Kids ride bikes, go swimming, play ball, hang out …

It’s comforting to see that in many ways summer today resembles summer then. But the fit isn’t exact. One huge component of summers past is gone, extinct as the pterodactyl.

Go ahead, Google “Sunday drive,” or “family drive.” All you’ll get is other people asking: “Whatever happened to family rides?” “Does anybody remember Sunday family drives?”

Until the 1970s or so, when summer hit, most families would pile into the family car (each family had only one) after dinner and before it got dark and go for a ride.

You weren’t going anywhere in particular. It was a family get-together and a chance to cool off.

My father was a master of going for a drive. He would take us by the forest preserve — cooler and maybe we ‘d see a deer. If there had been a recent fire in the area, Dad would drive us by to have a look-see. And, of course, at least once a summer he’d take us to River Forest for a gander at the homes of top mobsters.

For Sunday drives we’d go farther afield — along Lake Shore Drive near Navy Pier — keeping cool. Sometimes my Dad would park along the fence at Midway Airport, where we would join other carloads of families watching planes land and take off.

The cherry on the top of all such family rides was the stop for Ice Cream. It might be Dairy Queen for as large a cone as Dad would spring for. Or, maybe it would be Cock Robin for a triple-dip square cone of orange, grape and lime sherbet. Then, there was this grocery store that had terrific raspberry ice cream, which came in huge double-dip cones.

Does all this sound as good to you as it does to me?

Why did it all end?

Why did it all start?

Early in the 20th Century cars became affordable to ordinary people. From 1917 to 1925, 15 million Model Ts rolled off Ford’s assembly lines. And families started going for rides.

After World War II, Americans could get back to building and buying cars. The spread of suburbia and creation of the National Highway System during the Eisenhower years reinforced Americans’ love affair with the automobile. By the end of the 1950s, one-third of Americans lived in the suburbs.

By 1958, 67 million cars were registered, more than twice the number at the start of the decade.

So, what happened? Why did all these families stop going for drives?

Doubtless there are many reasons. I’d select a couple of culprits from the possible menu — air conditioning and computers.

With the spread of air conditioning, people didn’t have to go for a drive to cool off.

And computers. Well, you know computers. They devour our time and insidiously transform us into isolated beings instead of members of a family.

And then there is me.

I am a cause of the ending of my family’s rides. I became a teenager. Not even raspberry ice cream cones (two scoops) could make me want to spend summer evenings and weekends with my parents and siblings. I wanted to be with my friends. So, I stopped going on rides.

Soon, my family stopped going for rides.

Then America stopped going for rides.

That was a foolish mistake.

— What happened to the Sunday drive? —