Car Stuff: Family History #2

(This post was delayed due to technical issues: our printer has become extremely temperamental about scanning things, so I was forced to take pictures of this picture with my phone.)

This was my family's 1970 Plymouth Sport Suburban, which my parents acquired early in 1972, when this picture was taken. It was our "family truckster" for a number of years at a time when full-size station wagons were at roughly the height of their popularity.

Prior to getting this car, we'd had two Chevrolet wagons, a 1965 Bel Air in "Artesian turquoise" (which was closer to aqua) and a 1966 Caprice in white with wood siding (very much like this, but with a blue interior). The Plymouth also had the distinction of being the newest car my parents had owned up to that point.

Although this was Plymouth's top of the line wagon for 1970, it was not equipped with lots of the stuff we take for granted as standard on our cars today. It didn't have air conditioning, the radio was AM only, the windows were manual (except for the one in the tailgate); such luxuries were still optional on most cars at that time. Since it was a used car, my parents did not have the choice of whether or not to get the third seat; this car didn't have one. It was not strictly necessary, as we were perfectly content to ride in the "way back" sitting on the hard floor, but I'm sure if it had had the third seat, we would have made use of it.

I remember being pretty excited about it when we got it; about the only thing that I thought was cooler at the time was the new 1972 version, which I'd seen an example of either in the showroom at the dealership or on the lot, plus in the brochures I enthusiastically took home; even though I knew our budget would not allow for the purchase of a new car, I guess my young brain wanted to imagine the possibility of a quick trade of this car for an even newer one.

In hindsight the '70 was much better looking than the '72 (see for yourself). With the passage of so many years, it's become my favorite car of all the ones we had while I was growing up. That's partly because I like how it looks and partly because we went so many places in it: Disney World, Cape Cod, Lake Winnipesaukee. There's one other picture I was able to scan, from our Florida vacation:

That's my grandmother, who accompanied us on our voyage. This was taken at a rest stop/welcome center just over the border when coming into the state from Georgia on route 95. Taking family trips by car is one of those things that it seems people don't do as much anymore, but when I was growing up it was much more common than traveling by air, at least for average families like mine. (I did not travel on an airplane until I was nearly 21.)