded first and get to suck up all the overhead storage. Kids scream, the hoi polloi sweat and fart, and the seats are too small. Then the fat slob in front of you tilts his seat back, leaving you with five inches of space between the back of his seat and you.
I don’t fly. I refuse.
…and you pay extra for all that! My flying days are pretty much over, as well.
All- Yeah, memories…sigh…
We had a neighbor who was a Woolworth manager, his wife ran the “Lunch Counter.” Turkey coquets anyone?
Being able to fit 8 of your friends in the trunk of your car so you only pay for 2 people at the drive in.
Of course, you also had tires that lasted 5000 miles at most, needed to change oil constantly, had a very good chance of injury or death at any traffic accident over 30 miles per hour…
Modern cars are so much better in a lot of ways…
Q: Which one of those cars at the drive-in has the broken speaker?
A: Mine
Air Travel: My first flight was on August 15, 1963 — New Orleans to San Antonio for basic training. The only men on board not wearing suits were we inductees, as directed.
Woolworth lunch counter: In New Orleans there was a different menu on Fridays. No meat. Grilled cheese and tuna were the items of the day. New Orleans was VERY Catholic.
Best ’70s station wagon memory is when my best friend and I were stuck in the rear fold up seats of mom’s Ford Mercury Colony Park to haul fiends and family to the beach. (Now going thru some chemo as back in the day they let the kids cook in the bright sand from mid morning to dusk; we came out sunburned like lobsters.) Any-hoo one of us discovered that we had access to the license plate lamp sockets (one on each side of the plate) from inside the car – and you could press the socket latches together and push it out. You could then drop things out onto the road as long as they could pass through the hole (and around the wires to the dangling lamp socket.) Additional notes:
– There were cigarette lighters and sockets EVERYWHERE in that car. They probably came with the “courtesy light group.”
– One day my good friend brought along some M-80s. These were the type with the red paper tube and a green fuze coming out the end of the tube (axially.) The “better” kind were the ones where the fuze came out the middle of the tube (radially) but iirc those got very hard to find after the later half of the ’70s.
– And not practical for passing through that hole. The axial type just about fit out the hole.
– There was a tunnel between home and the beach. Perfect timing. It sounded like some other car or truck had a helluva backfire.
– It was a constant fear but we were lucky to NEVER light one off unless we had it out of the hole and were dangling it by the fuze in pinched fingers. Who knows what kind of punishment we’d have gotten if we’d dropped a LIT M80 in the back of the car!
(Again iirc but the control to roll down the tailgate window was in the driver’s door.) We did burn our fingers with the lighter a several times while trying to get the end of the fuze lit. We did drop some “duds” where we burnt our fingers without getting the fuze properly lit. Still the better option.
– You can pull the lamp socket back in by its wires and you only had to orient it later.
Also in the ’80s a retired stewardess published a lovely tell-all about airline life – especially before de-regulation. She said there was an industry joke in her day about recruiters using “the hula hoop test” to triage which airline you’d hire on – [x] if it stuck in her hair, [y] if it stuck around her bosom, [z] if it stuck around her butt, and [q] if it stuck around her belly. I can’t remember which airlines… Also, passengers’ stilleto highheels would pucker the aluminum sheet flooring of certain aiplaines.
I remember bringing a blanket and laying on top of the car to watch the movie.
Don’t remember Woolworths.
Love the car and the white wall tires.
Buses are not much more fun now.
Back when you could get an actual meal on your plane ride.
I missed out on all of those but the drive ins and the bus. The area drive ins and that style of bus were all gone by the time I was ten.
Hail diversity!
*puke*
We still have a drive in up here, it’s pretty cool.
The stewardess observation: They sure as hell aren’t young and pretty anymore. We used to fly on an airline that had a United stewardess painted on the tail. They swapped out young and pretty for gay and petty. Lotsa fat asses too. Decided we’d rather drive for three days than fly for three hours.
I remember the movie drive-ins where people with spot lights on their car would “chase” each other around the screen before the movie started.