Here’s how kids got their thrills in the 40s: playing “chicken”, the automotive version. The driver takes his hands off the wheel of an old jalopy. The first passenger to grab the wheel to avoid an imminent crash is “chicken”.
Reminds me a bit of this slightly tamer family version. Mom drives, everyone else tries to hang on to the old Model T. This is how families enjoyed their vintage cars, apparently.
People do the same thing today. Only it involves cellphones.
If I could star you I would.
+11 !!
Before I saw these photos, I actually believed it was better nutrition, sanitation, and immunizations that were largely responsible for today’s population exposure…
I meant explosion, not exposure.
Dang autocorrect!
Original context: Life magazine on “The Hot Rod Menace.”
Human beings being human beings. Why can’t we just sit peacefully in a field, strumming lutes, and writing lines of poetry with a quill pen?
What fun is that?
…Are you from Bellingham?
Ha, ha. Said as I’m talking on the phone to my kids in Bellingham.
I think these days if you told someone to go strum their lute in a field, they might misapprehend you and get arrested, that’s at least one reason why.
Seeing the kid on the running board with apparently mom behind the wheel is just unimaginable today. The other day the wife and I were heading to Costco and stopped at a light was an older Toyota 4×4 pickup, with a 20 something riding in the bed because there wasn’t room in the cab. We both could not remember the last time we saw humans riding in the bed of a pickup on a public street. While the area we were at had low speed limits they were soon going to hit a stretch of 45mph. Of course I rode in the back of pickups, though the only time I remember doing it at freeway speeds was in one with a canopy and thankfully some carpet.
Funny that you mention that, as just the other day I gave a ride to two folks in the back of my truck. I was stopped at a red light and they asked if I would give them a ride up to a main street in the direction I was headed. The dog was in the cab with me, and they weren’t going very far, but it did remind me of a time when that was so commonplace.
Back in my hitchhiking days, I did a fair bit of that over longer distances too.
Don’t know where you live but here in southern Indiana (and in my native Kentucky just across the river) it is still pretty common to see people riding in the bed of a pickup. Perhaps not as much now as before because nearly all pickups sold today have room for 5 or 6 people inside but back in the day of single seat trucks it was really common. I can remember my Little League baseball coach making the rounds and picking up most of the team in his old Ford pickup; many times there were 6/7/8 of us in the back, along with equipment bags, spare tires and who knows what else. Back then no one ever gave this a second thought, or any thought at all really, it was just the way it was.
Back of a pickup = Arkansas convertible. Still quite common here.
Same here, within the last few days I saw 2 young guys riding in the back of a scruffy old pickup and wondered how long since I had seen that. Although Indiana has not specifically outlawed the practice (to my knowledge, anyway) it is still probably illegal now because there are no seatbelts there.
I did a lot of dumb stuff as a “yoot”, but never that. The closest thing was when my friend would be driving us down a dark road and suddenly turn the lights off.
I was a fearless driver but a very wimpy passenger. Still am, except with my wife who drives almost as well as I. 😉
Now, with kids eschewing driving and staying inside more, they have to eat Tide pods or something to get their kicks. (Even their risks involve eating)
…all while wearing winter hats in the summer and growing ever-weirder beards, trading in their Rams for a Chevy, because it’s dope or whatever, bruh. Word.
Having just taken my daughter out for a driving lesson, I can offer up a few thoughts….
She isn’t afraid to drive. She thinks anybody eating a Tide pod is an idiot. She hasn’t been wearing any winter hats in May. She isn’t growing a beard.
Isn’t it so easy to generalise about people you have never met? I have two teenage boys, neither of whom is interested in driving.
They don’t eat soap.
They don’t wear silly hats.
They don’t have beards.
They do understand that our public transportation system is so good that they won’t spend at least $5000 a year to drive.
I just spent a half hour typing a careful, measured response and an apology for any offense. I was making fun of peer pressure, trends and those cynical Chevy commercials. Then of course my comment vanished, as did the original before it reappeared to annoyed responses.
This comment “glitch” has gotten tedious. Seems the only ones that go through are ones that either support the mainstream train of thought or can be seen as trolling. I’m noticing a pattern of the “glitch” and it has gotten annoying.
I was just trying to make jokes. I like you guys but I guess I need to read the room better.
Just $5000 a year on vaccinations and phychotherapy from riding public transit!
*Ba dum tssss*
…all while wearing winter hats in the summer and growing ever-weirder beards, trading in their Rams for a Chevy, because it’s dope or whatever, bruh. Word.
There’s no better way to show you’re getting old and clueless faster than you should by making fun of the current habits/slang of (some) kids.
Again, careful comment gone. Ugh.
So after soul-searching I have decided that my original comment was funny.
So there. 😝
Being able to make fun of the younger generation is one of the few perks of getting old, it’s not like they’re not making fun of us old farts just like we did when we were kids.
You can be sure over the years I’ve given many of my students a loads of crap, from man buns, to the knit hat in the middle of summer. In turn they aren’t shy about calling me a decrepit, senile, grumpy, or out of touch old man, among other things.
Oh, a-bloody-men to all that, and it’s not like the perks of aging are otherwise plentiful. Anyway, I’ve always thought slang was invented for the purpose of inviting mockery. Especially if it is slang from any generation younger than my own. Or older.
When I was a kid, soap in your mouth was punishment when you screwed up bad. Now kids eat it voluntarily. I guess there are some things that I’m just never going to understand. Oh, and riding in the back of a pick up always looks more fun than it really is.
” Oh, and riding in the back of a pick up always looks more fun than it really is.”
Very true.
“….And get off my lawn”….!
That article describes the speeds as 60-70 mph. I don’t think Model As could go that fast especially with that load. This was a very unsafe practice, I’m sure that many youngsters were killed or injured. It really didn’t have that much to do with legitimate hot rod enthusiasts.
A friend of mine in high school had a older brother who was killed in a very similar act to the one pictured here.
My 91 year old Dad remembers one one of his classmates dying on graduation night in 1946. He said the guy in question was joyriding with some classmates, hanging on the driver’s side running board when he was struck by a car traveling in the opposite direction. He was killed instantly.
Here’s my brother, cheering on a friend:
There was also another variant of that “chicken” game shown in the James Dean movie “Rebel without a cause”.
I am in my mid seventies now so what I will describe took place quite a few years ago. I had two brothers for friends, one older than me and one younger. They had the use of their fathers work car, a 1949 Ford tudor. We all lived in South Alabama down on the gulf coast. Near where we lived was a nice bit of woods with a two track trail out through the woods. We started out running up and down the trail as fast as we could drive. Soon, we would have one person on top of the car, holding on in the windows as we ran through the trail. Then we let more friends in on the fun. Now we had three people on the roof as we ran through the trail. The fun stopped one day when the driver ran off the trail slightly and centered a stump. The car stopped abruptly and the people on the roof looked like Superman making a bad landing, times three. No one was hurt, just skinned up a bit but the car was not so lucky. Considering the age of he car, about fourteen at the time, the car was totaled. The car was given to the brothers who immediately removed the body and had a beach car.
That was the end of the running through the woods trail as roads were being cut through the woods. Soon there were smooth asphalt streets which were just perfect for driving a car through with a rope tied to the rear bumper towing a skateboarder. But that is a story for a different time. I will just say that I discovered that I could run thirty miles an hour, for a very short time.
Your last sentence got coffee sprayed all over my keyboard.
In days of youth my friends and I did many foolish things with automobiles. Here is one. On snowy days when the town fell behind on plowing, groups of boys (always boys, wonder why) would waylay cars (on back streets) by grabbing onto bumpers or other grabbable surfaces for fun rides. Rear bumpers were best, fenders or door handles could work. Some drivers would stop and complain, and some would indulge us and try to make it fun.
Most rides were not that interesting; you couldn’t always get a good grip and competition was stiff among the boys for the good spots, sometimes you would just get dragged along a short distance.
Some were memorable; with a little luck and a good grip, especially with fingers wrapped around the underside of the bumper (metal bumpers back then), away from the exhaust pipe, body in a sitting position, wearing old sneakers, rides of a block were possible until you hit a slushy or plowed spot, got tired of breathing exhaust (which was rich back then), or just tired or scared, and dropped off.
Sometimes the drivers would get going too fast, which was really cool, and really scary, especially if there was another car behind or coming in the opposite direction. It was difficult to keep the optimal sitting position, avoid being asphyxiated, and find a way to safely disengage.
Dangerous and stupid for sure, but, back in the day, lots of fun, and, fortunately, no serious injuries that I recall.
As a kid (1950s) we lived on the best hill in town for sled riding. Not wanting to walk all the way to the top we would stand in the road so the car would slow down enough to grab onto the rear bumper for a tow to the top. Hard to imagine parents allowing that today.
We didn’t ask for permission. It was a small town, so I wouldn’t be surprised if word got back to them. We never got in trouble.
Though I don’t live where I grew up, and haven’t been there on a snowy day in many years, I have wondered if kids still do that. I have never seen kids doing it around where I live now, and we get much more snow here.
The closest I have come to that kind of thing in recent years is building wagons from parts picked from the scrap metal pile of our transfer station and taking my son on thrill rides down our street when he was a toddler.
He enjoyed it then, but neither he nor any of his friends are daredevils the way my friends and I were. Perhaps that’s for the best.
The article got me thinking of another dangerous automobile practice, which, unlike bumper-hitching, was probably pretty common in the childhoods of those of a certain age.
At one point in our family history, for reasons I have never understood, the family fleet contained a VW Beetle. A cool car for sure, but wildly impractical for a family with four children.
We would pack the whole family (sometimes plus a friend) into that thing. Mom and Dad sat up front, smoking; kids wedged into the back, no seatbelts in use. It must have looked like a flaming clown car when we disembarked; a jumble of limbs and torsos emerging from billowing blue smoke.
Recently, my daughter was telling my young grandchildren about cross country trips in the ’76 Eldorado, often the kids would stand in the back and lean over the front so we could talk, often with the top down. The kids were utterly amazed and shocked that their mom actually was so careless! And how could Grandad allow this? Times certainly have changed!
I will admit, without providing my name, address, and license, that I too-recently (about 2 years back), did the turn-off-the-lights chicken run at 40mph on a moonlit semi-rural road with the mischievous intention of causing general excitement in the car – and instead caused myself excitement to the point where new underwear became urgently necessary, as a dirty great kangaroo was immovably centre-stage when lighting resumed!
I may have sworn quite crudely and voluminously, but I surely braked to full abs-pulsing stop.
And resolved, to many whackings from front passenger, that I had chickened my last.
Wow, that would be scary as hell for me!
Especially since I live in Indiana.
Try teaching high school kids in your 62nd year. It’s a trip.
The more things change…