Road trip genes

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My memory bank is working overtime today remembering the road trips of my youth. My mother was a high school English teacher with the summers off. Our summers in the 50's and 60's - for my mother, my sister Claire and myself - were filled with road trips all over the Northeast, visiting friends and family, and exploring new places.

Getting ready was a multi day process. In an era before clothes dryers you had to be sure that you left an extra day to do the laundry in case it was raining outside and you couldn't hang the laundry out. You were strictly told to wear old clothes the day before you left on the big trip so you didn't get your good travel clothes dirty. It was always a challenge to find that old pair of shorts from last summer - a little too small but still not bad enough to be put in the giveaway bag - and fit back into them for one day. The travel day always dawned bright and beautiful with a tingle of excitement. In the days before air conditioned cars, we would start out with the windows rolled down and our hair flying. With bench seats in the front seat, all three of us would pile in and off we would go. Our mother smoked like a chimney so having the open windows was a necessity. When was the last time you played travel bingo? Do you even remember how to play? Our favorite game was the challenge to find as many license plates from different states as possible - even in the 50's and 60's folks were traveling far and wide. It was so exciting to see cars from North Dakota or Texas - they were truly foreign lands to us back then.

Our trips ranged far and wide and the memories are flooding back as I write. Steamers at the Jersey shore after a day at beach at Asbury Park - sunburned, sandy, and sleepy on the drive home. Fire Island - taking the ferry, the red wagon at the dock to wheel all our worldly goods to the Thorpe's cottage and then days of sitting on the glorious beach, drinking metzo metzo (a mix of cheap red and white jug wine), playing Scrabble and re-reading every summer Michener's Tales of the South Pacific., as well as the summer with Ellen and Mary Kate and the boyfriends... The long drive to Ohio to visit Aunt Cathy and Uncle John - it was a two day trip from New Jersey, across the long Pennsylvania Turnpike with its tunnels - staying at the old stagecoach inn in Scenery Hill - visiting the Ohio State Fair and seeking the sulky races and well fed pigs. Visiting cousins in West Virginia in the era of segregation and going to the white pool where we would swim with our cousins, and passing the older, shabbier black pool on the way. Hot humid Washington DC, the hazy gorgeous Blue Ridge Parkway, on the way to DC stopping at the Canvasback Inn in Bainbridge, MD owned by our father's commanding officer from WW II. Staying at the Lahm's in Great Barrington, MA and heading out the back door in the morning to pick fresh raspberries for my breakfast cereal, my first time on the lawn at Tanglewood and then later hearing Jessye Norman give her first concert there with my mother in the 70's. Visiting the Frohock's in Cambridge and seeing Harvard through the eyes of my uncle, a professor. I'm awash in memories - both wonderful and poignant.

I think you are either born with road trip genes or you aren't. In our family jumping in the car, turning the key and heading out was an every summer occurence and a cause for fun. Clearly my sister and I have inherited this gene - she and her husband reguarly head out on 1,000 mile road trips. I'm frequently happiest when behind the wheel of a car.

We'll start making our own memories when we head out tomorrow....

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[StevieC]

So Far, So Good?
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