S'funny what we did as kids in cars.
I used to love winding the windows down in summer and fishing my hands through the airstream. Changing to an upturned hand was great fun as it caused drag.
Sticking your whole head out was the best, allowing the rushing air to sweep over your face, eyes and hair. Even dogs like doing this!
Another popular pastime at the back was being co-driver. This was either achieved without props or with one of the cool plastic toy steering wheels which had a huge suction cup so it could stick to the back of the seat in front. I loved that toy. It has a horn in the middle, a ratcheting indicator lever and a couple of switches. I seem to recall it being blue and maybe made by Casdon?
I-spy was a staple as well, which everyone could play, even the adults. I spy with my little eye something beginning with Z. I remember it so well it could be yesterday.
A similar game was spotting certain makes of car and truck, although I'm not sure how we played this now.
In my attic I have an old board game about cars. Its something I picked up at a boot sale 20 years ago. Its by Letts or Lotts I think. It was made specifically for kids in the back seat. I don't recall playing actual board games in the the car like this. Do you?
What did you do in the back seat readers? as kids I mean!
We used to play Punch Buggy.There were a lot of Volkswagen Beetles on the road back in the 70's and if you spotted one first, you said punch buggy,said the color of the vehicle, and punched your opponent on the arm.Punch Buggy red!Punch Buggy green! Punch Buggy blue!Our parent must have ground their teeth down to stumps.
ReplyDeleteNot heard of that Brian but can see how it happened. I'm surprised there were so many VW Beetles in the US. I would have thought American cars would have been king. Was the punch a hard one. what we call a dead arm here? I hated dead arm but if you showed weakness at school some mean kid would do it all the time!
DeleteThe main thing I remember doing in my parent's car in the '70's was 1) trying not to be sick, 2) being sick, 3)trying not to be sick again, 4) being sick, 5) repeat until destination or about 1982 when I seemed to grow out of it.
ReplyDeletePlaying I-spy books only made the early stages of this worse. My parents tried every kind of remedy - do people remember the rubber strip that used to hang underneath the car to allegedly cure car-sickness?
That's a lot of puking Darryl although I do recall a good vehicular chunder myself especially en route to Butlins in the back of the car. The only remedy I remember was quickly pulling up on the hard shoulder or a lay-bay or one of those strange wooded rest areas, booting me out and letting me call for hughie safely away from the car and its suede seating. I thought the rubber strip was for lightning strikes. Maybe it was an anti-vom strip after all!
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