An Aside

Some Background that may help Chapter 15

Before beginning Chapter 14 in earnest, I'd like to say that until the early 70's, the auto industry didn't put much thought into "crash safety." Seat belts, air bags, padded steering wheels, soft dashboards--no such thing! From the 30's through the mid-60's, the interior of cars was actually a gauntlet of hard, pointy surfaces ready to make an instant impression on passengers (in more ways than one).

Steering wheels were metal rings encased in plastic that was as hard as pool balls. In fact, sometimes drivers bolted on a knob the size of a cue ball to assist in steering with one hand. Those steering knobs could add an extra eye socket to your face in a crash.

The dashboard itself was hard metal often with fancy vents, the radio and other knobs right at face level so the person sitting in the middle of the front bench seat would have the channel changing buttons imbedded in his forehead in the event of a sudden stop.

Child seats of the day looked like toy folding chairs hooked over the seat. The child was not strapped in this perch. Heavens no. That would be way too restrictive, but don't worry, mothers instinctively backhanded the baby in the chest at each stoplight to make sure he was safe. All across the nation, thousands of cars had a child lounging for hours outstretched on the ledge inside the rear window, waving at the friendly policemen who thought nothing of it. I ought to know--the rear window was my favorite place to stretch out in the car.

The insides of cars have changed in the past three decades. It all started about the time we began hearing the "Buckle up for safety" song on the public service announcements, but I was ten years old before we owned a car that had seat belts. They really hurt when you sat on 'em so we always tucked them into the crack of the seat. Not until twenty years later did it become Michigan law to actually wear them. Now dashboards are smooth with hidden air bags in front of passengers, and we restrain our kids as much as possible.
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But I digress. When we return to 1951...

Mom will be sitting in the '39 Ford, listening to the radio, waiting for Dad to swim back from Canada. One of the songs playing on the radio then was a new release in 1951 sung by Debbie Reynolds, called Aba Daba Honeymoon.

[That was a link to the 45. Mom preferred the movie cut. You may recall that this melody was borrowed in the 1970's jingle "Munchabuncha, munchabuncha, munchabuncha, munchabuncha. Fritos go with Lunch" .]

Reynolds had first sung the song in a movie called Two Weeks in Love, which Mom and Dad had seen the year before. To this day, Mom loves the old sing-along movies. She had been a tap dancer in the 30's and 40's, performing in USO shows, etc. Dad liked this playful, animated side of Mom, and even took dance lessons to try to keep up with her, but it was Mom who really got into scenes like this one in the movie from which the hit song sprang. She couldn't help but sing along when she heard them. If she was standing, she'd also do the choreography. (The song had first been a ragtime hit in 1914. It evidently gained some international appeal in the '80s, but it's really a simple silly song.)