Vintage Cars at Carlingford  Public School.

Les Pendlebury

18th November 2009.

Some months ago I had a call from a teacher at the school where our granddaughter attends, she said that a friend of her son's told her I had a shed full of old cars, and as the school was doing a project on transport, would I be available to bring a car up to show the children the difference in today's cars. I said "Yes I do have a shed full of old cars, the shed holds two cars so it is full"

On the arranged day for the visit, we had that dreadful dust storm, thankfully, they called the display off as they had to keep the children inside out of the dust storm, so it was arranged for a day after the school holidays in November, the day being 18th November 2009.

On the day, I took both the 1942 Hudson Two Door Brougham and the 1965 Rambler Classic up to the school, In all, there were about 4 groups of children come down to see the cars.  I had to give a talk on how things have changed over the years.  The thing I think that was of special interest to them was, that back in those days we did not have SEAT BELTS.I told them how when our children were babies we just had a cane basket with the baby inside and we just sat that on the back seat unrestrained.

I told them we did not have air conditioning, C.D. players, power windows, remote controls to open the doors, I told them how the bumper bars and hub caps were all steel and not plastic like modern cars, how Mum & Dad's present cars will never be restorable because of the plastic,I showed them how the bonnet on the '42 opens from the rear, unlike most cars which open from the front, how we had flipper windows and vents on the scuttle for fresh air, how we had to wind the windows up manually, and not power operated like Mum & dad's, how I can't just go to my local tyre dealer and buy tyres, how we had to use hand signals as we did not have blinkers. By all accounts from what I have heard from the teachers, the children really enjoyed the talk, the teachers told me they had learnt a lot as well, so the talk was well worth the effort.

The children were then asked by the teachers if they had any questions, and yes there were plenty, mainly on how fast do the cars go, do other drivers get cranky because we are so slow, what petrol we use, how do we keep them clean etc etc.

After the talk the teacher from the kindergarten class (5 year old children) came back and handed me 15 drawings and little snippets the children had written for me..

I think that this sort of thing should be done more often to let the children know the changes made and what we had to put up with in our days.

Drawings from the kids at Carlingford after Les's visit.