Somebody dug up a collection of archival photos from the 1950s showing how families used to pile into the car and just go. MSN put the whole set together and I'll tell you what, it's worth a look if you've ever spent ten hours in a truck with your family.

The photos show families loading up the station wagon, kids piled in the back, everybody dressed in the style of the era. Cars with big round fenders and chrome bumpers, the kind of vehicles that make you think of a simpler time on the road.

I think about my own childhood when I see stuff like this, and I want to be clear, this is my memory, not something drawn from those photos. When I was growing up, we didn't take vacations to theme parks or resorts. Dad would load the fishing gear and the tent in the bed of whatever pickup he was driving at the time, and we'd head down to Bull Shoals or Table Rock for a week. No itinerary. No reservations. Just a full tank of gas and a cooler full of sandwiches. That was just how we did things in my family.

These photos hit that same nerve for me. Station wagons with the wood paneling on the sides. Kids in the back with no seatbelts and no car seats, just riding along however they fit. That's just how it was back then.

And the packing, that's the part that gets me. In the photos, you see people traveling lighter than most of us would today. No roof boxes on these cars. No cargo management systems. Maybe some of that existed somewhere at the time, but what you see in these pictures is families making do with less, and fitting everybody in however they could.

I've driven a lot of miles in a lot of different vehicles over the years, and I'll say this. The trucks are more comfortable now. The seats are better, the cabins are quieter, the air conditioning actually works. But something got lost along the way when every kid got their own screen and their own headphones and their own row. Used to be you were in it together, cramped and hot and somebody's elbow in your ribs, and that was just the deal.

These old photos remind you of that. Before GPS told you where to turn and long before chain restaurants and coffee shops were at every single exit off the highway, the way they are now. Just a road, a car full of people you loved, and wherever you ended up when the sun went down.