MSN Shopping, May 25th, 2007
It’s just after 4 am on a warm July morning and the black Corvair wagon, packed to the gunwales, is gleaming under the street lamp. Dad likes to get an early start so we can get across the George Washington Bridge well before rush hour and get to my grandparents house in Waterville, Ohio in time for supper. Mom tucks the picnic basket in on top of the luggage as my sister and I pile into the back seat. It’s 1965 and not the first time we’ve made the 13-hour drive -- it’s an annual expedition -- but in those moments before we even roll off down the driveway, under a blanket of stars, the silence broken only by the chirping of crickets, I feel like the four of us are the only people on earth, and that ahead lies the road to infinite possibilities. Melodramatic? Very little isn’t when you’re 10 years old.
* * *
Today, the family road trip is an iconic rite of passage, but it was not always so. During the mid 19th century, when the family packed their wagon and headed west, it wasn’t to do a little sightseeing and spend some quality time together. The economic boom and the rise of the automobile culture after the Second World War gave birth to a new American mythos in which the open highway became synonymous with freedom and adventure. And with the passage of the Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956, it soon became a whole lot easier to get wherever it was you wanted to go. A roundtrip cross-country drive that might have taken several weeks soon became short enough to fit the standard two-week summer holiday and tens of millions of Americans hit the road.
* * *
The Alleghenies loom above us as we hit the central stretch of the Pennsylvania turnpike. For me, it’s the highpoint of the trip. It’s not the forested carpet of rolling high country that captures my imagination. It’s the tunnels. From the brilliance of a cerulean summer morning to the mysterious depths of an eternal night, tires singing over the pavement, we plunge into the belly of the mountains, one after another, their names emblazoned above the arches of each gaping entrance. Blue Mountain. Kittatinny. Tuscarora. To me, these were names with all the exotic allure of Madagascar, Tunisia and Timbuktu.
* * *
With the accelerating popularity of the national summer migration, an entire industry sprung up to cater to the traveler’s needs. The orange rooftops of Howard Johnson’s popped up at service plazas along the turnpikes like mushrooms after the rain. It was the era of the drive-in movie and the drive-in restaurant. America was clearly spending more of its time in the car.
* * *
By mid afternoon my sister and I have pretty well exhausted the novelties of the activity bags Mom has packed for us. Coloring books and crayons lie scattered on the floor of the back seat with license plate bingo games abandoned unfinished and puppets sleeping off hours of frantic activity. A hot wind rushes through the open windows filled with the pungent scent of livestock as we stare out at mile after mile of the flat Midwestern landscape. My sister begins to feel carsick. My Mom begins to sing: “Oh, what did Delaware, boys, oh what did Delaware? What did Delaware, boys, oh what did Delaware? I ask you now as a personal friend, what did Delaware? She wore a New Jersey, boys, she wore a New Jersey...”
* * *
In the days before portable DVD players and handheld video games, keeping the kids amused on the long haul was much more of an art. Of course, where the scenery fell short of spectacular, there was always the string of Burma Shave signs to enjoy.
Ben met Anna
Made a Hit
Neglected beard
Ben-Anna split
Burma Shave
“20 Questions,” “I Spy” and “License Plate Acronyms” (ESP 057 = Elephants Sitting Patiently) could fill in a few blanks, but more often families relied on the pleasure of conversations between the front and back seats. And in that way, a handful of people crammed into a space less roomy than an Apollo command module got to know each other a little better. How did Mom and Dad first meet? Do fish sleep? Where did Granddad grow up? Do you think someone will invent a time machine someday?
“When will we get there?”
“Soon, and I’m looking forward to it as much as you are,” says Dad, “Be patient and keep your eyes open. You never know when you’ll see something you’ve never seen before.”
Today, the Burma Shave signs are gone and there are more fast food franchises to compete with Howard Johnson’s and Stuckey’s. But the maps haven’t changed all that much and American highway still stretches like a silver ribbon across from here to way out there. And through the long summer days ahead we’ll all be out there again, some of us coming, some of us going, as if it’s always been that way.
Twenty five years down the road, I’m at the wheel of my wife’s SAAB. We’re lost somewhere in the rolling hills of Central Oregon and the wind sweeps through the wheat fields turning them into a living sea. U2 is wailing through “Running to Stand Still” to which my 6-year-old daughter is adding “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” in counterpoint. “Did you teach her that?” asks my wife? “I’ll take the 5th.” I glance in the rearview mirror as the diminutive beermeister looks up from grooming one of her dozen My Little Ponies and asks, “Dad? When will we get there?”
Soon. Be patient and keep your eyes open. You never know when you’ll see something you’ve never seen before.
