Car Kids of the 70s
During the 70s, my family never had new cars, but we went through a stream of Dodge Darts, Dusters and numerous Plymouth Furies. I found a pix of me as a kid in one of them, and the inside of the car looks cavernous.
What I remember about being inside of these cars are the enormous bench seats, the weird lap belts where the metal latch could get hot as hell from the sun, the huge metal glove box that could fit Al Capone’s body, the sound of the high/low beam foot switch being rhythmically hit by my Dad as cars passed, the shitty crackly AM radio, the ashtray, the fucking ashtray, and the coolest thing for me: the turn signal indicators mounted on the hood that faced the driver so they remembered to turn them off.
I also remember that if you sat in the back seat with a sibling you could hold the door handle and as the car hit a specially sharp turn you would use gravity and your own evil mind to launch your body as hard as you could and slide across the vinyl bench seat to body slam your victim.
All the while screaming, and then protesting, that the road made you do it; it wasnt you. And who wore seatbelts anyway. Were there backseat belts? I forget.
The front bench seat profile was also low enough that my Dad could keep his left hand on the steering wheel and reach around with his right arm and slap you and growl “Knock it off or I’ll knock your heads together.” Or “You pull a stunt like that again and I’ll…”
Anyways… just thinking bout it. With the oil crisis and gas crunch and the intro of these tiny imports, these big old gas guzzling dinosaurs hit the junkyards pretty fast I guess. But it was fun as hell as a kid to be in em