Couldn’t help but wonder…

All aboard!

All aboard!

When I read the headline “Tennessee Police Recover Three Children from Trunk of Woman’s Car” I couldn’t help but wonder about the circumstances. On the face of it, it sounds dreadful. On the other hand, some of my best memories are of the rides I took in the trunk of Dorothy Elliott’s old car during the seven or eight summers I spent at Camp Willapa right here on our Peninsula. They were the best rides ever!

We always hoped we’d get lucky and be assigned to the trunk. Otherwise you might be the one that got to ride on Miss Elliott’s left – yes, her left. Typically, there were three kids on her right, one on the left (usually a puny kid, so it was often me!) and four or five on the back seat and another three or four in the trunk. Sometimes, we rode on the running board, as well.

Always Room for One More!

Always Room for One More!

Of course, no one had ever heard of bucket seats or seat belts. And, no matter how crowded, a ride sure did beat walking, especially if we were headed to Leadbetter Point or to Beard’s Hollow. Either one was a long hike from Joe Johns Road which is about where Camp was. Once in a while we’d ride the horses. But mostly we walked and prayed that Miss Elliott would pick us up sooner rather than later. Amazingly, we lived to tell about it. I don’t think she lost a single kid or even had an accident.

We used to ride in the backs of pickup trucks, too. And, when we started driving ourselves, we quickly learned to thrust out our left arm to keep our passengers from plunging through the windshield when we braked too fast. All these years later (it’s been almost 64 since I got my first license) I still stick out my arm when I need to stop quickly. Old habits die hard.

Joy Riding!

Joy Riding!

I wonder if we’ll ever hear the rest of the story about the Tennessee woman… In the interest of fun, I’m really hoping for the best-case scenario. Yeah, I know, I know! It’s 2016 and there are maniacs everywhere. But then, people probably thought Miss Elliott was a maniac, too.

3 Responses to “Couldn’t help but wonder…”

  1. Stephanie Frieze says:

    My mother tells the story of riding in the back of her parents 1920s touring car on the curvy highway coming to the beach from Vancouver. She said her mother put a pan of sticky buns on the seat beside her and they slid back and forth across the seat depending on the curves in the road. One trip and one curve the back door opened and my mother and the sticky buns landed in the road. She claims to have been unhurt. No word on the buns.

    It is a wonder I survived a childhood standing on the front seat of my parents’ Ford in the early 1950s. In those days parents would fling out their right arm across their unsecured child in the belief that would prevent said child from going through the windshield.

    When Miss Elliot was carting children around there were far fewer cars on the Peninsula and what there was averaged speeds much slower than cars of today. Here’s to our generation who didn’t have seat belts, or bike helmets, rode in the backs of trucks, and in or on trunks (my cousin fell off one on the beach and got a concussion).

  2. Marion Freshley says:

    Speaking of dangerous things with cars I remember once when a boy schoolmate of ours picked up about 4 or 5 of us girls walking on the beach and gave us a ride in his truck. He started swerving & doing donuts up in the soft sand and scared me to death. The only thing I thought of was jumping out. I did and half lit on my head and ended up with a bad headache the rest of the day. Crazy on my part but guess it could have been worse.

  3. Cuzzin Ralph says:

    My folks had a couple of Studebaker cars when I was a tyke. A story retold many times was that once when I was riding up front (absolutely no seat belts, of course) in one of those old Stupidbakers in the early 50’s (about 3-4 years old) between Dad driving and Mom riding shotgun that I reached up turned off the headlight switch. Luckily Dad reacted quickly and turned on the headlights before running off the road! I also recall riding in the back of pickups many a time. And our Boy Scout troop often piled into the back of a loaned delivery truck for trips out camping from home in Sunnyside—until this was banned by state regulations. On the way back from these camping trips in the eastern Cascades we always stopped to get 19 cent hamburgers in Yakima (at this time neither Yakima nor Sunnyside had ever heard of McDonalds)—myself I preferred to splurge with the extra 5 cents for a cheeseburger (or two!) and also a 24 cent chocolate milkshake!

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