Remembering the Big White Buick & the 1970s

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Lately, I’ve been remembering the big white Buick and the 1970s when my girls were young. I wish I had a picture of that car. I don’t. But I do remember driving it.

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It was the days of platform shoes and flared-leg denim jeans. Watergate, Elvis, and the Vietnam War. Star Wars and Jaws played in cinemas. A Motorola engineer made the first portable cell phone call in 1973.

Phones were attached to kitchen walls by cords; information required physical encyclopedias or card catalogs, and only a small handful of TV stations existed.

Saturday Night Fever, glittering mirror balls, and disco were popular. Remember the TV shows “Happy Days” and “Laverne & Shirley?” My girls came home from school, grabbed a snack, and sat on the floor to watch reruns on the big, bulky TV set.

We lived in a modest neighborhood of small brick homes (around 1000 square feet) with one-car garages. Young families with young children gravitated toward one another like moths to a flame.

Summers in the 1970s:

We sipped sweet iced tea and exchanged gossip. While the kids played outside, we’d hoot and holler like kids stealing whiskey from their parents’ liquor cabinet.

We fixed peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches for lunch. Handed out paper napkins to kids with peanutbutter-smeared hands.

In the afternoons, we’d perm and frost each other’s hair. We sat around with our hair under plastic caps, hoping we’d come out as beautiful as the woman on the front of the hair product box.

Of course, that never happened. It was always more of a disappointment. Fun that fizzled out quickly once we looked in the mirror.

The kids splashed around in a plastic pool in someone’s yard. They came running through the house with wet feet, clamoring for something to drink. Or yelling that someone hit somebody else.

We young women exchanged recipes from our little recipe boxes. We found casserole recipes in Good Housekeeping magazine, clipped them out, and shared them. 

We swatted flies lured in by the Kool-Aid spills. 

It was a simple time. We watched soap operas, and we talked about who was doing what on which daytime shows.

The kids would always get cranky around mid-afternoon. We’d pick up toys and clean up spilled Kool-Aid. And give a final gaze in the mirror at our new hairdo before we took our children by the hand and walked them home. 

Then those simple summer days would end, and our thoughts would turn to classrooms and registering our kids for school.

We’d go to the dime store to pick up everything on the teacher’s list of necessary school supplies. Crayons and pencils and paper. And maybe a new pair of shoes if the budget allowed and we could pay the balance before school started.

I remember when my youngest child started Kindergarten, and I bawled much of the day. I was 27, and it felt like the end of something. My girls were growing up.

I felt old and somewhat unnecessary. After I dropped them both off, I came home to an empty, quiet house.

Those Were the Days:

I remember once, close to Christmas, I told the girls’ dad that we should do something a little different than usual. We could fill each other’s stockings and pretend that Santa brought them.

I wondered if he’d buy me something like cheap jewelry or a special book he knew I wanted to read.

After the girls went to sleep, I brought out the presents I’d hidden around the house and put them under the tree. I handed him my stocking to fill. And he just stared at it and me, looking dumbfounded. 

I was furious. What in the world was I going to put in my stocking? The girls would wonder why Santa didn’t bring Mom anything.

Back then, stores didn’t stay open all night. So I was in quite a quandary. 

Finally, I grabbed some of his socks and filled my stocking. And the kids were so excited the next morning that they were none the wiser. Nevertheless, disappointment tasted bitter on my tongue.

That was the last time I gave him a special holiday task for fear he’d forget to fulfill it.

As I said, times were simple. Conveniences weren’t as customary. Cell phones were still far off. 

Their dad died in March 2024, and the girls were heartbroken. It seemed he had shrunk, I thought, when I saw photos they took of him for Facebook.

I recall one photo with my oldest grandson Riley, tall as a beanpole, wheeling him down the hall in a wheelchair just to get him out of that room.

My eyes tear up every time I think back on that image. My strong grandson, now an adult, spending his last days with his grandfather.

We were long divorced, but children always link us for life, like a chain that stretches out and over the years but is never severed.

Now I look back on that aggravating Christmas Eve memory fondly, and naturally a bit sadly. He was always that distracted professor with college essays on his mind instead of whatever else was going on in our house.

The White Buick with Red Velvet Seats:

When the girls were still young, we bought a second-hand car from a preacher in town. It was a big white Buick and in great condition. I was so thrilled to have wheels.

It was big as a house and cruised down the road so smoothly it was like riding on air.

You could cram a lot of people in that big car. It carried lots of young girls to evening softball practices and ballgames over the years.

This was back when kids played outside until the neighborhood streetlights flickered on. It was a much gentler time, the 1970s, when my girls were growing up.

And I could be found gliding down the road in my big white Buick, my hair blowing around in the open window as I cruised through town.