One arm across my chest and one hand on the rim of a giant steering wheel represents the stability control program and occupant protection system that I grew up with in the 60s. Parents weren’t too concerned about seatbelts back then mainly because many cars weren’t so equipped, and even if they were, there was no law requiring seatbelt usage.
I recall my younger sister as a baby riding in a child seat positioned in the front between mom and dad. The seat had no restraint value whatsoever; it simply hooked over the seatback of the front bench and hung there, ready to become a projectile with the slightest impact.
It wasn’t that my parents cared less for us than other parents in the hood cared for their broods, it was just the norm back then to load kids like cordwood and hope they didn’t squabble or require the back of a hand.
The car-based “kids be damned” attitude wasn’t always limited to the perils of a potential crash. I faced perils that included the ingestion of carcinogens by lighting my dad’s cigarettes for him as we rocketed down the highway.
You see in his mind, it was far safer to have me dig the butt out of the package, light it and pass it to him than for him to break his concentration on the road to address his nic fit. Apparently firsthand smoke followed by secondhand smoke in an enclosed cab wasn’t anything to avert the kids from back then.
(Of course, if I were to be caught smoking a butt behind the garage, I’d be in for a butt kicking of a different—and more damaging—form.)
Despite the apparent “under-protectiveness” of parents in the 60s, we all managed to survive, and aside from lighting Sportsman cigarettes for dad, I never took up smoking—I didn’t need to.
I recall my younger sister as a baby riding in a child seat positioned in the front between mom and dad. The seat had no restraint value whatsoever; it simply hooked over the seatback of the front bench and hung there, ready to become a projectile with the slightest impact.
It wasn’t that my parents cared less for us than other parents in the hood cared for their broods, it was just the norm back then to load kids like cordwood and hope they didn’t squabble or require the back of a hand.
The car-based “kids be damned” attitude wasn’t always limited to the perils of a potential crash. I faced perils that included the ingestion of carcinogens by lighting my dad’s cigarettes for him as we rocketed down the highway.
You see in his mind, it was far safer to have me dig the butt out of the package, light it and pass it to him than for him to break his concentration on the road to address his nic fit. Apparently firsthand smoke followed by secondhand smoke in an enclosed cab wasn’t anything to avert the kids from back then.
(Of course, if I were to be caught smoking a butt behind the garage, I’d be in for a butt kicking of a different—and more damaging—form.)
Despite the apparent “under-protectiveness” of parents in the 60s, we all managed to survive, and aside from lighting Sportsman cigarettes for dad, I never took up smoking—I didn’t need to.