Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for January 07, 2023

I used to give my neighbor with a 2 year old daughter a lift occasionally. The daughter’s safety seat was her mother’s lap.

My mother had a station wagon (look it up) and I used to crawl around in the cargo area while it was in motion.

Ah, the good old days when you could build character. Eh, or die. I think I must be channeling Calvin’s dad here.

we used to ride in the mountains in the back of a pickup truck…still alive!

My brother, my sister, and I used to ride cross country in the back of a pickup. It was a ’76 Ford F100 with a basic top and we sat it bean bags. We went everywhere from Yellowstone, Salt Lake, Mt Rushmore, etc.

No seatbelts, playing all over the car, laying on the back dash, all kinds of stupid things.

Then again cars were a lot stronger and heavier then, and it seems like there were either fewer on the road, or people drove less crazy than they do now,

Riding bicycles with no helmets or lights in the dark.

Being able to play on the street after dark.

When I was kid in the 70’s we drove cross-country one summer in an Econoline van with no seats in the back much less seat belts (we had a trunk with a blanket on it), and the AC was a spray bottle of water, and we liked it.

Oliver Douglas, Mr. Haney and Arnold the Pig.

What seat belts?

I don’t recall when they became mandatory, although I always wore them as soon as they were available. My 1970 Ford truck only has lap belts.

My Mom’s lady friend would drive us downtown in her 1936 Dodge and I got to sit in the rumble seat.

I remember in 1962 a friend lost his leg in a car accident because he wasn’t buckled up and was thrown from the car in what would be called a minor accident today. I worked for Boeing in 63 and it was mandatory to wear seat belts. Got used to it and used them ever since. I was glad to be wearing one when my VW flipped over and I didn’t even get a scratch. Seat belts saved my life and all you who didn’t wear them are just lucky you didn’t get into an accident.

In my childhood in the 60’s, I rode in the front seat or sometimes I lay on the rear window ledge. Cars had no seatbelts or perhaps a few had lapbelts. No one worried or they didn’t say.

In the late 60s my parents would drive 350 km in a Volkswagen Beetle with six kids to get to our vacation plot of land. As one of the two smallest kids, I got to ride in the back window.

remember the 1970s cars that had that handy clip to attach the seatbelt to the roof to get it out of your way while driving?!

I think Rat and Pig have their usual roles reversed today!

Our first car was a Ford Falcon. I don’t remember it even having seat belts, although I may be mistaken. Not only didn’t we wear seat belts, but I remember when only dad had a drivers license, and my brother and I were too young to be left alone at home, so shopping was a family event. I remember sitting in the back seat when dad was lighting his pipe and mom was lighting her cigarette in the front seat. I wasn’t allowed to open the window, since it was cold outside. You’ll never realize how much smoke a pipe produces whent it’s first lit, until you’ve seen (and breathed) one being lit in a small enclosed space.

The Subaru Brat had two bucket seats in the bed of the truck

You could buy an ounce of pot for $10.

TV stations went off the air every night.

I don’t know where to start… we weren’t oversensitive crybabies back then. When we got our order wrong at the fast food counter, we moved on or politely asked for it to be corrected. We couldn’t care less about the lives of the musicians, we just enjoyed the music. When our opinions got challenged, we debated the issue or accepted the disagreement. We didn’t get into a fit of rage. We didn’t have warning labels on our batteries saying “don’t eat”, on our potato chips saying “high Sodium content”, on our lard saying “high fat content!”. It seemed so obvious at that time that putting your fingers into a wall socket was a bad idea that we didn’t need the warning labels. That’s hard to believe nowadays… :D

Nothing had tamper proof lids or were safety sealed. “Child proof” lids are a b!tch to open.

We didn’t have to consider survivor bias.

https://www.racv.com.au/royalauto/news/illegal-old-car-ads-and-products.html

My fave is the Lull-A-Baby car hammock.

I used to ride in the front seat between my parents while my three siblings rode in back and none of us had seatbelts on.

Always buckle up.

No bike helmets!!

How did we all survive back then ⁉️☺️

Spirograph now has putty to hold the wheels in place. Back in my day we used pins.

Nothing is perfect, but statistics show that your chances of surviving and getting minimal injuries are far better with today’s safety systems. With all due respect to Mr. Balfour, in this case the stats aren’t lying.

Never wore a helmet on my bike or my skates, or my boards, or my skis… just on my horse (tho too often we didn’t bother with helmets when we were just playing in the fields, off lesson time and where Mom couldn’t see) but back then helmets were cosmetic at best, structurally speaking, but who didn’t want to wear the WHOLE outfit :D

We had no seat belts back in the 50s

We had a car that for short while had lost one of its back doors. my parents said to scoot (bench seats) away from the opening. Funny, but I never fell out. We are safer now, but more angry and dependent on the system. I wonder if those go together?

Such an improvement from the ‘50-60’s. No seat belts, no air conditioning, smoking, leaded gasoline.

Cars weren’t very good. They leaked oil and people put drip pans in their garages. They overheated and you’d have to add water to the radiators. The tires leaked air and you’d have to fill them up at the gas station.

Mom had quicker reflexes back then and would slam on the breaks stick her arm out and hold you back

And when we were young it was soooo much fun riding in the rumble seat of my uncle’s car. And, as a giveaway, it wasn’t that old a car – back then.

Not having our eyes constantly glued to some sort of electronic device. we played games in person with actual social interaction and conversation

The Count enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and did not avoid going to Viet Nam even though The Count could have. Oh wait… that was 1967.

When I was a kid we didn’t have seatbelts in cars. My mother’s reflex arm motion was the only protection I ever had.

I use to climb trees, and would ride my bike down a sidewalk hill in the neighborhood without ever falling off. If my mom had known about that. I would’ve been in big trouble

I was a kid in the 80’s (well, 70’s too but I don’t remember them) and grew up in a rural area, so a lot of people didn’t wear seatbelts. My dad, however, was a driver’s ed instructor, so seatbelts were always mandatory for us. The only exception was with our 1970 something Chevy Blazer. If we were over capacity, us kids could ride in the way back, which did not have seatbelts. Back then the seatbelt laws weren’t strictly enforced, so I remember many a trip where we’d be back there waving to the cops behind us, and they’d just wave back and go on their way.

I was an adult in the 70s and I loaned Mom my car when I was overseas for a year. Convinced her that my car wouldn’t start until she had her seat belt on and she believed me for quite a while. By then she’d developed the muscle memory and used it every time.

There was room under the dashboard for both my 8-track tape player and my CB radio!! And I could fix my ’72 Nova without a computer

When I was in college in the 80’s I would always put my seat belt on and the driver would give me a look like they couldn’t believe I was actually doing that. I finally came up with a response when someone would give me “the look,” “Your driving I trust, it’s the other guy I don’t trust.” and that always seemed to satisfy them.

The cars didn’t have seatbelts when I was growing up, and I used to stand up in the back seat. I was a bad little girl in the 60s.

My cousin was killed in a survivable wreck when he was thrown out of his pickup. But did his family wear seatbelts after that? Nope, they’d “rather be thrown clear.” That was the hillbilly side of the family.

In the mid-1950s it was an ~0.8 mile walk from home to Jr. High. A neighbor drove his daughter along the same route. If he knew the parents approved, he would let any of us who flagged him down climb in the back of his pickup. In bad weather, there could be 5 or more of us taking advantage of the free ride.

The ’70s were a wild time, apparently.

…yes, it’s amazing so many of us survived

On vacations we could lie down on the rear deck and nap.

Whenever we came to a red light or stop sign my mother shot out her right arm to try to stop me from going forward.

In the ‘50s & ’60s, my siblings & I (whichever one of the 5 was youngest at the time) rode in a car seat. It was an aluminum frame that hooked over the back of the front seat and ran around the kid in a square; slightly padded square board for a seat, a strap up betwixt the legs so you didn’t slide out, and a little steering wheel – just like this:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/385309235058?chn=ps&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-117182-37290-0&mkcid=2&mkscid=101&itemid=385309235058&targetid=1263094005346&device=c&mktype=&googleloc=9021504&poi=&campaignid=14859008593&mkgroupid=130497710760&rlsatarget=pla-1263094005346&abcId=9300678&merchantid=113356095&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI7uecgui1_AIVAxd9Ch0vkwanEAQYAiABEgKecvD_BwE.

Positioned you perfectly to miss the dashboard & roof; and go right through the (non-safety glass) windshield.

We also rode on the “package shelf” (between the back seat & rear window) until we got a station wagon in ’60.

In the late ’40s my dad sometimes let me sit on his lap and ”steer” the car.

For family vacations in the 60’s-70’s, my dad put down the back seat in the station wagon and tossed in an old mattress. We could play games, snack (Ho-Ho’s were the special treat on a road trip), wave at the truckers we passed or just nap. It was even more fun when we got to the winding roads of West Virginia – wheeee!

Ironically, it is because of that laissaiz-faire attitude towards seat belts in my youth that I made it an unchanging habit, from the time I first got my license, of ALWAYS buckling up when I get into a vehicle…

My Dad installed after-market seat belts in our 1959 Ford Galaxy, in 1962. I’ve worn a seatbelt ever since. In the early 70s, my husband and I told our son that the car wouldn’t start if the seatbelts weren’t buckled around a body. We never started the car until we heard ALL the clicks.

There weren’t any seatbelts when I was young and all the cars had heavy steel frames. I really liked the vent windows and was sorry when they did away with them. I still miss them.

In the 70s, the legal drinking age in my state was 18.Walmart didn’t exist. Kmarts was a new phenomenon. Drivers license did not automatically come with a car.It was possible to work your way through college without taking on massive amounts of debt. (I know because I did it.)

We never wore seatbelts on the school buses. I’m not even sure if they had them. That was 50 yrs ago, I don’t know if that is required now.

I rode front and back in my old man’ car with no seat belts. Also when he was drunk, he rolled us once. He left us in the car once and we also nearly froze to death. What a father of the year he was!

Standing in the front seat. My protection was my father’s right arm when were coming to a stop. This was the era when dashboards weren’t padded, but made of solid steel.

It is hard to believe it it was before 1973…

Why would Rat believe that? Mom knew Stephan would someday become rich and famous and support his dear mom to the life she richly deserves…

Ohio License Plates, 1973, 1974 - “Seats Belts Fastened?” Remember when they used to give you key chains of your license plates? In Ohio, maybe not elsewhere…

I have a vague memory from around 1950, when I was five. My father had a very small black car with only a front seat, one big enough for two adults. I would stand on the seat between my mom and dad, while the car was in motion!

Growing up in the 50’s there weren’t any seatbelts. so my brother and I sat in the back seat. Living in NYC we didn’t drive much, mostly just to see family, or go out to eat where it was too far to walk. We always had an Oldsmobile

We started wearing seatbelts just before 1980 when one of my mom’s co-workers was killed in a car crash.

Back then was a good way to get rid of stupid people. Today we protect the stupid people and the more we protect stupid people, the more stupid people we get.

Like all safety devices, seat belts, car seats, etc. are completely irrelevant, as long you’re not in an accident!

How did we ever survive?

Everyone over a certain age remembers riding in a car and not wearing seatbelts, but I remember when I was a little kid (1950’s) actually standing up in the middle of the front seat in my grandfather’s car (and I have old home movies to prove it). I can’t even think about that now without shuddering. Our family’s 1962 Ford Falcon did not have seatbelts, but they had them put in a few years later. I think our 1966 Galaxie and 1968 station wagon both came with seatbelts. The 1970 Mercury Cougar had seatbelts but separate shoulder belts which no one ever took down from the clips holding them to the roof. I resisted wearing seatbelts for many years, mainly because I didn’t like being told I had to by my employer, but once I got married and had kids my thoughts on this changed and now I always wear them. Seatbelts didn’t matter in the only serious accident I was ever in, where I was a passenger in a 1963 VW that didn’t have seatbelts. I didn’t get hurt but the driver broke his collarbone, so that at least got me thinking about it.

We were barbarians, to be sure, and boy was it fun!

BOOMERS! YEAH!!!!

Lots more nostalgic things on Pinterest boards like this one: https://www.pinterest.com/bump0807/do-you-remember/

Heck, Cartoon-Boy, not so hard to believe at all, if you’re the Ancient of Days (as I pretty much am). I remember my cousin (close to the same age as I) and I playing blissfully on the floor of the back seat of the old ‘40s sedan, of course without even a hint of seatbelting regulations, which didn’t come along until many years later. We suffered no harm, BTW….

Wearing seat belts became California law 35 years ago on January 1, 1986. All the cars I grew up with had no seat belts.

At the park, we had metal slides, splintered wooden planks on chains for swings, and concrete to cushion any falls.