DRIVER'S SIDE DIATRIBE
By Al Vinikour     
There are a lot of things I miss having in cars. Among them are high-performance V8s with multiple carburetion, glass- or steel- packed mufflers, four-speed manual transmissions and solid-lifter cams. But one thing I think I miss more than all those other things are vent windows.

Vent windows were really neat. In the ‘50s and early-‘60s, a few weeks after the disappearance of the dinosaurs, there weren’t many vehicles with air conditioning. A few had a huge, ugly mechanism resembling a home window unit that hung below the instrument panel but that was about as worthless as an ex-wife.

The alternative was to open the windows. However, whether it was 114-degrees or -114-degrees, somebody in the car would bellyache about it either being too windy, too cold, their hair was blowing around, etc. Meantime, you, as the driver, were gasping for air like a small mouth bass flopping around on a pier.

But there was some salvation. You could always pry open the vent window and even if it didn’t let in as much air as you would have preferred the whooshing noise alone was enough to soothe the savage beast. It was a compromise that other passengers in the vehicle seemed to accept.

There were other reasons vent windows were so functional. Since a lot of people smoked back then it was a way to suck some of the smoke out of the car interior and likely prolong second-hand smoke emphysema for decades. At the same time you could flick ashes out the vent window, seldom having them blow back on the back seat occupants. This didn’t always work of course because it wasn’t uncommon to see children wearing clothing that had burn holes in them like the work clothing of a steel worker at an open hearth at U. S. Steel’s South Works…or back seat passengers emerging from the car looking like they had just swept a chimney.

Let’s not forget another vital use of window vents. My buddy’s Uncle Mac, a real Detroit clown liked to hang his used handkerchief out the vent, mostly to get rid of you know what and to dry the damn thing out. Yuk!

It was also a great way to dispose of gum and candy wrappers, paper that was used to wrap hamburgers from the drive-in or any kind of refuse that was cluttering up your car. Greenies, tree huggers and other environmentalists hadn’t emerged yet so it was an everyday occurrence for roadsides to look like a giant “to-go” restaurant. Styrofoam and cardboard containers were fairly rare back then and McDonalds hadn’t infested the land like pimples on a 14-year-old.

But for a teenage driver of that era there were few things slicker-looking than having all the windows open in a vehicle (especially if it were a two-door hardtop) and having the vent open at about a 45-degree angle, and then gripping the vent-window frame like it were a machete. This didn’t work well, of course, if you were smoking a cigarette at the time, as many of us “cats” were, but that was only a few-minute “recess” from clutching the frame.

Yeah…grabbing hold of the vent frame with your left hand and letting your right hand hang over the steering wheel at the wrist was about as neat as one could get. Vent windows even became so important to a door that a lot of manufacturers added them to their array of power accessories.

Then one day, just like the bubbling crude that erupted in front of Jed Clampett, vehicles started showing up with a solid piece of stylized glass instead of having a door window and a vent in the same space. As I recall, it began with coupes and eventually worked its way into sedans and station wagons. If nothing else it made disposing of lit cigarettes more difficult and sitting in the back seat during this process a lot more dangerous. I shudder to think of the poor occupants of a rear seat who were burned to a crisp because the driver had no vent to toss out a lit smoke. Just tragic!

Just as there are millions who never knew the joys of watching the Kate Smith Variety Hour and guffawing to the antics of Elmer the Elephant, so, to, have several generations missed out on one of the simplest, yet truly great devices in automotive history…the lowly vent window.