Vacationing in 1970- something.
Airplanes
Going on vacation when I was growing up in the 1970s meant taking a road trip. Oh, there were airplanes, but they were reserved for emergencies, business, and rich people. I remember the time that my dad and his brother flew to California to visit my sick uncle; the flight became a conversation piece in our family as there was much discussion about the expensive tickets, lay overs, and the fact that they ‘ran on the runway’ to catch their connecting flight in time.
Airplane Travel in the 1970s.
Roadways
Army General Dwight D. Eisenhower was stationed in Germany during WWII and was impressed with a network of roadways known as the Autobahn. When Eisenhower became president of the United States, the roads were primarily made of concrete and packed dirt and he championed the construction of the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. The purpose of the road network at that time was to eliminate unsafe roads, inefficient routes, and traffic jams, as well as encouraging ‘speedy’ and safe transcontinental travel. Other advocates felt the highways would permit quick evacuation of target areas in the case of an atomic attack on key cities, and were essential to the national interest. The highway network began in 1965 and was completed in 1991, thirty-five years later.
Only one in approximately 18,000 Americans owned a vehicle during the 1950s and early 60s. By 1970-something, however, the improvement of the roads and the convenience of highway travel opened an entirely new industry called tourism!
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Fuel
Although the roads were improving, facilities were still few and far between. Gas and oil check services were available at Gulf or Texaco stations and if you pulled in before they closed at 5:00 p.m., you could borrow the outside restroom key attached to a large block of wood and purchase a cold bottle of yummy Coca Cola and some peanuts!
Gas stations use to be referred to as Filling Stations because your car needed to be filled with gas, water, oil and the inner tubes in your tires needed to be filled with air.
Food
On the first day of the road trip and even sometimes the second day, we had sandwiches and food brought from home that was packed in a styrofoam cooler full of ice. My dad bought the ice downtown from the ice house and used an ice pick to break the large, one foot square block into small pieces. The sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper and quickly went soggy but the potato salad was in a cool whip container and stayed good until the ice melted. We stopped to eat and stretch our legs at the many roadside picnic tables along the way.
The driving route usually went through main streets where the local cafes were located and blue plate specials or burger baskets were waiting! Blue plate specials included a dinner salad, bread, meat, veggies and a cobbler or piece of pie with coffee or tea. The cafes were only open during ‘meal times’, which meant about an hour for lunch, and then they would close to ‘reset’ for the dinner hour. Sometimes truck stops could be found for fuel and a decent meal.
Food chains eventually began popping up along the way that were open longer than the local cafes. Stuckey’s even had candy makers that we watched make pecan logs and pull taffy and my favorite was the long, flat pieces of taffy that came in different flavors. The indoor potties were the best!
Stuckey’s had the best travel snacks AND an inside potty.
Finding a Dairy Queen on our road trip was great luck! We could purchase a burger basket, a dilly bar, and a soda pop that came in a wax paper cup with a Dennis the Menace picture. The straws were made out of paper and if you bit the ends, they were toast.
Signs
My uncles lived in California and we traveled on Interstate 40 when we went to visit them. The highway was covered with road signs that that would have a word or two on each sign and the next word of the message would be on the next sign a hundred feet or so down the road. I am convinced that whoever came up with this method was a marketing genius because I still remember the signs forty years later!
Burma Shave Road signs often were cautions to drive safe. This sold their product!
Sleeping Accommodations
Howard Johnson or Holiday Inns were available about every two hundred miles as well as small mom and pop accommodations that usually had the name ‘Court’ in the title and advertised if they had a color TV. I don’t recall ever staying in a motel because the adults in my family took turns driving and we didn’t stop until we arrived at our destination.
Holiday Inn often had air conditioning AND a color TV.
The Ride
The cars I traveled in when I was young had large dashes next to the back window and no seat belts. I would curl up in the window dash next to a little bobbing dog figurine because I could see better and sometimes my daddy would hit the brakes so that I would go flying into the back of his seat, which was more fun than the ferris wheel! We didn’t have game systems, iPads, cell phones, or laptops and entertainment was found in simple things such as counting cars, reading books, singing songs, and asking the ever famous question, “Are we there yet?”
My favorite travel story is not my own but belongs to my cousin. There were four children in her family and every summer they ventured on a road trip for several weeks. Every morning during the trip in their station wagon, the parents gave each child a roll of nickels, which seemed like a LOT of money to a kid back then. If they got out of hand as they traveled, they had to give their mom a nickel and at the end of the day, they could spend what they had ‘earned’. One day, Karkie’s little sister was being particularly annoying, so she tapped her mother on the shoulder and handed her the entire roll of nickels. When her mother asked why she had handed her the roll of nickels, Karkie turned around and gave her sister a good smack. To this day, Karkie vows it was worth every nickel!
“One of the best ways to truly see is to step out your door.”
Angie Harris, Going Out The Door