Labor Day weekend always reminds me of traveling, an idea that’s been fixed in my mind since my college days. However, most of my traveling was done by plane, the norm by the early ’90s. These images come from a time when that wasn’t generally the case, and I’ve no idea if these travelers are leaving or arriving. Or whether they’re going for business or pleasure. For all I know, they could be going to the airport to board a DC-8.
We can certainly imagine the backstories in these though, and I’ve done enough moving and traveling by land to admire the neatness of some of these travelers. Also, it’s nice to see those trunks put to good use.
The first photo perfectly captures suburban style of the early 1960s – the architecture, the landscaping, the pinch-pleated draperies in the window, the lady’s clothing, the luggage, and the car.
What I find humorous is how people back then not only traveled in clothes that are considered dressy by today’s standards, they were also fully dressed up (and the women in full makeup, and often heels) when they hefted the luggage out to the car and loaded it. Quite a contrast to today, when I usually look like I’m headed to the golf course when I travel.
Yes, it is a 60’s classic. Lawn could use a mowing though. The grass has even gone to seed.
That lady is probably about to be driven to the airport or possibly train station by her son or son in law to begin her trip back home after a weekend visit. The wife took the photo.
And that ride will be in an awesome (that’s right, I have always loved them) pure Exner bucket seated 1962 Plymouth Sport Fury. Sadly without AC, but judging by the coat over her arm it was a cool day. (A factory AC equipped one would have one more button at the bottom of the row on the right side of the instrument pod.)
Agree about the early 60’s gestalt in this photo. In a few years the children of the 60’s would crash head on into that with their new ethos – a collision that is still reverberating today. I remember what a culture shock that was – longhaired unshaven kids with ripped jeans and t-shirts on the one-hand, and prim and proper elders in polyester on the other. At the time I was all in on the former, but now I kind of miss the steadiness of the latter.
Alan ;
I have never understood why some like to dress in clothes with holes .
Being broke is very different from being poor , broke folks know to keep clean and tidy, there’s always a cheap place to buy clothes .
I see the stupids today with the chonies hanging out, why they think this is cool escapes me .
In stir it means you like anal sex as a receiver .
One doesn’t have to dress like these folks did until the mid 1960’s, I wore jeans and T-Shirts too but once they got a hole anywhere they were cutoffs or used as rags .
I dressed in bell bottoms & arrow shirts when I was out on the town just like many did , I bet I looked ridiculous but I was always clean .
No one else can take your self respect, only you can give it away .
-Nate
Nice .
Now folks go out in their pajamas .
I can’t say I miss those styles shown here but do love the photos .
-Nate
So right, Nate. Guys in pajama bottoms and dirty t-shirts at the grocery are an all too common sight in SoCal. Amazing.
I’d peg the first shot as my Grandma, except that I don’t think she ever slept a night in a motel.
That 61 Buick’s trunk is REALLY SHALLOW!
As cars got lower and trunks shallower and longer to make up for it that’s what happened. Ford thought of moving the fuel tank to an upright position behind the rear axle – extending the rise for the axle into a shelf where the spare tire could go – instead of flat under the trunk. This first showed up on the revamped 1964 Lincolns (hence the defacement of a fuel door in the middle of the left rear fender) and then on the all-new 1965 Galaxies and Mercurys. This of course made for a deep square well in the rest of the trunk floor and the end of the filler behind the license plate (or in those Lincolns in the middle of the fake rear grille). It took a while for everyone else to copy.
I recall that the 1961-64 Chevrolets had a pretty deep trunk floor too.
My Dad’s 1978 Mark V had the worst trunk ever. Very shallow and non-spacious for such a huge car. He and his girlfriend had to make use of the back seat for additional storage when they went on long road trips.
The flip side is the last Mazda Miata I had. It looks like it should have a decent size trunk behind the rear axle line, but the lid opens to show a shelf on top of the rear crash structure and the fuel tank. Room for a few pizza boxes and the mini spare.
Hilariously, it had an inside release in case someone got locked in.
That is one cool Plymouth (Dodge?) in the first picture. Beats her taste in luggage!
Great photos! I very much admire the packing skills/spatial awareness of whoever loaded up that 1957 Chevrolet in picture #4. Beautiful job.
And with the classic red plaid Thermos bottle. One thing about those Tri-Fives that is better than the competition is the tall squarish trunk with the lid opening down to the bumper.
My parents had that exact plaid thermos. I remember finding it when I cleaned out their house and debated whether to keep it, as it had been witness to innumerable childhood picnics. I ended up tossing it, since I felt I was keeping too much stuff already for purely sentimental reasons and I knew i’d never use it. Have regretted doing so from time to time (mostly when I see one in a photo like this).
Gotta love the 2-tone 1950-52 “Pontiac Eight” (emblazoned on fender). All duded up in wide whites, out in the country somewhere.
The young lady could have been my mom, who carted us around in a Star Chief just like it. How she ever parallel parked that tank with manual steering is beyond me. But, at 93, in a nursing home, our Star Chief is barely a speck o f a memory.
Great photos, all 😎
I was also going to comment that the lady in that photo looks much like…and is definitely dressed like…my mom at about that point in history.
Somewhere I have a photo of her with a suitcase standing in front of a car very much like that 🙂
+ 1 😉
I hope the lady in the last photo didn’t hit the back of her head on the decklid when she straightened up.
As a guy who swore off of travel in sedans a long time ago, these exercises in trunk packing seem quaint. But I definitely remember going through that exercise, both watching my parents do it and doing it myself. That couple along the road rooting through the trunk of the Edsel brought back memories of traveling with two toddlers in a Crown Victoria sedan. There was lots of mid-trip trunk rummaging done. Life with vans was so much nicer.
I think the most useless trunk I ever had was in a 68 Mustang – it was tiny and was almost half occupied by the spare tire. The 71 Scamp trunk was far larger, but very, very shallow.
The picnic baskets and thermos containers take me back in time. When we took long road trips in the 50’s and 60’s there weren’t that many places to eat along some stretches of pre-interstate highways and economy-minded parents who grew up during the Depression were content to pack sandwiches, apples, crackers, and cheese, et al, to be washed down with iced tea or lemonade. And often there were small roadside parks with picnic tables where we could enjoy our meal. Because I was an only child we never had a station wagon so the sedan’s trunk was usually packed quite full.
Your trips sound like the ones that I had. We usually did good to afford the gas for a trip. Eating out was not an option. We ate out of the cooler chest. Our Kelvinator refrigerator couldn’t make enough ice so ice had to be bought but once we were gassed up and the cooler loaded, we were good to go. If there were a few extra bucks, we might stop for ice cream! Simple pleasures!
We alternated on trips, my Dad liked eating out but my Mom was used to picnicing…something going back to her childhood, she’d have an outing with my Grandfather where they’d cook bacon and bake potatoes on a trip (takes more time than a typical car picnic on the way somewhere but she wasn’t used to eating out on trips). Later on, my Dad needed to cool medications he brought with him in a cooler, so we tended to picnic more since we had to manage ice for the cooler anyhow since it became a requirement to bring with us on trips.
Sometimes the trick became finding a roadside picnic table, especially away from interstates that tend to have them at rest stops at the time we were getting hungary for lunch (or my Dad had to eat, as a diabetic to maintain blood sugar). I remember eating standing up with lunch resting on a pillar at an abandoned building along the road we were on when we couldn’t find a table (my parent’s weren’t into spreading a blanket, especially with fire ants around).
We were fortunate to have a station wagon most of the time I was growing up, but later as wagons disappeared my Dad would buy a sedan. The wagon was good for storage not just because of the space behind the back seat but also the “well” (as my Dad called it) under the floor in the wagon area, he often packed suitcases underneath leaving lots of space for cooler or even someone wanting to lie down in the back.
Masterful packing job on that ’57 Chevy! I used to strive for that in our 1980 Volvo 242 when we had two small sons. Here’s a photo taken in 1988 when we were leaving a motel in Indianapolis after my wife’s parents’ 40th wedding anniversary celebration.
It appears one boy is sitting in the left rear seat and my wife is helping other to get in. The rear head restraints were dealer-installed.
Source for these photos?
Most of these photos are late 50’s and early 60’s sedans.
By the mid 60’s thru the early 80’s, station wagons ruled the highway during summer vacation.
Looking forward to minivan vacation photos from the mid 80’s as well.
In the 2nd photo, I remember those labels one would put on their luggage. Some from the airlines, steamship companies, or from places visited.
Currently, the airlines frown on these for they could separate and obstruct scanners in the luggage conveyer belts.
However, I have seen some passengers use high resolution tape to identify their luggage at baggage pickup at the airport.
The first picture with the Sport (I think) Fury shows the cars most attractive area, the front fender with the heavy sculptering into the front door. I think Mr Exner really got this area right, along with with the shape of the wheel opening and the inward curving lower section it makes for an athletic and dynamic look. While the rest of the car is polarizing, these would become very good looking cars over the next few model years, but the good bones were there for 1962.
This reminds me of a photography exhibit earlier this year at a local art gallery – ‘Leaving and Waving’ – where the photographer had taken pictures of her parents waving goodbye to her from their driveway over a period of 27 years. Very simple concept, and very memorable effect.
https://thepolygon.ca/exhibition/deanna-dikeman-leaving-and-waving/