There’s a new video trending on social media these days. The videographer goes around the office, asking people what year they were born.  If they were born after 2000, they’re safe, but if someone starts saying 19- instantly their background changes to show them riding a dinosaur or crossing the Delaware with George Washington. Very funny.

Well, I was born in the mid-1900s and kids, you have no idea the things I had to live through.  This was the age of the astronauts, and I firmly believe any of us could have passed the test to go to space.  You see, we had plenty of experience floating in zero gravity, hair-raising situations.

Just riding in a car was an adventure. The family car was a very different vehicle than those you see today. I remember going for rides in the back of our 1957 Chevy. It had two doors and the front seat tipped forward for us to climb in the back. There we were, four kids across, seatbelt-free, as our car zoomed along the Windy Way (Route 52) home from Kohlertown to Callicoon. Lots of slipping and sliding all the way home.  The good news is the more kids you shoved in the back seat, the less room there was for them to slide around.

You could be protected in the front seat if you were riding there (and why wouldn’t you if you had the chance?) by the ever vigilant and powerful Mom Arm. This well-known safety feature was apt to engage in scary situations, and it could leave bruises on your torso, but it always served to keep you in your seat.

One of the other norms of riding around with Mom and Dad was the constant smoking.  A nice after-dinner sojourn was the perfect time to light up a Winston (because “(They) taste good, like a cigarette should”) and tool around the countryside with a car full of kids. Not to worry, though. They would always roll down the window if we came to a pond so we could hear the “peepers.”  Cars didn’t have seatbelts, but they all had cigarette lighters. Handy.

Once we got our big Estate Wagon, you could slide around in the Way Back seat, facing backwards and looking out the back window. As I recall, the window was able to be lowered while the car was in motion adding to the fun. If riding backward didn’t cause instant nausea, flying out the back window during a sudden stop might do it. But there was an added bonus. In case there were more seats than kids, all the seats in the back could be folded down and then it was absolutely Zero Gravity time as a passel of us rolled around and hung on for our lives.

Cars weren’t the only places where it was safety last. I remember that we got a swing set but somehow no one thought it necessary to anchor it in cement. It was free-standing, sitting there on top of the lawn.  Boy, we could get that thing rocking.  Working together, we would swing hard enough to lift its legs right off the ground.  We never managed to tip it completely over, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.

Life was so much more exciting back then.  No one knew what a seatbelt or a bike helmet or secondhand smoke was. We lived on the edge every day. Great memories.