“Let’s Go for a Drive!”

🎵 Windows are down, skip the short cut, 🎵
🎵 Turn off the phone and turn the radio up, 🎵
🎵 On a day like today there’s only one way to go, 🎵
🎵 Let’s take the long way home. 🎵

It’s time to discuss a Christmas tradition—sort of.

The above lyrics for the JJ Heller song “Take the Long Way Home” brought to mind a childhood memory from my early days in California: the custom in the mid ’50s of “taking a Sunday drive.”

Yeah, that’s what they called it, but it wasn’t just reserved for Sundays. It could happen on any summer day that happened to be a scorcher.

Dad would call out the magic phrase and everyone would eagerly pile into the car, slam the doors shut, roll the windows down, and off we would go.

Where? To the freeway, of course, to take in the sights and to cool off as the car accelerated and the wind began to whip through our hair.

You see, air conditioning wasn’t a thing back then. It existed, certainly, but only as a luxury for rich people. Even by 1960, only 20% of homes had AC. And it wasn’t much of a priority in California’s mild climate.

Nowadays the freeway wouldn’t necessarily be ideal for this purpose. Traffic congestion would bring you to a crawl pretty quick. But this was back when the freeway system was new and traffic was sparse. You’ve heard the term “rush hour?” Back then it was a literal hour.

And of course we would angle those little wing vent windows by the front seats to blast air into our sweaty faces.

And then, with the windows down, we’d all sing together the only songs we all knew at that point—Christmas carols!

In July.

It got us some funny looks from time to time if we were cruising through town.

The thing is, kids in the ’50s knew Christmas carols cold. They were taught in school, sung in church, played on the radio, and repeated endlessly every December. They were the closest thing to a shared musical songbook.

Plus, without AC, screens, or playlists, you had to make your own entertainment. Singing was the in-car entertainment system.

From the back seat, my brother and I would always resume our ongoing debate as to whether the little Lord Jesus was asleep in the hay, or on it.

They don’t include those little wing windows in cars anymore—you don’t really need them if you’ve got AC in the car. You don’t roll the windows down with a crank handle, either—there are buttons for that.

And you aren’t going to be flying down the freeway anytime soon with today’s traffic. “Rush hour” has morphed into “from morning coffee to evening news.”

I’ll never forget coming back from the Army in 1972, driving along Highway 101 and experiencing my first traffic jam. Traffic slowly came to a complete stop, which amazed me—that had never happened to me before.

I suppose if you tried it at 2 am you might have some luck, but where’s the fun in that?