Van life, 1976-85

The family vehicle that consumed a boatload of gas and yielded a boatload of memories

Story time.

In 1976, our family welcomed a Plymouth Voyager van. Blue and white, sliding side door. I remember the year because the license plate was GRJ 76, the initials for the kids in the family plus the year. The three of us (at ages 12, 10 and 8 heading into the year) were desperate for a van, though I can’t remember why. Nor why my dad relented. Did we actually convince him it was a good idea?

The van got eight miles to the gallon with a 40-gallon tank. So we were going places … then spending an hour or two refueling. In theory, the van seated 12, but with the two smallest behind the third row in the trunk if we needed, we could have 14 people without even a squeeze. I believe our record was 18. (Of course, only the driver and shotgun would wear seat belts.) It was in the back row of the van, while my Mom drove half our sixth-grade class on a field trip shortly before graduation, that we played the Truth or Dare game where I kissed Lisa Bonet.

Honestly, I think Mom caught us in the rear-view mirror, but she was cool. She’s always been cool — “have all the potato chips you want, here’s a butter-and-sugar sandwich” cool.

The van had a tape deck — which was more than we could say for the car it supplanted, our 1964 Ford Falcon — but two caveats about that. One: The tape player could fast-forward but couldn’t rewind, so that in order to go back to the beginning, you had to eject the cassette, flip it onto the other side and fast forward. If you wanted to rewind to a certain spot, you had eject and flip, eject and flip, eject and flip.

But that’s not all. You couldn’t press the fast-forward button and let go. You had to hold it. For a 45-minute side of a Memorex tape, you were holding that button for … well, let’s say for as long as it would take to fill the gas tank. And hold it while driving, if you weren’t lucky enough to have a passenger.

One time, our family of five was heading up to Carmel. I know it was in 1983, because Synchronicity by the Police had just come out, and I wanted to play it in the car. Wasn’t I cool? My dad obliged, but …