Car trips loom large in our family’s history. To Grandmas’ house, the shore, skiing, to Schrader’s lake and the Sue locks. I think back on the vacations of our youth – the bickering, the singing, the geology lessons and the laughter – and realize that our best anecdotes as an adult come from those childhood excursions.
We listened to static-infused local radio stations, as dad would fiddle with the dial. We would get a pretty strong signal for about 60 miles, then it would falter and the search would begin again. Finally in later years we had a vehicle with an 8-track player and would be forced to listen to the “horsey song.” The wagon became a moving classroom. We learned to read maps. We learned about local history and weather systems.
The back of the station wagon was our domain, to be carved into personal spaces to suit our moods. This was before seat belts, when kids would lay in the rear window to toast in the sun and watch the sky, or at night watch “the bombs”, which were the reflections of the oncoming traffic headlights. We were free-range passengers, and we made beds in foot wells and forts behind the coolers at the very back of the back. When we tired of the bickering, we would exchange the seat arrangements.
As we grew older, the sniping ceased and the years of helpless, stop or I’ll wet my pants laughter followed. There was no one funnier in than we were, we believed, and if something was funny once, well then, it was funny a hundred times as we giggled and snorted our way across America. As for our long suffering parents, usually a reach for the visor with the hidden paddle or the words, “If I have to stop this car…” would put a calm to us.
Though we all eventually went our separate ways, we remain close. I believe this is partly because we were soldered together by miles and miles of shared experience, by slices of summer vacation lived on the road. We rode over the sticky blacktops of Ohio and climbed through the Appalachian Mountains, all the while laughing, singing over bridges and talking over each other. These memories are as fresh as yesterday, and still invoke bursts of laughter at family gatherings.
Love ya all, Cindi