Kids in Cars

     Kids in cars seem to make the news more and more these days, especially during the sweltering summers. Children are left in hot cars while parents go shopping, or run errands, or go to work, or forget all about them – and the children are dying or suffering other dire consequences and parents are prosecuted in the courts and persecuted in the media.

Eric, Clark, Den 1960

     Back in the 60's when my brothers and I were young, we were left in the car often while my parents shopped! I remember it mostly was in the early evening, after Dad had worked all day and we had eaten dinner and cleaned up – Mom and Dad might decide to drive to Sears, about a half-hour drive away at the Southgate Plaza – to pick up some things they probably had talked about over dinner. We were too young for the three of us kids to be home alone for the length of time it would take to get to Sears, shop and drive home again. And that might have raised some eyebrows at the time. So that meant taking us with them. But how convenient to not have to get us out of the car, go through the parking lot and then the store and back into the car again – wouldn't it be so much faster for just the two of them to leave us in the car, go in, hurry with the shopping, and then get back to us kids?

     It was not unheard of back then to do this. And again, the temperatures of the early evening in Western New York were not killers; and Mom and Dad were not working 8 hour shifts with us out in the car – just running into the store and out again.

     They did not leave the windows cracked; nor were the doors unlocked. The Folks did not want anyone getting in to harm us, nor did they want any of us getting out. But I think their biggest most realistic fear at the time was the fact that the three of us did not really get along that well – and we were three smushed kids in the back seat told to behave while they were gone! Actually, I was the only problem in this scenario – I felt I was too old to be left in the car like that, and being the bossy older sister with two younger brothers just being normal boys – well, yeah it was me.

     But we managed, however, in spite of all that could happen – to not have anything terrible happen to us. Of course, if my Folks were raising us in today's world, they would not consider leaving any or all of us in the car for any length of time, and in today's world, I don't think anyone shopping at the Southgate Plaza would get away with leaving kids in the car like that.

     There is one incident I can remember from when the three of us were in the car at the Sears parking lot one evening. Being the early sixties, and with us growing up out in the suburbs – we had never seen in person, an African American! African Americans were in the news since the Civil Rights movement was well underway in those years, and African Americans were in our textbooks at school. Well, we were in the car and chatting. And then we noticed a couple who were getting out of a nearby car that had just parked. They were African American! I burned the image into my brain – the first time I saw African Americans!

My brothers and I commented about the couple. And then Eric began to roll down the window! He was going to ask them if a few questions!

     I managed to get the window rolled back up before they heard him. And the couple walked on by, walked into Sears, and did not notice, I don't think, the three kids staring at them from another car in the parking lot.

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