Temptation's Window

This is a picture of the rear passenger side window of a 1948 Plymouth, much like the car my dad purchase used from my mother's cousin back when I was very young.  Obviously they don't make windows like this in cars like this any more.  Obviously they don't make cars like this any more.  

I think I may have had something to do with that.

One summer when I was about five or six, we set off on a family trip from Detroit to visit my dad's relatives in central Pennsylvania.  In those days it was a good ten to twelve hour trip, even using the Ohio and Pennsylvania Turnpikes.  But oh what an adventure it was.  And oh, how bored two little boys can get in the backseat of a car with no air conditioning (few cars had it then in 1956).  So we would get into mischief to be sure.

This is where I think I had something to do with Detroit stopping making rear windows that opened like vents as in this picture.

Before we left Detroit, my parents took my brother and I to Montgomery Wards to buy new summer tennis shoes.  They were's high tops like I wanted.  All the boys were wearing them.  But my parents thought they would be too hot for summer.  So they got low cut gym shoes...and were told we would like them.  

I didn't.

This is where the window meets the shoes.

On the turnpike where there was no stopping allowed except in case of emergency, my dad was cruising along, pushing the speed limit as he always did, and not paying much attention to us in the back seat.  I remember opening the window, knowing that would be okay.  It was getting hot.  Open windows were okay.  But what I did next was not.

You guessed it, I am sure.  I shoved my new gym shoes through the window and watched them fly out onto the highway.  It was quite a site.  Those shoes flew until the big truck behind us ran over them.  My mother caught sight of the shoes out her rearview mirror.  There was shouting and the car swerved slightly as my dad grabbed my arm and then quickly let go.  But there was no going back.  The shoes had flown the coupe (spelling intentional) and were gone forever.

I couldn't sit comfortably for several hours...maybe a day.

Nope, they don't make cars like that any more...not with those kind of windows.  I kinda think I had something to do with that.  When you're five years old, you just don't know your power.

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