Going for a drive

When I was a kid one thing our family did quite a bit was go for a drive. We were not driving to anywhere. Usually we would not even get out of the car. We were just going for a drive.

The 1970s and 80s I guess were the last gasp of the "driving as an end in itself" hobby. When you think about it, it makes sense. Cars took off as something that everyday people owned in the 1950s and 1960s, and at that time people did of course, go driving as a fun activity. The kids from that time were my dad and his generation, so they continued the practice, to a lesser degree, in their adulthood. Plus in my family's case, both my grandfather and my father worked in the auto parts industry, so they were into cars and driving anyway.

My dad like his dad was "a Ford man". In Australia in the 1970s you were either a Ford man or a Holden man. My dad like his dad drove a large Ford sedan, which he was entitled to lease or buy courtesy of his employer. These were nice cars, but being the 1970s they were not a patch on cars today. They didn't have retractable seat belts or air-conditioning. As kids we would get car sick in the back, and there was no DVD system to distract us, no sirree Bob! (Mine was a deprived childhood, obviously). But they were big, and on long trips up to New South Wales or Queensland there was enough room in the back for me and my sister to curl up and sleep, moderately comfortably, against the armrests or leaning on our pillows against the doors.

My dad always took care of his cars. I don't recall ever eating or drinking in one, though we must have been allowed to on occasion I suppose. He would get mad at us for wiping condensation off the windows, or for touching the window glass at all.  Dad washed the car regularly, and did the weekly oil and water checks, and kept the tyres inflated. So the car was always ready for a drive.

The best car I remember was a blue Ford Fairlane with leather seats and a white roof. I think that one had air conditioning. Which you'd think was a huge improvement but in fact often meant me and my sister sweltering in the back and not allowed to wind down our windows because the air conditioning had just been turned on and would kick in "in a couple of minutes".

But even in a nice car, going for a drive is not something that kids usually choose to do with their weekends. When Dad would announce we were going for a drive, my sister and I would groan and moan but there was no getting out of it so we'd get in the car and off we'd go.

Strangely I don't remember a lot about these drives. I remember the experience of being in the back seat of the car: playing games (or fighting) with my sister, feeling car sick, the prickle of the seat fabric against my bare legs (or the stickiness of the seat leather in the later years), the seat belt strap chafing my neck, the burning hot metal belt buckle on a summer day. I remember tinder-dry farmland and winding roads, and feeling thirsty.

The only place I loved going for a drive was the Dandenongs. I loved the tall trees, the filtered light, the quiet, and the green ferns. I didn't even mind that we never actually stopped the car and got out and enjoyed the forest up close. I just loved driving through it.

dmscvan/Flickr CC

I also loved driving on the freeway, driving at night and driving in the rain. I loved the feeling of snuggling against the car door, gazing out the window at the dusk, stars or streaming rain, and listening to my parents talking quietly in the front.


Last Friday after work I picked up my kids from Mum's house but we stayed there a bit later than usual because it was raining hard, and I prefer not to drive in pelting rain if I have a choice. When I told the kids we were waiting for the rain to ease off, M was disappointed. "But I love driving in the rain," she said. "It's so cosy!"

We don't "go for a drive" these days, but we do drive a fair bit, and I do love driving. I still like driving on freeways and driving at night. So my kids will have their own "driving memories" similar to mine, I guess. But without the car sickness, sweltering heat, or the elbow burn incurred from a hot metal belt buckle in summer.

How things have changed

I tell you it's uncanny. A couple of months ago I was thinking about music over the years and about how songs have changed since the 80s. I mused on two things: one is how no one does the "fade out" anymore. Until quite recently all pop songs always ended in a fade out, to the point where it was just the standard way to end a song. That no longer is the case. The second thing was how singers used to do their own "special effects" such as repeats and echos - e.g, Rod Stewart in Young Turks towards the end going "ti-ti-time is on your side, side side side" (etc). It's pretty funny when you hear it in an old song now, but back then it was, again, just standard.

Then a few weeks ago I noticed Slate did a whole article on the demise of the fade-out in pop music, and BAM, I can't talk about this now.

Slate has a way of capturing what we used to call the zeitgeist: things you were thinking or almost thinking yourself which means probably everyone was thinking them. Right there now are articles about how the internet has made us constantly "obsessed" with things ("cultural manias"), how popular Taylor Swift is, and how we should not attempt to bring back extinct species (in case you missed it, some guy wants to bring back dinosaurs, as if Jurassic Park never happened).

Anyhoo, then in the last few days I've been playing with a post in my head about listing all the ways that life is different now compared to when I was a child... Well, I know that's not hugely original. But still, now I see Neil deGrasse Tyson has just done the same thing. What's more, the first thing in his list is about toothpaste tubes, which was one of mine.  So therefore, before I have to delete all my draft posts and come up with something new (of which I have nothing), I'm just going to NOT read any more of Neil's list and I'm going to go ahead with my list as it is.

Things that have changed since I was a child

H is for Home/Flickr CC

Toothpaste tubes were made of metal, and would develop very sharp points where you squeezed them, which could give you a nasty scratch. They were also messy, because they had screw-cap lids which also tended to roll lazily off the benchtop and onto the floor while you cleaned your teeth.

Telephones had three sounds that don't exist anymore. The lovely soft brrrrr made by the rotary dial, which I loved, the lovely soft brrrr-brrrr made by the telephone ringing at the other end while you waited for the other side to pick up, and the horrible, jangly, nerve-wrackingly loud ring at your end when someone called. From the time I was little until the fairly recent advent of soft-tone phones, I HATED the sound of the telephone ringing. Remember that tiny little sound it made right before it started ringing, almost as if it was taking a breath before screeching? Like nails on a blackboard.

Blackboards.

Classroom work-sheets from mimeograph machines (mmm, that lovely purple smell...) *

Teachers thought schoolyard bullying was an inevitable part of childhood and didn't do much about it.

Corporal punishment in schools - remember that? We didn't have "the strap" from my parents' days, but boys got a slap with a wooden ruler on the back of the legs, and girls on their open palm. Or girls were told to "touch your toes" and then a slap was delivered to the bottom. Creepy.  I still remember a teacher on the first day of class showing us a wooden ruler with black marks on the back which she said were made by "boys' legs".

More things were made of wood. Rulers, strawberry crates, even some kids' pencil cases (thanks Mum for reminding me of that one). Strawberries were only available once a year.

Our parents and teachers sharpened our pencils with a knife.

We ate less. I'm pretty sure I passed most of my childhood in a state of mild hunger, being fed only with three square meals and two small snacks daily; my poor deprived childhood....

Takeout every Saturday. Fish and chips, occasionally hamburgers, Chinese dim sims with rice and soy sauce, or my favourite, Kentucky Fried Chicken (that's KFC to you, kids).  We rarely ate McDonald's, but when we did, I always had the box of fried chicken. No nuggets in those days.

In school I learned that brontosauruses were real, dinosaurs were covered in scales, and there was this ridiculous new theory that a meteor might have wiped them out. As if!  We also learned that the global temperature was cooling and we were headed for another ice age.

Expensive, special-treat colouring books made of white paper instead of the normal scratchy brown paper. Expensive, special-treat comic books made of white paper with the occasional coloured page in them, when Dad shelled out for the 75c one.

Two-colour printing. Common in children's books, flyers, and posters. This was still a thing, just, into the early nineties, when in my early twenties I worked briefly for a university printing and publishing office.  People would bring in their floppy discs, let us know if the work was formatted or not, and we would book in some desktop publishing followed by some thrifty two-colour printing.

Book pages that had visible wood shavings in them.

I remember when toast-slice bread became available. It was so decadent! A sensible friend eschewed toast-slice bread on the basis that you will always eat two slices of bread so with toast-slice bread you are eating too much bread - thus giving me a lesson in moderation which I remembered but alas, have rarely practiced.

No one I knew got up before 7.00 am. That left ample time for breakfast and the work commute.

If you were lucky enough to have a trampoline or a friend with a trampoline, then you were unlucky enough to pinch the skin of your palm in between the springs around the edge. OUCH!

There was hardly any air-conditioning. Summers were spent sweltering in unbearable heat and bathed in a constant film of sweat. Car rides were torture. School days spent in boiling hot portable class rooms, where the only air came from louvered windows right up near the ceiling that the teacher had to open with a two-metre pole.

We drank less water I suppose, because we didn't carry water bottles around. Or we drank hot water out of drinking taps. Make no mistake, I don't miss this. When I was a kid I used to wish you could buy water in a can (soft drinks were my only reference for purchased drinks).

Homemade clothes. My mother made many of our clothes, even doing a Knitwit course and making us t-shirts and sweatshirts.  So when I grew up I made myself skirts, dresses and once even a pair of cuffed trousers. Then suddenly, at some point in the 1990s, it became more expensive to make clothes than buy them.

What else has changed in your lifetime?

* As Andrew points out in the comments, I might be thinking of a roneo/spirit duplicator (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_duplicator) which I have for years thought of as a mimeograph (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimeograph) - similar, but different.

Nude lipstick

Nude shades are back in makeup and in particular lipstick.

Cosmetic ads are featuring lips like this:

marin / FreeDigitialPhotos.net

This is a shade I used to wear sometimes in my twenties. Cue nostalgia shot: me swanning around Santorini, wearing pale creamy lipstick, oversized sunnies, black platform sandals and a black swing dress. I thought I looked pretty hot.

The one I used to wear was a Gerlain Kiss Kiss (my first expensive lipstick) in a pale, pale fawn shade. I bought a second one when it ran out, and then the shade was discontinued and fashion moved on.

So recently I had a sudden urge to try a nude lipstick. Being older and poorer, I bypassed my old favourite makup retailers Gerlain and Estee Lauder, and headed for the supermarket.

I picked up this, which I thought would probably suit most people, including me.

WRONG! It does not suit me at all. I think of my skin as fairly pale, but it is not as pale as it was, these days. Wearing this lipstick makes my skin look dark, wrinkly and blotchy.

I guess I'm not twenty-five anymore.

But all is not lost.  I have found that if I wear this lipstick and then apply a red balm on top, I get a lovely shimmery pinky-caramel shade which is much nicer.

It also makes a good cream eye shadow.

Sunday Selections #157

It's time for Sunday Selections!
Sunday Selections is a weekly meme hosted by River at Drifting Through Life. 

The rules are very simple:-

1. post photos of your choice, old or new, under the Sunday Selections title

2. link back to River somewhere in your post

3. leave a comment on River's post and visit some of the others who have posted and commented: for example:

    Elephant's Child

    Andrew at High Riser

    Gillie at Random Thoughts From Abroad

    

This week it's random again.

Apologies if I've posted a couple of these before; I can't remember whether that was here, or on Instagram / Twitter / Facebook. Anyway it's still 35 degrees in my house and I'm too hot and weary to check.


This is how my daughter insists on wearing a jacket. And hair over her eyes too. So frustrating. I'll be telling her to stand up straight next.

     

Tia

A rainy night in the city back in winter. How long ago that seems now.

                               

Zener cards I made for M.

My little niece's gorgeous chubby foot

These lovely sea creatures were painted by the girls when they were in daycare and they've been blu-tacked to the bathroom wall since then. I have just taken them down, in case visiting little friends might tease over them - and I only felt a tiny bit sad for a short while.

Something tells me the kids found the Nutella.

A gadget from A's spy kit: a tiny receptacle for secret messages.

What message did she write for me?

Meanwhile, things are quiet at M's hamburger restaurant.












Lastly:

While the last few governments have been racing to the bottom on treatment of asylum seekers, church signs like this one are a welcome sight.

This is St Paul's Cathedral on Flinders Road. I took this just before Christmas, but the banner is still there (and will be for some time, I think). You can read about it here.

I'm not a religious believer at all, but I do like it when churches focus on humanity and looking after people instead of moralistic guff.

The Dean said: “I am convinced that future generations of Australians will judge this policy for what it is: inhumane to those seeking our protection, and demeaning to Australia as a nation. These actions will not only be judged by our children and grandchildren but by God himself. Christ's judgement will be based on a simple measure: 'What you have done to the least of these my brothers and sisters, you have done to me' (St Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 25 verse 40).”   (Link)

I think we're done here

Hard garbage week this week. So we spent a good part of today clearing out EVERYTHING old and broken from our garage.

Our girls are nearly 8. I'm nearly 44 and Y is a few years older. So we figured it's probably about time we got rid of The Baby Things.

Over the years I have actually got rid of a lot of Baby Things. Clothes, sleeping bags, various toys and other small accoutrements have been gradually handed down or given away, in the beginning reluctantly and with sadness, and later, to my surprise, with something more like relief.

It's both sad and wonderful to see your babies grow up. I was so emotional, for so long, at either side of my babies' birth, and for a good three years I parted with nothing. I didn't want my children to stay babies (GOD no) but I could quite happily stand in the garage and press my face to an old sleep suit and pick up just a trace of that glorious, sweet baby scent - one distinct scent for each baby - and it made my heart jump and sing every time.

But eventually those scents faded and went, and our garage piled up with stuff we would never use again, had no one to hand down to, and could not sell. I did always intend to sell our baby stuff, but somehow I never got round to it. I booked a stall once at a baby market - but I was sick and couldn't go. I planned a trip once, to a second-hand baby gear shop - but I was too busy and couldn't go. I decided to donate our twin pram to the Multiples Club we belonged to - but somehow I forgot to do that.

I did give away a lot of things, mindful of how much had been given to us. Clothes were always passed on to my cousin for her daughter, one year younger than ours.  Of our actual baby gear though, little was shed, for one reason or another. Some went to my sister when she had her baby, but by that stage most of our stuff was pretty old and new stuff was so cheap.  By this point, we wouldn't be able to sell anything.

So this year, nearly eight years after our babies were born, the last of it has finally gone.

Well, not yet gone, but sitting on our nature strip awaiting the annual hard garbage collection.

How long did it take you to get rid of The Baby Stuff? Was it difficult?