Welcome to another STORYTIME DUET. Tonight, possum and I will be taking you along on that grand American tradition, the Family Vacation. Possum is up first with memories of traveling with his family as a young boy, and then I will tell of the one and only long car trip taken with my husband and toddler in tow. Possum and I will both be here to respond to your comments.
If you have a story you would like to tell one Friday evening, please contact me at the address in my profile. With summertime getting into swing soon I will have some weeks I won’t be able to be here for Storytime. Rather than let this diary go dark on those weeks I would like to give other storytellers an opportunity with this wonderful audience. Drop me a line and I’ll be glad to get you started.
DOWN HOME: Childhood Travels by possum
Traveling is always such sweet sorrow. New places, new people, new lodgings, new food. So much to experience. So many very varied experiences along the way. Not all of those times were good ones. Follow down the road, around the bend, and across the fence to another of the possum's tales.
When I was a child my family traveled two times a year nearly every year. One trip was around the state where we visited various historical landmarks and state parks. We most always drove in those days as air travel was expensive and by the time of most of my memories there were three growing boys in the family.
By age 10 or so all recollections of car travels start with the sickness bag. Every time we went more than about one hour or so my stomach began to rebel. We tried a wide variety of changes along the way in an effort alleviate the issue but nothing seemed to work. Food. No food. Crackers and clear soda (Mother really believed that colored sodas caused stomach upsets). Milk. In the middle of the seat. By the window. Window open. Window closed. Front seat. Back seat. All were failures. I was simply doomed to being sick most all day as we wandered about. In response to my gastric condition our moving was often interrupted so I could empty the tank by the side of the road. Once all stomach contents were safely deposited, we went on our way while I held a bag for minor issuances.
One memorable trek took us through the mountains of eastern Kentucky. The curves and hillsides did nothing nice for my GI tract and those steep roadside cliffs aggravated my vertigo. The situation was hopeless for me. One time we stopped to view a swinging bridge that crossed a deep gorge. The bridge was the sole connection to the highway for the locals. My brothers were happy to run right to the middle of the bridge. During a few moments of gastric calm I managed to approach the bridge. By about 10 feet out I was reduced to crawling on hands and knees to return to the safety of land. The motion and the height both acted to make my experience miserable.
We always stopped along the way at restaurants that seemed to have the right kind of character. There were very few restaurant chains in those days so we tried to find local places with busy parking lots. At least one time that idea worked to our distinct disadvantage. The restaurant was moderately full and the seating arrangements were fine. The first signs of trouble came with delays in getting menus and water delivered to the table. The situation went down hill as we finally placed our order and began an interminable wait for food. After about an hour in the place, my usually placid and intractable father announced we were leaving. He canceled the orders and we walked out to begin the food search over again.
That same stop was plagued with trouble. Dad left the car at a gas station trusting them to fill the tank. When we retrieved the car and started down the road the gas gauge still pointed to empty. Dad, now hungry and frustrated really spoke harshly to the attendants at the station. As they all protested that gas indeed was put in the tank, he pointed to the gas gage as contrary evidence. The attendant showed him the fill level of the tank. It was then we discovered the gauge was dead and for the remainder of the trip we relied on mileage as a sign of need for gasoline.
Our trips did not often entail much in the way of worry, but aside from the food and gasoline troubles we had motel trouble one time. The parental figures used AAA as a recommender for motels. We would pull in to any place that had an AAA sign out front if we needed a place to stay. One evening we did our usual and took a pair of rooms for the night. Dad left travelers’ checks for payment and off we went to settle in for the night. Trouble struck early. One room was just fine, but the second was very small and had a sloping ceiling that put one of us boys sleeping with his face just about on the ceiling. The same room had air conditioner problems and no TV. After having several discussions with the desk personnel, Dad decided were leaving for some place else. He picked me to announce the decision to the desk and to retrieve his money. I still remember the abject embarrassment of going to the clerk for a refund. I was a shy child in general and that interaction mortified me. Only my hearty respect for Dad pushed me into going without a real fuss.
On very long trips my parents took turns driving. Dad did the most, but when Mother drove he often took advantage of a split back seat and slept with one side of the seat folded down. The car in those days was a Pontiac station wagon, so Dad slept with two brothers beside him on the seat while the lucky brother rode in the front. To this day I can see my dad asleep while we kept moving down the road. I can also hear the squawking as we boys tried to decide who had the next turn in front. We never seemed to remember whose turn was next and each of us always knew it was his own.
I am grateful to this day for all the traveling we did in my childhood. We saw so many new places an met so many new people. Not all may have been perfect, but the overall was very good indeed. Traveling by car remains a favorite experience of mine today as the car sickness of childhood went away in later teen years.
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Family Vacation by Cronesense
My parents married at the beginning of the Depression and quickly had two children and as such the 'Family Vacation' thing just never happened. World War II came along with rationing and made gas and tires too dear to waste. I was born at the close of the war, fifteen years after my parents married. So Family trips were just a short jaunt from Tulsa to over the border to a little town called Noel, in Missouri where my grandparents had moved to when my grandfather retired. We never took a trip just to see things and venture around.
When in our early married years my in-laws expressed a desire for us to come east from Colorado to Massachusetts to show off their grandson to the family we decide to take the plunge. We had a giant used Chevy station wagon that we could put a mesh port-a-crib in the back seat. This was long before car seats for children but we did have seat belts so we rigged one to lock in a potty chair for our 15 month-old son. We also had one of those flimsy seats that hooked over the back of the bench seat in front so he could join us up there. It had a little plastic steering wheel so he could 'drive' too. I know, by today’s standard that is just down right scary to think of such unsafe riding conditions but I grew up in the era of the only safety device in the car being my mother's arm thrown across my body in a karate-like motion. Anyone my age remember that? She just about fractured my sternum a couple of times with the move.
The camera we had at the time was a little brownie box type and we could only afford black and white film to record the trip. We got up in the dark to load the car with all of our paraphernalia leaving the crib until the last minute hoping we could just pop our son back in without waking him up. We had dry run the installation during the day. While I tucked our sleeping son into our bed we broke down the crib and hauled it out to the car. The dark was not cooperating and neither was the crib. Much banging and cussing from my husband and it finally went into place. We realized we would be performing this maneuver several times over the ensuing days. Guess who inherited that chore?
Child in a fresh diaper enjoying a bottle of milk tucked into his bed fell back to sleep after we posed for a flash picture by the side of the car before we started our grand two thousand mile adventure. We had allocated 4 days for the trip, as we knew the first half would be slow going due to detours. The interstate highway system was not complete so we would be taking roads that wound through small towns. It may have slowed down the trip, but I was ever so grateful for the side trips to those small town that had for so long depended on the traffic being part of their economy. The first two days of the trip were in stark contrast to the last two days spent on highway and toll roads with their ubiquitous chain motels and restaurants. The first two days had charm and the last just felt like there was very little in way of a change of scenery. One Howard Johnson's after another and every Holiday Inn looked the same.
But the first two days had variety of food and accommodations spiced with local charm. I still remember one early morning driving through the sleepy Iowa town as the sun was coming up over the cornfields. It was so huge and deep orange shimmering above those fields that were framed by the tall August corn nearly ready to harvest. We traveled though farmland that was being harvested and I watched the flocks of giant combines gather up the crops as in a precision drill team, staggered as they went across the fields cutting it down to stubble. I fell in love with barns and farmhouses on those back roads. We passed many roadside stands in front of farmhouses in that early morning light with their tempting hand-lettered signs. The bins were vacant, waiting to be filled with fresh items for that day.
To pass the time because radio reception was spotty we took to telling stories making them up as we went along. We called them The Adventures of Chicken Souperman. The plot lines were all of a serial type in that we had to create a situation of great peril for our hero and just when it looked like all would be lost it was the other persons turn to pick up the story and get him out of his jam and into another one. It started out pretty tame but each turn cranked up the level of danger and silliness. We finally ran out of ideas after about two days but Chicken Souperman was put through his paces before being retired when the roads turned smooth and the radio reception improved.
We traveled through Chicago, which seemed massive in scale to me, crossed numerous rivers and on and on we went. When we hit the interstate highways we could make some good time. Now bear in mind this behemoth of a car we were driving did not have air conditioning. Also bear in mind that disposable diapers back in that day were little more than paper towels with a little plastic on the outside, just a plain rectangle - no fitting. I did have a goodly supply of cloth diapers and rubber pants but after a couple of days driving in the August heat our son had a great deal of diaper rash no matter how many times I changed and slathered him. Now you know why I brought the potty chair along. We were not trying to train him yet at home but at least he could sit au nautrel to give his skin a break.
On the morning of the third day of this trip we stumbled to the car after I loaded the port-a-crib looking and feeling a little worse for wear. We were now deep in HoJo/Holiday Inn country with nothing but straight highways before us. When we stopped for lunch we talked about taking turns to see if we could just drive through while the other catnapped. I agreed that I would rather push on than spend another night in a motel. My husband called his mother and apprised her of our decision and said we would be there sometime in the wee hours of the morning.
So the long last day of driving would end this half of the journey. By the time we hit western Massachusetts it was too dark for me to see the lovely countryside. My husband navigated the confusing maze of highways and roads that finally brought us to the house he had spent his teen years in after moving to the States from Argentina. We staggered in the door and bless their hearts they had rented a crib so we didn't have to untangle the port-a-crib in the middle of the night.
The following days were spent meeting family and sightseeing. My husband spent the days be an avid tour-guide. We went to Ipswich for fried clams. To Rockport to view the most popular building for paintings. We rode the MTA one night into town and walked the Boston Commons on our way to Dinty Moore's restaurant. I thought my husband was trying to pull a fast one on me when he walked my down a dingy alley to the entrance of the restaurant. Sure enough once inside the door it was quite elegant. We then went to the movie house and saw Doctor Zhivago. There was a couple sitting behind us and the man was snoring loudly. When the love scene came on the woman started laughing hysterically, really, I do mean hysterically and couldn't stop. That tender moment has always been tainted since then whenever I have watched that movie.
One day we went to buy fresh lobsters for dinner that night. I had never seen a live whole lobster before. As we drove back to the house I tucked my feet up on the seat as the kept scrabbling in the sack. That evening was one I wished I had had a movie of to watch again. I was to be taught how to eat a lobster, a whole lobster the proper New England way. The massive dining room table was set with snowy linen, fine china, crystal and silver. My mother-in-law was born in Massachusetts and had 'proper' running through her veins.
First of all I didn't know what was entailed in cooking a lobster. I already felt pretty sorry for them cooped-up in a sack all afternoon in the refrigerator. A huge pot was set to boil and my husband was going to do the honors. He explained to me you had to stun them first by whacking their head on the side of the pot so they wouldn't tense up when they hit the water thereby causing a tough lobster. So I watched as he whacked and plopped them into the pot. By this time I was getting a little queasy.
So we sat down to the table with a bright red lobster on each china plate and I hadn't a clue what to do with it. All of a sudden this very proper family was ripping and wrench body parts asunder and cracking shells and sucking meat out of tiny legs. The incongruity of the tableau was quite memorable. My husband finally took pity on me and reached over to help me. Then I opened up the tail and realized I had a gravid female that was full of eggs. That was it for me. I fled from the table overcome because I had a secret. I thought I might be pregnant and seeing that poor female with her eggs was too much for me. As I left the room racing for the stairs I was assured that the eggs were edible.
Soon it was time to traverse our route and head back home. The first morning out I suffer a bout of 'motion sickness' and had my husband pull over the car. I don't remember much else about the trip home other than the heat. We drove hard again and made it home in three days instead of four. Chicken Souper Man made no return appearances. That little humble clapboard house was a very welcome site. We never did take a long car trip after that adventure, but I was glad to get to see a bit of America that has been bypassed and dried up because of the great interstate highways. One thing I learned on that trip was the small rural towns are where so much of the heart of this country comes from.
Got a Happy Story by EddieC is all about vacations too. Stop by and say 'hi' if you missed it.