Because I was in tsunami-overload, I was channel surfing early this morning, looking for something else to listen to on television while doing housework. My heart breaks just a little bit more each time I see those images in Japan and hear the stories of tragedy beyond anything the human mind is comfortable with.It was during this search for something that didn't require direct attention and wasn't too depressing, I came across a movie called "Blue Crush". Because it looked like a transparent plot and was filmed on the beautiful North Shore of Hawaii, I decided this was my temporary diversion.
But this is what caught my attention.......a 1961 blue Chevrolet Impala. This is the identical car to the first one our dad ever bought my sister and I in the summer of 1966. It was a clunker, but at 16, transportation is transportation. And compared to the black hearse he bought my brother to haul musical equipment in for his band and the mail delivery mini-vehicle (built on a golf cart base) that didn't require a driver's license to operate he bought for my under-aged-driver other brother, this 61 Impala might have been the most normal car my dad bought for his kids.
In 1966, Lyndon Johnson was President and the Viet Nam war was raging. If you were a male under 30, you were consumed with the draft; who would be called next and how the hell it could be avoided. You could buy a new house for $23,000, a first class postage stamp for $.05, and a gallon of gas cost $.32. Seems like a kid could drive forever on that, but that wasn't the case because our allowances were adjusted accordingly....we got next to nothing. If we wanted extra money, we have to find a job and earn it. So the more kids you could pile into the car and share the $1.00 worth of gas you usually bought, the more money you had left over for other stuff.
My sister and I had big plans for the car that summer. We lived in a very tiny town with no community pool, so the popular summer activity was a 15 mile drive to Spring Lake, mostly down a dirt and gravel road. This posed a problem because most cars at that time did not come with air conditioners; they had to be added later. So, driving the dirt road with the windows down in the scorching Arkansas summer heat in a car packed with sweaty kids was not a good situation by anyone's description.
We begged out dad for an air conditioner and finally when he was able to locate a used one at a salvage yard, he agreed to have it installed. This posed another problem . If you have never seen an after market car air conditioner from the 60s, just imagine someone attaching a small microwave under the dash between the driver and passenger seats. Before the air conditioner, we could easily get 3, sometimes 4 girls in the front seat of that car. After the air conditioner, the third person in the front bench seat had to sit in a tight fetal position because there was absolutely no place for that person's legs except in the seat tucked up next to her cheat. Despite a little initial bitching, no one really seemed to mind. Plus, that was another 10-15 cents toward the gas bill if we could still pack that person in!
I still think of that as the Spring Lake Summer.....the summer that I had an Almond Joy and Dr. Pepper almost every day for lunch if I budgeted my money well.
By winter, that car was on its last leg and I often wonder if the engine died a painful death from dirt inhalation. My dad went out and bought us a brand new car so we would have reliable transportation to school. It was a very ugly tan 4-door stripped down version of a car that didn't even have carpet (I didn't know they even made such a thing). Oddly enough, I was more embarrassed to drive this new old-lady car than I was the old clunker. Go figure!
But, just by happenstance, I saw the twin of the old blue Impala this morning and it took me back, WAY back, to a time when coming up with $1 for gas and deciding which swimsuit to wear might be the biggest dilemmas of the day.
