“It was like a mini-van, but before mini-vans were invented.” I explained to my daughter, “It was an International Harvester TravelAll.”
We had been watching TV, and I had caught the very end of a humorous car commercial, something about the seats being optional. I laughed and commented that I had ridden in a car like that once...
“When you were a kid?” my daughter guessed. She knows that my dad (car mechanic turned college professor) maintained a strange assortment of used vehicles when I was growing up. She has, in fact, seen the remains of some of them in her grandparent’s barns when we visit them in upstate New York.
“It had both front and back seats to begin with, I think,” I said, “But my dad took the back seats out before we embarked on a road trip to Florida when I was 10 years old. We went south to spend Christmas with my grandparents that year- your grandma’s mom and dad, that is. They lived in St. Petersburg at the time.”
I thought for a moment, willfully summoning long buried memories of that seat-less ride to Florida...
“You see, at the time there were six of us kids, and my parents started the trip in the evening so that they could drive through the night past the densest metropolitan areas and beat the rush hour traffic. They threw cushions and blankets in back so we could cuddle up and sleep until the next day, when we had made it to un-crowded Southern roads. All told, I think the trip took a little over 24 hours.”
Traveling South. Images long ago filed in my memory rolled through my mind like a slide show...
...doling out sandwiches and Christmas cookies to my little brothers and sisters...
...marveling at huge old trees hung with Spanish Moss...
...rolling past ubiquitous billboards that advertised roadside stops and pecans...
By evening we were in Florida, stuck in an impossibly long string of traffic on the freeway, as the bright orange sun sank slowly to the unbelievably flat horizon...
Finally, we arrived. Safe and sound. No seats, no seatbelts. They were optional back then...
.
4 comments:
I thought only Australians drove the family that far to visit family. Melbourne to Sydney was only 12 hours, and we did it in a comfy Volvo, but I still love driving that highway even now.
Road trips are cool.
In this mobile society few people these days end up living near where they grew up- which is why there are so many travelers on in the air and on the highways come holiday time, I think. And yes, road trips can be cool. I posted the essay on Facebook, and my older sister and a younger brother added their memories to mine. That was cool.
I remember the long trip to Arkansas back when I was very young. This was before iPods and the other electronic devices we have nowadays. My brother and I would either play games from kids magazines or listen to tapes on a walkman. At five-years-old, eight hours on the road can take forever!
I remember road trips, lying in the back seat with a stack of comic books and extra-large package of Wrigley's Spearmint gum, the trip a necessary evil, and getting wherever. the only thing that mattered.
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