Boomers . . . and How They Got That Way
Epistle 10 – The Family Car Trip
Before jetting off to Monte Carlo, Cancun or a Carnival cruise ship, boomer families used to pile into the family Ford or Chevy and creep along beastly hot, two-lane roads in quest of some exotic Ray and Ruby’s Cabin Court motel that let you park right in front of the door to your room.
Talk about convenience. If you wanted to spend the night in your car, which might have been more comfortable than Ray and Ruby’s room, you could completely block the door for safety, except that nobody cared about safety back then and didn’t lock the doors to their houses or their cars.
They didn’t use seat belts either, which gave birth to the annual mid-summer statistics about the slaughter of thousands on the highways, probably in the family sedan, and certainly gave inspiration to the lovely, lyrical:
Around the curve,
Lickety split.
Beautiful car,
Wasn’t it?
Burma Shave
I’ll bet somebody actually got paid to write that.
Anyway, back to the family car trip, which was mostly spent in the oppressively hot back seat with the hot air from the open windows (1950’s air conditioning) blowing the smoke from my father’s cigarette in my face. Although I valiantly tried to improve my mind by reading my comic books, and vicariously improve my body by watching Charles Atlas kick sand in some bully’s face after he had turned a pale, scrawny body like mine into a stack of rippling muscles, there were just too many distractions.
My brother always wanted to play Hangman or Battleship–with paper and pencil for God’s sake, not even a game board. As soon as he cheated me out of my rightful victory by quoting some new rule that always seemed to favor his situation, it was time to ask for the twelfth time if we were there yet, and start whining about some place to eat, invariably a contest between a cozy tavern where my father could get a frosty mug of Schlitz and a drive-in where we could get a frosty mug of A&W root beer.
Because the driver could keep going and torture our bladders into submission, the tavern generally won the day, but at least we got a burger, potato chips, a Pepsi, and ten minutes to slide steel discs down the shuffleboard, all in all, not a bad consolation prize, considering we could have been forced to eat real food.
Of course, you can’t make a long, torturous car trip to somewhere without making another one back, which was even worse. There’s no sense of eager anticipation of the pleasures of Ray and Ruby’s Cabin Court motel; the comic books have all been read, and my body is covered with pink calamine lotion to ease the itch of poison ivy, contracted in search of frogs in the dark with a flashlight. Was the calamine lotion bright pink to match my sun-browned skin? I looked like I had been dipped in liquid bubble gum.
At least my misery got me an A&W root beer.
We Will Win
Filed under: Boomers . . . and How They Got That Way
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Hi Jim,
oh that is a RIOT! OK, so I didn’t quite grow up in the 1950s. My late husband did! Although your story did remind me of “Road Trips” from the 1970s and earlier. What fun!
Oh, the spilled drinks, food, screaming children.
OH my. Nothing like the Long Island Freeway with 4 children, Ole Style A/C, and a fluffy collie to make for a long drive being FUN for the adults.
We would play license plate games. Your tale of your brother’s change the rules tricks reminds me of card game we played as kids.
Now we are all close.
Thanks for your Boomer Blues posts. These are a delightfully fun read.
Your twitter buddy,
April