Road Trip!

We are considering a trip to Chicago or Houston this March, and it will be our first real trip since we had kids. When Bob was a kid he and his parents went to Florida often to visit his grandparents. Bob is an only child and his trips were made in a big fancy Cadillac with the whole back seat to himself (can you even imagine?) He would kick back and play with his GI Joes, read, color, pretty much anything he could do at home. I imagine his dad, in his flowery bowling shirt, would pull into HoJo’s for a nice meal before they took time to see touristy things on their way to the sunshine state. I picture his mom with a little martini shaker in a secret wet bar in the glove compartment. I see her wearing the latest beach wear couture with giant Jackie O sunglasses, snapping her fingers while she sang along to her Sinatra 8 tracks and enjoyed the scenery. These trips were quiet, civilized, serene, just nice.

We took trips too. It was either my parents, my sister and me. Or it was my mom, my aunt, my nana and all my cousins. Neither of them were quiet, civilized, serene or nice.

Trips with my dad were…well…umm…fun? We would set pre arranged estimated departure and arrival times. But we never left on time. We always left at least 3 hours early if not the night before. We never had a Cadi. We usually had Ford and most likely the passengers side door wouldn’t open from the inside (this was such a source of angst for me as a kid. My sister would let me out of the car when we got to school, and I would get out limping as if I were too injured to open the door myself, that should have been a HUGE red flag for my mom). The first thing my dad would do was light up a Winston. My mom would immediately start waving her arms and rolling down the window, asking him if he just wanted to kill us all before we got there. Then telling him to crack his window if he was going to smoke. This was no good. This meant that the smoke would waft behind him and to us. PLUS, if the window was cracked, the A/C wasn’t doing it’s job and that’s not fun for us. Then he would pop in either Elvis or Neil Diamond, and he turned it up all the way because the only speakers were in the back and he couldn’t hear the music, because the friggin’ window was cracked! We stopped for meals, that we ate in the car. I once got an entire cup of McDonalds OJ dropped on my head because dad took a too quick turn into a Texaco outside of Chattanooga, TN. To this day I hate orange juice. And I wasn’t the least bit surprised by that whole OJ Simpson thing.

Trips with the “ladies” of my family usually involved the three of them and seven kids. These trips were usually made in a station wagon. And always in the heat of summer. The last trip I remember there was a van, but there was a bar thing that blocked the A/C to the back seats. We did get to stay in a hotel room. A hotel room, as in ONE hotel room. The 10 of us. Oh and we got a soda. A soda, as in ONE soda between the seven of us. If we made the mistake of giving one of the two boys the drink first, no one got a drink. Meanwhile, the Supremes where in the front seat with a Pepsi and a bag of Corn nuts each. And the air was blowing right on them!

These trips are events that my sister and my cousins and I talk about often. Not fondly, but often. We aren’t too damaged. I mean sure, none of us will share a drink with anyone. And we all refuse to drive a car with no A/C . Oh and if we all go somewhere we insist on each taking our own cars so that no one has to sit in the back seat. But aside from that and a few little harmless tics we’re cool.

I think that I remember once, somewhere at that point where the trip from Oklahoma to North Carolina, and Illinois to Florida meet, that I saw a big fancy black Cadillac with a boy in the back seat napping on a feather pillow while the cool air from the A/C vent blew his soft hair. I saw him as I stuck my head out the window of a crappy pea green Ford, trying to get a breath of fresh air while Elvis Presley blasted about treating him like a fool.

I recently took a short jaunt with my parents up to OKC. I was sitting in the back seat of his truck with my kids, and my mom was in the front with him. Dad lit up a friggin’ Winston and my mom started waving her arms around and telling him to crack the window! I looked at my kids and I told them “I’m sorry that we aren’t in a Cadillac listening to Frank Sinatra. But we are in a nice Ford. Now, cover your nose and breath through your mouth, we’ll be home soon”.