Riding in the Car

Riding in the Car


We always sat in the backseat—my sister and I—if Daddy drove. Mama sat beside him in the front on the wide bench seat. She always put her purse on the seat between them. The Chevy—it was always a Chevy—was humungous. The Chevys and Buicks and Cadillacs of that era were all baby Hummers, like baby elephants are the same concrete block shape as their Mamas. This one was huge and dirty white and rusted chrome on the outside and blue metal and vinyl padding inside, with vinyl seat covers that heated up to scalding temperatures when left out in the hot Florida sun.

On Sundays, Daddy would come home for dinner (lunch, really) after driving to the dock to check on his boat and leave the Chevy in the driveway to bake while we ate our dinner. Then it was time for the Sunday drive to the beach and down Indian River Drive. My sister and I would climb in the back seat in our shorts and halter tops. We’d sit with our legs raised up off the blistering seat covers and learn forward so our exposed skin wouldn’t touch the fiery seat back.

“Roll down the windows,” Mama’d say, fanning with her newspaper. We’d grit our teeth, press our lips together and lower our eyelids until we were seeing just through our eyelashes. Daddy would back out of the driveway, crank down his window and rest his elbow on the door frame where the hot breeze created by the forward motions of the Chevy crossed the threshold.

“Too much air back there?” he’d ask. My sister and I would look at each other. Which was worse—hot air blowing our hairdos to smithereens or….There was no “or”. It was a given that the answer was “no, Daddy.”