Road tripping: We take our modern, reliable and comfortable cars for granted. How would your teenage daughter take to spending a road trip like this? If you’re old enough, you’ll relate to that look of profound boredom: no iPhone, DVD player, not even music of any sort. Not even a window! How did they/we do it (he asks rhetorically, remembering all too well)?
carrosantigos has collected a series of typically superb old LIFE magazine photos shot on Hwy 30 in 1948. You won’t regret it. It’s a stark reminder of how far we’ve come; well, except those that never arrived at their intended destination.
When cars could tow!
And window air conditioners, extra tools, water and oil cans, coin belts, and making the best of it.
“Think of it as an adventure” is what we used to say.
Many of us who were raised hillbillies still had a rustic lifestyle into the ’60s. I think I was 5 when my grandparents had an indoor bathroom put in. 🙂 Yet, we went camping several times a year, in a homemade cabover slide-in my Dad built himself. All of us love finding beautiful spots we haven’t seen before and food cooked on an open campfire to this day…
Good job, Dad! 😀
Really cool old photos… reminds me of going cross country, with my grandmother, in her Rambler… two lanes, small towns… travel was much more of an adventure in the 50’s and 60’s… oh, and I liked the pic of the window mounted “air conditioner”– we had one mounted on the Rambler… just a steel tube, with a circular bale/matrix of hay, and it was soaked in water, with a string to occasionally rotate the bale… of course, when you pulled the string, water would spray out! It was primitive, but better than nothing!
Oh Look – another Ford V8 that needs more water!
You beat me to it! I was just noticing that pattern.
She has that same “I want to find trouble” look on her face Sue Lyon had in Kubrick’s Lolita.
spot on.. i can almost hear the Lolita soundtrack music in the background.
Occasionally this still goes on today. A former student in my First team and now fellow mentor traveled some of the time in a similar fashion during his recent Border to Border EV run. He and a couple of friends, among other vehicles, converted a S10. With the large amount of batteries the vehicle alone has a ~300mi range and with a sufficient amperage power connection can recharge in about 4hrs. To go with it they built (and patented) a multi-purpose “range trailer”. It extends the range about 300mi. They started out in the Seattle area drove to the Canadian border and topped off the batteries there. Then it was south to the Mexican border. Along the way they pretty much only stopped long enough to charge. RV parks were where they did a lot of charging, many didn’t even want any compensation. They also charged at the Tesla plant gave them a quick tour our their machine and received a tour of some of Tesla’s facilities. To do this in the fastest possible manner and still have time to spend the day at an EV gathering they took turns sleeping in what I call Chad’s electric Coffin.
Holy kilowatts! How’s he get in there? Where are the S10’s batteries? What’s this Border to Border run – I can’t find it on the web. Very Impressive!
He is a pretty wiry little guy but I’m not sure how he wiggled in there. The bigger question is how his friend the owner of the S10 managed it. He’s about 6’6″ and that is a short bed truck.
They didn’t do a particularly good job of documenting and promoting their run. Some of that may be due to the fact that they wanted to test it. They do have a “The Range Trailer” facebook page.
When they charge, yes, they suck some serious kilowatts. All told he said it would have cost under $30 for the power if purchased at our local rates.
That reminds me of a school project that I once participated in. Nothing at all on this scale and you can paint me green with envy. Mother Earth archives about David Arthurs Amazine 75mpg car (it may have ben 70mpg) will show you an equivalent project. In fact your friend may have taken some pages out of his book. I sure did.
Arthur put a trailer in back of a vw van in a second project but the first was an opel GT. Whatever, that is really great that they put the miles on it.
I did find the Range Trailer facebook page, thanks! It says they drove one of the little-known S-10 EVs, built by GM the same time as their famous EV1s. About sixty of the 500 built were sold to fleets, not leased, so they escaped GM’s infamous EV crusher. 85 KW induction motor, EV1 electronics, and either lead or nickel batteries down under the bed between the frame rails.
Anyway, the Range Trailer is an excellent project. The tech details would be most interesting. And major kudos for the Border-to-Border run.
I think we have a new nominee for the Coast-to-Coast Classic!
I was passed out in the back of the s10 on a 1.5ft x 1.5ft foam square for comfort that night. We were just driving and stopping to charge then just as we finished we would drive until charge was needed again. It was an amazing trip!
The earliest road trip I can remember was in 1947 (I think). It involved an overheating 1935 ford, a hot Kansas summer day, and a mom who should probably be up for sainthood for being able to put up with my little sister, me, and our overheated whining selves as we went to her dads funeral.
For those of you who are too young to remember the window held swamp coolers like in the pictures, traveling was different. The teardrop trailers and larger ones being hauled by cars bought back some memories
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Large v8’s, good automatic transmissions, refrigerated air conditioners, and interstate cruising speeds made all the difference in the world. Not trying to sound like an old guy it’s just that I kinda am one.
My last “cross country” travel, well, actually more like half the country, from Minnesota to Florida, is done using a rented Pontiac “Dustbuster” minivan. Unfortunately the van does not come with rear A/C outlet, and the airflow just didn’t reach the rearmost seat, even with the blower at full speed and the driver/front passenger complained of freezing. So whoever got to be in the third row complained endlessly about being suffocated by the heat. Dang third row windows didn’t open either. So I can say that I know what the girl must’ve felt.
In 1948 I would have been aboard the Santa Fe Express in a Pullman dining car having a scotch and a steak.
Love these photos. Reminds me of the 1949 cross country trip taken with my family when I was 5 years old. We had a new light green Kaiser Deluxe with trunk packed full including a kerosene cook stove. Every morning we would leave motel at 4:30 am sharp and drive till we found a public park with picnic tables between 7 and 8 am. There my mother would cook bacon and eggs. Then on to another stop for lunch between 12 and 1 at another picnic area. We would start looking for motel around 4 pm and it would usually be one of those old tourist cabin set-ups that you see in the old movies. Crossing the desert my dad wrapped dry ice in bath towels and hung them on the inside of each passenger window. It was really quite effective. I can still recall the cool air eminating from the bath towels. He also invented a homemade cruise control for the Kaiser that was nothing more than an electric throttle powered by two small motors under the hood. One would wind up a cable to hold the accelerator at whatever speed you wanted and the other would unwind the cable if you needed to slow down. Planning ahead to slow down was very important, of course my mother never liked this invention and she forced him to remove it when we returned to PA from our California trip.
I was about the same age (6) when my Mom, Grandma, little sister and I drove from Fort Wayne, Indiana to California in the summer of 1965. My Dad had been out there on business and we were going to meet him.
We had a 64 Olds F-85 Cutlass. My parents picked a dark green one with dark green vinyl seats but no a/c. Much of the time we were on Route 66, although there were a number of interstate portions available by then. We stopped at lots of diners and motels along the way, and took in a lot of touristy sights. We toughed it out in the heat, but sleeping was easy as Dad had rigged a platform that sat on the back seat and was held level with legs that rested on the floor. It made a bed wide enough for two little kids to snooze in comfort.
Somewhere there are a lot of photos from that trip. I ought to look for them.
I can remember summer trips out to my older sister’s house in Hanover, Pennsylvania when I was a kid. These would have taken place in the late 60’s early 70’s. My folks would have us on the road early in the morning, to avoid the heat of the day as much as we could. In addition to our suitcases packed in the trunk of one of our many Mercurys, we had a huge Coleman cooler and a Coleman canteen. Depending on his mood, sometimes my father would bring along a bag of charcoal, too.
We would stop at the rest stops and either eat sandwiches my mother had wrapped at home or if my Dad felt like it, we boys would be sent into the nearby woods to gather kindling so we could cook our lunch. Sometimes, dad would sneak a bottle of wine or a couple bottles of beer in the cooler, so he had something to enjoy at the rest stop. My brothers and I drank unsweetened iced tea from the canteen, or the water that was available at the water fountains. My mother would read the paper and we kids would run around the rest stop to burn off extra energy. These rest stops were truly “rest” stops.
My father always drove; they were very conservative people raised in another time. It was his duty. My mother only drove around town at home. Never on long trips. This kept up even after my father passed. There was a series of summers where me or one of my brothers were driving her somewhere. Myself, I prefer if my wife drives, because she can see better at night than I do. I get to rubberneck that way…
It was only a six hour ride from Youngstown to Hanover, but we made a whole day out of it, and routinely took an hour or two at the midday rest stop to truly recharge. At that time, I-80 ended at DuBois, PA and you had to take (US 322?) smaller highways to make it to the other half of I-80. Again, depending upon a number of things, but particularly my Dad’s mood, we could take all back roads over to my sister’s house. It was a real treat for him, having grown up in the Danube River Valley, to follow the Susquehanna River over to the eastern side of PA. I guess it reminded him of his ancestral home.
Now, I routinely make the six hour trip home from Grand Rapids on the Interstates. With a car that can seriously outrun, outmaneuver, outlast those old Mercurys in mileage, comfort and technology (Lost? Just OnStar it!), but I’m beat when I hit Belmont Avenue.
Maybe I should do the two hour rest stop, too…
How about being able to use the rear bumper of your DeSoto as a picnic bench and the raised decklid as a sunshade. Try that in your Camry.
We did a couple of cross-country trips in 1951 and 1953 in my dad’s 1950 Packard sedan. The ’53 trip was in December for my grandparents’ golden wedding ceremony – lots of fun snow driving. But I think the trip from western Washington to Solvang, California in the summer of 1948 in my uncle’s 1937 LaSalle coupe is the one I remember best, for a couple of reasons. First, the car vapor-locked on the Columbia River bridge in afternoon rush hour. Second, it was a one-seat car with just jump seats…guess where the little kid got to sit.
Awesome pictures. I could practically feel the dust in my eyes.
The clan made many a trip from northern California to rural eastern Nebraska over the decades.
Sorta’ the northern branch of the “Okies.”
Remembering the pre-I-80 days where US 30 was the route around Elk Mountain in Wyoming.
Sure felt akin to the wild west on that route.