Today we are taking a
trip.
Not just
any trip.
A road trip.
Not just any road trip, but the
obligatory road trip of my childhood.
My family was
obsessed with the road trip.
It was a well-oiled machine of efficiency.
There were
basic rules to the family road trip.
These rules are set in stone. Any deviation is
strictly forbidden:
I need to emphasize that you
need to re-read rules #1 and #3. If you are unprepared, it could be disastrous.
Now way back in the 1970s my family had 3 options for our travel vehicle:
Legend:
Vehicle A: Family car. Purple Citroen. Great looking car. Cool inside. Drives approximately 167 miles between break-downs. Looks great sitting on the side of the highway.
Vehicle B: 1969 Pontiac. Car given to my family by relative. Large car. Lots of power. Can sit approximately 12 people comfortably in the bench backseat. Reliable. Gas tank capacity rivals a tanker truck.
Vehicle C: Late 60s “conversion van” that can be borrowed from my grandparents. Has a full kitchen and bathroom. Advertised to sleep 5. Actually can sleep one comfortably (and not that comfortably). Down-side is that family has to drive to West coast to pick up vehicle.
Let’s pick Vehicle B!
Now let’s choose a route:
Please make note that
all car routes require around the clock driving. Please note that all arrival times must be between
2 and 5 am because relatives that we were visiting
loved when we, a family of four rolled into their driveway in the middle of the night.
Let’s drive to California!
We aren’t pansy travelers.
We are weathered.
Experienced.
Insane.
So what are we going to eat along the trip?
Howard Johnsons?
Big Boy?
Wall Drug?
Puuuuleeeeease people! We have already
forgotten rules #1 and #3. Eating out requires
a stop of the vehicle. Eating out
costs money. And for your information,
money doesn’t grow on trees.
So mom is going to
pack a cooler:
We are ready to roll!
We have filled our rectangular suitcases full of necessities and dad has placed them with
precision in the trunk with skill that rivals an experienced brick layer.
The trunk is full. So full that a piece of notebook paper placed on the top of the suitcases would cause the trunk to pop open. A few extra things are placed on the floor of the back seat because
children don’t need legroom.
In my family suitcases were
NEVER tied to the roof. My dad would have seen this as a sign to the world of
packing failure. That would be
unacceptable.
Let’s show a little road trip pride!
Even though the backseat measures about 72 feet in width. This is necessary:
Within an hour this will happen:
Tears were the ONLY drink available because of rules #1 and #3. Unlucky was the child who realized pee urgency within the first few hours post fill-up.
Dehydration was the goal.
Who needs drinks when the sandwiches are of the floating variety?
And then this would happen:
To keep the kid’s minds off their full bladders
game mania ensued:
I spy.
The license plate game.
Punch bug.
We were road warriors!
No amount of crying, screaming, bladder explosion or road trip songs would make my dad turn around and head back for home.
Nerves of steel.
We didn’t need a portable DVD player!
We could occupy ourselves the old fashioned way with whining and fighting…
But every once in awhile there was a quiet moment that I wish I could recreate with my own kids:
OK, not exactly
this quiet moment since in the 1970s it was perfectly acceptable for children to lay in the back window of a moving vehicle.
But something
close to this. A moment of complete
road trip bliss when the kids are
quietly listening to dad making up stories about road signs.
A moment filled with family road trip magic.
My favorite story was the ‘Legend of Falling Rock’…
OMG!!! We had the same line of death if ever crossed! AND the window ledge in the back – we were so lucky not to have died! Naw, it was way more fun then the boring road trips we go on now. I mean every.single.child. has something to keep them entertained, and the van doesn’t even have a ledge. Our childhoods were so much better than our kids, no? 🙂
best. post. EVER. i can relate to much of it. we traveled in a bright orange VW station wagon with no seatbelts and no A/C. roll down windows, baby. cross country. PA to Cali. A family of 6 with an aspergers-ish dad and a mom with a flare for melodrama.
Love the cooler graphic and the floating sandwiches.
Do Mom and Dad read the blog?
My mother used to threaten to “Pull over to the side of the highway and kick us out of the car if we don’t stop fighting right now…” One time she did it to my brother. I’ll never forget the look on his face as she drove away…she didn’t drive far though. She stopped and he got in…very quietly.
I love the commenter who had a Neil Diamond 8 track playing…that is to funny.
LOL funny.
I am now the packing professional…my DH knows better than to try to put ANYTHING in the back of the minivan…that’s MY JOB!!! My parents didn’t make us go too far too often, but we dray our kids to Illinios at least once a year (@15-16 hours)…Thank the Good Lord for the invention of the portable DVD player!
My father always bought those horrible little filtered cigars for the 6 hour trip to my grandmother’s house…he didn’t smoke (usually) My mother did, though…maybe he did it to get back at her for making him breathe the smoke filled air!
Thanks for the giggle..and the animated post!
We were spoiled. My parents always put a crib mattress in the back seat (a ’76 Caprice Classic) so we could bounce around and sleep comfortably. When we started punching each other, one of us would get to sit between our parents in the front. And somehow, we survived.
My childhood vacation life, down to the cooler and the itinerary. Except we had 5 kids in the back seat. And we spent one night in a motel because our relatives very clearly weren’t expecting us in the middle of the night when we called upon arriving in town. But it was just one room for all 7 of us.
I think our Dad’s are related!!!! So true. Loved it!
Thanks for the road trip down memory lane! I loved my mom’s 1976 Cadillac Eldorado. The back seat was like a twin bed for me and my cousin to sprawl out on…pillows and all. Seat belts be damned!
We had a Buick like your Pontiac. I loved sleeping in the back seat of that thing. I miss that car, sagging healinder and all…
Thanks for the animated post, I’ve been missing them! : )