the Family Car

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PART OF OUR LIVES

I remember a lot of things about the family car.

I remember the smell.

Vinyl and plastic. There was a very distinct smell inside those cars, especially when they had been sitting in the sun. I can still remember it.

I remember the backward-facing third-row seat in our station wagon, the hump in the middle of the floor, and the folding armrest on the front seat.

I used to sit on that armrest.

There were no seat belts.

On a long trip, my brother and I might be squeezed in somewhere between my parents and their friends, or left to entertain ourselves for what seemed like an eternity.

We had an Etch A Sketch. We made faces at the people in the cars behind us. And when a truck came alongside, we would make the familiar arm motion asking the driver to blow the horn.

Most of them did.

Those big air horns could make your whole world shake.

My father had another way of keeping things under control.

If my brother and I were misbehaving in the back seat, Dad had remarkably good aim from the driver’s seat. He could reach us with a backhand without ever taking his eyes off the road.

He never hurt us. It was a warning shot over the bow.

And when he had to brake hard, his right arm would instinctively come across the passenger seat to keep whoever was sitting beside him from going forward.

The old air bag.

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THE INFAMOUS ROAD TRIP

My favorite family car was our Ford station wagon, with that 3rd rear facing seat.

It seemed enormous to me, with ashtrays everywhere and enough room for everyone and everything we needed for a trip.

One of those trips was from Philadelphia to Miami.

Today, that sounds like a long drive.

To a kid sitting in the back of a family car, it was really long.

But somehow, those are the things I remember.

The boredom. The laughter. My brother. The cars around us. The truckers. The smell of the interior. The endless miles of highway.

They were great times.

I didn’t know it then, but those ordinary moments would become memories.

And I think that’s what made the family car special.

It wasn’t just transportation.

It was where we spent time together.

It took us on vacations, to visit family and to places we had never been. It carried the luggage, the groceries, the beach chairs and everything else a family seemed to need.

It was simply part of our lives.

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THE FAMILY CAR TODAY

The cars have changed considerably since then.

They’re safer, more comfortable and far more sophisticated.

But the experience hasn’t changed as much as we might think.

Families still take road trips.

Kids still get bored.

Parents still hear, “Are we there yet?”

And families still become attached to their cars.

I see that attachment now when I photograph families with their automobiles.

Sometimes it’s a newer car. Sometimes it’s one they’ve owned for years.

And it’s usually pretty obvious that the car means something to them.

Maybe it’s the car they bought when their children were young. Maybe it took them on countless road trips. Maybe it’s something they worked hard to own.

Or maybe they simply love it.

Whatever the reason, when a family wants a photograph with their automobile, I don’t think they’re really asking me to photograph a car.

They’re asking me to photograph a part of their family.

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WHAT MAKES A CAR MATTER

Maybe that’s why some cars stay with us.

Not because they were the fastest.

Not because they were the most expensive.

And not because they were destined to become collector cars.

They matter because of what happened inside them.

The people who sat beside us.

The places they took us.

The miles we traveled.

The life we were living while we were getting somewhere else.

I think that’s why, after all these years, I still remember our old Ford Wagon.

It wasn’t a special car.

It was our car.

Ray Baldino