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A potpourri of stories about various family members or events
Rolling over (the odometer)
Have you noticed that people make a big deal out of “big” birthdays like turning 13, 20, 30, 40, 50, and so on (and sometimes 18 or 21). One reason these x0 ages are celebrated is that it seems like something significant since the ten’s digit is rolling forward by 1, which happens only once a decade. That is fairly significant since most people have only one or two handfuls of decades of living on this earth. Today, one of my grandchildren (Adalyn) just turned 10. For her, it was significant since she now has two digits in her age, and it will be that way for at most 90 years. So is it reasonable to celebrate these birthdays more? Sure, why not? Should we be concerned about them and celebrate them with black balloons? I think not.
For cars, we measure their age either in chronological age or in miles, as read from an odometer. In the 1930s, it was very unusual to reach 100,000 miles. Typically, they averaged 50K-90K miles and 6.75 years. (See cascadecollision.com.) However, in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, cars were more typically able to reach over 100,000. However, the odometers of that age only made it to 99,999.9, and then they rolled into all zeros. Nowadays, odometers don’t have this issue since they added an extra digit on the left. This is good since it is not uncommon for cars today to readily reach into 200K and beyond.
My family had a white Studebaker station wagon for a number of years, but sometime in the mid-1960s, we purchased an International Harvester Travelall, also white. I guess that it was about 1966, but not sure (and I need an older sibling to give some feedback). It was a truck-based station wagon, and they were produced from 1953 to 1975. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Harvester_Travelall. I recall that Dad often took advantage of this feature of being a truck since, for in early years, gas stations sometimes offered (and advertised it with a sign) a truck discount of a penny or two per gallon. (This was significant when the price was 19-29 cents per gallon.)
Our International Travalall
We used our Travelall for a lot of things: commuting to work, picking and delivering sweet corn, fishing and hunting trips, camping trips, travel trips out west and east, and more. (Later, I even used it to get into St. Cloud occasionally when there was no other choice.) So we put many miles on this truck. On our trip out east in 1969, we went into Canada to Ottawa in the middle of the night and on to Quebec to visit the Expo 67 (World’s fair after its opening), then down to NY, on to Burlington, VT where Dad had a week-long biology meeting and then to MA, MD (to see mom’s brother) and then DC and then home.
THE event occurred as we were driving through Boston on a busy highway. We could see it was coming, particularly Dad could most easily. All of a sudden, he pulled over onto the shoulder and took the following photo:
On shoulder on Boston highway: 99999.9
Then he drove a little further and took this one:
Now 00000.0
We had our odometer roll over on this trip. I am not certain, but I think we were on our way to the Boston airport to pick up Mom, who had flown home to attend her father’s funeral.
I bought a 1995 Honda Accord in 1998, and I recall when it turned from 99999 to 100000. I sold it in 2015 with about 153K. I think it will be a while before my current 2015 Honda Accord will get to 100K.
Published 2021-01-14. Revised 2025-06-08.
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