I didn't get my first car until a couple of months before my wife and I were married in June of '68. It was an MGBGT (a hardtop MG), a neat little two seat sports car. We were living in New Jersey at the time. I was still in the army, stationed at Fort Monmouth.
The sports car seemed like a good idea at the time, but I eventually came to the realization that it wasn't a practical choice. This realization struck me somewhere between exit 10 and 12 on the New Jersey Turnpike. It hit home when I looked over at one of the many trucks that were passing me and noticed that it's wheel was taller than my car. I was driving along at 70 miles an hour in a car where my ass was about a foot off the asphalt. My legs stretched out under the car's engine. I wasn't wearing a seatbelt (nobody did back then). In reality my car was a coffin on wheels.
On top of that I was usually driving back to Baltimore after working a 12 hour shift. I would usually find myself dozing off in the vicinity of the Delaware Memorial Bridge. I still don't know to this day how I made it home some of those nights.
I often try to think if it was my future wife's father who talked me into purchasing that little car. We didn't see eye to eye on most things. He didn't think I should be dating his daughter, and I thought I should. He was big and Italian (I swore he was in the mafia) and never smiled, save for the time I told him I was going to Vietnam, then a large grin split his face.
Anyhow, I made it through a couple of years with that car. Turns out it was pretty dependable. It really didn't start acting up until a day or two after the warranty ran out.
Before that, when I was in high school, I had five ways of getting around: borrowing my father's '58 Chevy Wagon, catching a ride with a friend, walking, thumbing a ride, or taking the bus.
I'll tell you truthfully that the last three options were worst case scenarios. Unforunately, more often than not, I ended up using one of those modes of transportation.
Until my lastyear in high school, when my brother and I were lucky enough to acquire a friend who had a Volkswagon Beetle, I was very much at the mercy of the public transportation system or the general public.
I know of grandfathers who would tell their grandchildren tales of walking miles to school in the most horrendous weather conditions. That wasn't me. Oh I walked to school, and home from school, many days (my high school was two and a half miles away). But only under favorable weather conditions. If the weather was lousy, I'd either thumb or take the bus.
Hitching a ride was easy going to school. I'd simply walk across the street by my house and stick my thumb out. Usually within five minutes I had a ride. I should add that thumbing a ride in the '60s was an accepted practice. Lots of kids did it without incident. In fact the only incident I'm aware of was when a buddy of mine was touched on the leg by an older male driver. My friend told me that he proceeded to punch the guy in the head, then jumped out of the still moving vehicle. My pal was alright, and he never ran into that man again.
Hitching a ride from school was harder because of the competition. On most of the traffic lights surrounding the school you'd find as many as twenty guys angling for a ride. If someone pulled over, at one of those lights, it was much like the papparazzi and Britney Spears. The vehicle would be swarmed with bodies all grabbing for the door handle, or even the hood or the trunk.
I would often walk a block or two up the road to a less congested intersection. Or sometimes, after walking those two blocks, I'd just say the hell with it and keep walking.
The worst part about walking home was carrying all those books. We didn't have backpacks then. Some kids had them, but they'd get beat up for it. Backpacks, or book bags, were, for a reason I can't explain, taboo at our school. So, if one liked an unbruised face, they would keep their notebook, and classroom books under their arm. The only saving grace we had was a large rubber strap with hooks on each end. The strap secured the books together until it either stretched out until it was about six feet long or wore out and snapped at an always inappropriate time.
For me, the public bus was the last resort for two reasons. One, it was always packed with kids. Where all the kids came from I'll never know since our stop was the first in front of the school. The driver, who I suspect was sadistic, would never close the doors on a potential fare. The problem was when you yanked the cord for your stop, you usually couldn't negotiate the crowds to get off. The driver, always impatient, would only wait a few seconds before he shut the doors and took off. I remember once, by the time I exited the bus, I didn't even know where I was. Two, I had usually spent my quarter for the bus on snacks in the cafeteria. Thereby leving me penniless and walking.
Thank God for Dave Panuska and his Volkswagon Beetle.