Our first new car

Speaking of family cars, one of ours that I remember well was a 1969 Plymouth Fury III. Dad bought it "brand new" from the Plymouth-Chrysler-Dodge dealer in some far off town like Waynesville or Licking. Dad thought the local guy was too high and as a result decided to do his car dealing out of town. As I recall it had a screaming 383 cubic inch V8 unencumbered by catalytic converters and future smog control devices and could go from 0-60 in about 3 seconds when Dad was driving it. Dad rarely drove over the speed limit unless he was passing someone on crooked old highway 63N (looking back I think Dad's in the 1960's and '70's used passing cars on the highway as an excuse to stomp on the gas pedal of the family car--perhaps their only chance to run the snot out of a car like they probably did before they got married), but he could get our family car to just over the legal limit when he needed to in what had to be at or very close to the state record. I think Dad called it, "blowing the soot out of the engine", something you apparently had to do every now and then if you wanted your car to run right.

~Mom around that time

Cars back then didn't come with a cruise control but our Mom performed the aftermarket equivelent by saying things like, "Don slow down a little bit" and "Don, you'd better slow down." I don't recall Mom ever telling Dad to speed up, but maybe she did when we weren't around.
The other thing I remember about that car aside from the white vinyl top, was the massive size of the trunk. Dad never left a square inch of storage space go to waste in the trunk of any vehicle we ever had and he and Mom were able to get everything in that trunk we needed for a 2 week long camping trip in the Rocky Mountains with enough room left over for a small mule and 3 or 4 circus midgets if need be. Had we needed to, I suppose we could have left the huge Sears & Roebuck family sized cabin tent at home and just slept in the trunk of the car, but that wouldn't have been as fun.

It was the first car we'd ever owned with seat belts and Mom made us wear them when we were going on long trips; trips like the ones we used to take to California, Missouri to visit our grandparents or to St. Louis to visit our friends the Sperrys. We weren't required to wear them around town most of the time, I guess because the statistic that most accidents happen within 18 miles of home hadn't came out yet and we all just figured most accidents happened on highways like 63 and 50.

~My brothers & I with our cousin Dee-a trip we would have made in our Plymouth

The first nick on the car was installed by my friend Jim Ballenger one summer afternoon when he decided that shooting an arrow from my bow straight up in the air sounded like a good idea. It was until it came screaming down from the sky and landed directly on top the vinyl roof of our new Plymouth. Unfortunately for Jim (and me), Dad was standing about 12 feet away in the garage when the arrow whacked the top of the car. Jim would have probably gotten off easier if he'd have just gone home and set his house on fire. The lesson we learned that day was, don't do stupid stuff in front of your parents or your friend's parents: save it for when no one over 12 is around.

~Dad, well before the flaming arrow incident of 1971