Bringing a little more detail

Underscoring the just slightly upper middle class but sort of rebellious and daring elements of the family trip from 1951: it turns out the car was a new 1950 Chevrolet convertible, lemon yellow no less, 3 speed manual transmission on the column, with a surprisingly weak 90 hp six cylinder engine. This exact same model was owned, in mint condition, by the estate of Steve McQueen and sold for $84,000 at a recent auction. 

It's a thing of beauty.

What a great car to take from Pennsylvania to Los Angeles and back. But definitely with an edge of conspicuous consumption combined with a playboy sort of flair. My grandfather's midlife crisis car, I guess. 

In an example of how television advertising probably played a role in the choice of car and the idea of an epic road trip, Dinah Shore's jingle ran from 1950 to 1963. 




Life is completer. 

Thanks Dinah, and a great touch having the Chevy logo be a blown kiss at the end. She does, indeed, make it sound very inviting. 

There's also an element of post war giddiness and relief. The eternally dissatisfied quandaries of bored white American young men as reflected in Kerouac's On The Road, that sad and ominous foreshadowing of the incredible social and political upheaval of the '60s and beyond, was still six years in the future. This road trip happened securely in that brief window of time after WWII where the United States (for white people anyway) was a haven of the greatest hopes for humanity and justice. Not so much for Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, for example, who were convicted of espionage and sentenced to death in 1951. 

What many music historians think of as the first rock n roll song, Rocket 88, was recorded in 1951. How fitting that it was a love song to a car. 




In another weird turn of events, while my folks were on the road, the US Census Bureau announced it was using the UNIVAC I computer, the first widely available commercial computer, for all of its data analysis. 

Another detail I found out via email interview with my mother: the trip began the day after her graduation from high school. My father was in Ashland Pennsylvania the entire summer, before his junior year at Nebraska, working two jobs in construction and driving an ice cream truck. So from June 8 to July 11, my progenitors endured their separation, especially poignant since they were separated for the entire academic calendar as it was. So, the trip of a lifetime with relatively hip and generous parents in a yellow Chevy convertible was also an imposition and a heartache for my mother.