The Last Innocent Age...How many people can you cram in a Beetle...

When I was a kid my mom drove a VW Beetle. Not the new version...it was a 1968 model. It was the real Beetle with a rear mounted, air-cooled engine and the trunk in the front. They bought it new in 1968 and drove it until probably 1975. It was a standard run-of-the-mill VW...no air conditioning, so you opened the wing windows and pointed them out so they acted like air scoops. It had the trunk up front and a storage area behind the back seat that we called the "well". Once or twice a year my mom would be backing out of my grandmothers steep driveway and bottom-out and drive one of the tailpipes into the muffler. That was a trademark issue with Beetles. The thing was great in the snow because the engine was right over the rear wheels. It was white and I think it had a black interior if I remember correctly.
What was really amazing about the Beetle was how much we could cram into the thing. We had discovered Elk Neck State Park on the Chesapeake Bay when I was about 8 years old. You could get in for $2 a carload and swim all day. So we would load the car up and head down Route 40 into Maryland. As best as I remember, here is a list of who and what would make the trek to the Bay...
My mom drove...obviously. I rode in the front seat because I suffer from intolerable carsickness (still do to this day) Tommy Riccio usually sat on the front seat with me, sometimes we'd jam someone in the tunnel where our feet went on the passenger side. Now these were bucket seats mind you...not a bench. Wedged in the middle leaving enough room for the shifter, was usually Donna Riccio or Sheryl Messick. In the back seat would be Kevin Messick, Monica Riccio, Sheila Messick, My little sister Beth who was a baby at the time (no car seat) and my brother Tommy would be hidden in "The Well"  like a contortionist, along with a playpen for Beth, a cooler for food, and assorted bags for changes of clothes.
We'd load up towels, suntan lotion, and cheap plastic diving masks and snorkels and be off to the beach for the day. If anything had every happened to that car on the way down or back, they never would have untangles the bodies. We would have had to been buried together in a piano crate. Mrs. Riccio used to crack up laughing at us when we'd get home at night because she said it was like watching a clown car at the circus...people just kept getting out of the thing for about 12 minutes. That's not an exaggeration...we usually jammed eight people into a car meant for four. It was hot and uncomfortable and rough riding but we were going to the bay for the day and it was great fun. The water was murky, the crabs would nip at your feet sometimes. But we had a blast.
My friends and I have been reminiscing behind the scenes since I started writing this series. We have unanimously decided that we all wish life was like it was back then. I wish my daughter could know the happiness of riding to the bay with every kid on the block and not one of them was a stranger. I'm all about child safety, but it does come at the expense of funny stories like the number of people we'd get into that little car.  Mrs. Messick used to joke that as we drove past her house on the way to Maryland, she saw flesh pressed against every window in the car. We have all remarked how well we really, truly, knew each other on that street. How we really did love each other like a big family. How we really still do...
We all wish our own kids could grow up in a world where it was okay to have that sort of lifelong friendship with people. People don't really love each other like that anymore. We fought...of course we did. There were disputes on the block and parents who would sometimes stop speaking to each other for a while. But almost invariably, enough time went by, and spring would return, and we'd be outside and they'd see each other and just start talking again like nothing happened...like it suddenly dawned on them how trivial the argument was compared to how much we all shared and how deeply we loved each other.
I miss that the most...