We’re about to reach the middle of the summer, and it’s a good time to revisit not only the season but that everyday companion; the automobile. As soon as the calendar changes, I’m sure most of us have at some point imagined the moment to board a vehicle, depart, and reach a destination we long to be at.
Here’s a collection from such travelers by The US National Archive, mostly captured in the ’70s. Above, canoers in Ohio River, in 1972.
The Florida Keys, 1975.
Lake Powell, 1973.
Campsite in Ohio Key, Florida, 1975.
Honda Key, Florida, 1975.
Public beach, 1975.
The Pontiac wagon is magnificent. As are the other wagons but especially that one. The rear-engined pairing is cool too.
This evokes a lot of memories of long drives with sweaty thighs and back on vinyl rear seats, never enough ventilation, usually a breakdown of some sort, a picnic basket with sandwiches for lunch, and perhaps eventually a sweet treat from a gas station convenience store usually consisting of a heretofore weird brand or flavor of soda not sampled previously. Good times.
The Poncho is indeed magnificent, what with the incongruence of its Parthenon face on a literally beige and doubtless grub-stained family truckster. It’s no fugly-but-super-capable Renault, say, but it is very nearly eccentric, for a US car. I love too that the family have chosen a folding camper, lest the standard 13 mpg fell to, say, 9 mpg from the drag of a full-height trailer.
Sweaty thighs? Perhaps I’m ill-mannered, but I recall a sweaty ass-crack that extended to the top of one’s neck as being was more like it, not to mention the rumpled and grumpy sibling to which one was inevitably side-sweat-welded by about halfway to There.
Luckily, and by Miracles, He invented the mass-market airconditioner, and Lo, the Older Types – including this one – could have fond memories of the actual holiday, rather than the torture of how it was arrived at.
The ’70 Chevy woody wagon looks darn nice also!
Lots of big sedans and wagons pulling the trailers back then.
Love the Corvair and VW bus pairing too; a fair number of Corvair engines found their way into these buses back in the day.
I am loving the Barracanoeda. Also that woodgrain Chevy wagon at the campsite in the Keys.
I have never been on board with the front end of the 1970 Pontiac. Also, I question whether that shot was taken in Ohio – the midwestern US is not known for its palm trees.
I was struck also by your mention that we are almost at the middle of summer. Here in the midwestern US, school is back in session as of the last couple of days of this past week. The calendar may say that summer lasts until about September 21st, but “real people” summer in the US seems to hit a hard stop at the end of July. I grew up starting school right after Labor Day at the very beginning of September, but that world appears to be long gone.
For me, “summer” was generally from the beginning of June through the end of August. This was probably due to our school’s summer break generally encompassing that timeframe while I was growing up in Montana in the 1980’s and 1990’s. We usually got out somewhere around the 8th of June, and always started school on the Wednesday before Labor Day, going for a half day, and then full days on Thursday and Friday… start and finish dates did gradually creep so that we got out later and started earlier.
My ex is an elementary school teacher in Arizona, and I remember being slightly shocked by the ~five and a half week summer break her students got, as well as the unusual (to me) amount of short breaks they got during the school year. But even after that, and 15 years of living in a place where the only seasonal changes are a shift from summer to very hot summer, my mind still equates the pictures here with June 1st through August 31st.
Agree. Here in the Southern part of the U.S. Summer was always beginning of June till Labor Day. Then it all ended and school returned. 🙁
That one had a typo, it’s Ohio Key, in Florida. It’s fixed now.
Not in Canada. School always starts just after Labour Day.
Boats, campers, big old canvas tents with aluminum poles (I can still conjure up the smell of one of those canvas tents)…and not a truck to be seen.
It’s a wonder those folks could even get to the end of their driveways with such inadequate vehicular equipment 😉
I think the first picture may be the Ohio River. And Lake Powell…could be. The rest are definitely FL.
I still remember the smell of those canvas tents too. I don’t know if I’d describe it as “cellar mold airing out” or “just been in storage since a while back.”
That smell, yes!
Damp hessian, getting hot in the sun, still smellable at night. Not horrid or anything, though likely as toxic as most things then were. But it was omnipresent, and to this minute it’s hugely evocative of wondrous kid-holidays long ago.
When we all wore rose-tinted glasses, too, of course.
Cool photos! I agree that the 70 Pontiac is tops of the cars. That does not look like Ohio to me. The picture I’d most like to jump into is the VW/Corvair one.
The Pontiac picture is likely at Ohio Key, Florida – there’s a big campground at Ohio Key, and this picture is on the Ohio Key Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_Key
From what I understand, the Holiday Inn corporation bought the entire island in the early 1970s and developed the campground that’s currently there, and also changed the name to sound more tourist-y.
The scary part is 40-50 years from now people will be looking at pictures like this from now and it will all be SUVs…big ones,small ones but all SUVs.
Sigh
Probably not much different than looking at photos taken before WW2 and noticing that there weren’t many station wagons, or photos before WW1 having more open cars than sedans. And then there was that period from 1984 through Y2K where minivans were the family vehicle of choice.
I’d probably find it more boring than scary, yet it’ll be as indicative of a certain period in time as the cars in these photos are to us today. “Hey Dad! Why are all of the cars in black and white but everything else is in color?”
I wonder if people in the future will look back on these times and wonder about the noticeable lack of color. Is it manufacturers and consumers playing it safe? Is there some big psychological reason related to our times that explains it? Or does everyone just have the same taste?
Great Post and Pics!!
Lots of big cars but the early Mercury Capri catches my eye as it is a car rarely seen anywhere nowadays. They were nice cars as my sister had a 74 2800cc V6.
Yep, the brown Capri caught my eye. These were among the hot cars to have when I was in high school.
Simply lovely photos .
In the 1960’s we had 6 brats (me the worst of the lot) and IHC Travelall and a green canvas “cottage tent” that had that odd smell .
Traveling and camping out have always been a favorite American pastime .
I remember being squeezed into Pop’s gray ’59 Peugeot 304 sedan all day with the windows rolled up (! Why, dad why ?) with four of my siblings and his new wife, oddly enough I’m now older than he was then and I still prefer auto travel and don’t bitch (much) when I take one of my non air con jalopies through Death Valley etc….
Thankfully my parents never had cloth seats, I remember sticking to them painfully but not the stench of sweat filled cloth seats .
-Nate
In the background of the Corvair/VW Bus pic, in Bahia Honda Key, looks to the be old Seven Mile Bridge. Much of it is still standing, and is used for fishing, next to the “new” bridge, which opened in 1982.
My Miami-born wife made many trips across that scary old bridge. It’s very narrow. Two lanes. Driving by it on the new bridge makes you glad you didn’t have to take the old one.
Great pics.
I’m looking at the Capri shot. I take it there are sharks in the water, or stinging jellyfish, or the water’s just fricking cold, because I can’t imagine why else nobody has jumped headfirst into those endless blue swells. The Capri has what looks like foil wrap blocking out the rear side windows. Curious.
Second picture brings back memories. Big Chevy wagon and big family size canvas tent.