Red and Rover by Brian Basset for April 19, 2017

Or on any of your job cards

That pesky permanent record just won’t go away!

But we didn’t use the seat belts in those days. Well, maybe if you were playing astronaut.

Wait till you see the kinds of tests would be astronauts have to endure.

I absolutely LOVE that car! My best friend’s family, at the time my mother died, had a wagon like that for their six kids. They were a source of stability in those turbulent days, and going grocery shopping with them in that wagon is a memory that has stuck.

I remember we were out of the good ole USA from 63 to 66. When we returned Dad bought a new 66 or 67 Buick station wagon with the push button in the middle of the seat belt buckle. We were familiar with the ones on the old Cessna and PanAm 707 that we flew on (and in the strip above). Dad stopped someplace in downtown Houston on the way home from getting the car and could not get the seat belt unlatched. He had to lengthened it and wiggled out.

The first car I bought for myself was an Austin Healey 3000 that I bought brand new in the UK in 1965. It did not come with seat belts but I had them installed because I knew I would need them when I brought the card home to the US. I think the belt buckles might have been designed like race car buckles and were very secure but easy to open. They had no complicated latch mechanism – they just used a magnet to hold the release lever closed.

Red shouldn’t worry. I read somewhere that weirdly, people who get carsick on Earth tend not to get sick in orbit, and vice versa.