Friday Five: Road Trip

Jan at RevGalBlogPals writes:

My husband and I just returned (on Wednesday night) from a long road trip up the middle USA to Canada, going through various national parks, and on to the Puget Sound of Washington State. This brought back memories of family road trips with my children and when I was a child, so the idea of today's Friday Five arose.
Tell us about five road trips--in your childhood, in your family, in your recent past, with friends, and/or hoped-for-places-to-drive-to. Don't forget the one that stands out as the BEST or as the worst time.

1. The first road trip I remember was in the spring of 1955 when my parents, four younger siblings, and I drove from El Paso, Texas to Bowdoinham, Maine, with a stop in Norwalk, Ohio “on the way.” My father had orders for Germany, to which we’d follow in about 6 months, so he ws taking some leave time to take us back to our little house in Maine where we’d await our port call. I don’t remember what kind of car we had other than it was a sedan of some kind. My eldest younger brother sat in front because he had a tendency to get car-sick. I was in back with the twins, who were about 2 1/2, and baby brother who was just about to turn one. The space between the front and back seats was filled with footlockers padded with blankets. I’m not sure about the diapers – I think disposables were just becoming available and we may have used those some of the time, but I also seem to recall a diaper pail and occasional stops at laundromats.

We did some sight-seeing along the way – I remember a stop at a scary snake farm – and sampled indigenous cuisine such as catfish-flavored grilled cheese sandwiches in the Ozarks. The visit to Norwalk was to see my aunt’s family, which included my one same-age cousin, and was a welcome respite from the road. When we arrived back in Maine at last, I remember my parents pointing out damage from the previous fall’s hurricane. I think it was a good trip.

2. After our return from Germany, we lived for several years in southern Connecticut, about a six-hour drive from home in Maine, so there were several trips a year. My mother would make sandwiches (to this day I dislike egg salad; I preferred when she would make “Italians” as we call them here); my parents would have a big thermos of coffee, and I suppose we kids had something to drink too. The clearest memory of these trips is the landmarks we looked for – East Rock and West Rock in New Haven, which meant we were really on our way; the various giant billboards and advertising statues just north of Boston; the fourteen (I think( underpasses of New Hampshire, and then the bridge across the Piscataqua from New Hampshire to Maine, which cost a dime. I would begin to feel at home as soon as the first toll-booth attendant said “Thank YOU sah!” but the twins did not ever believe we were in Maine until the smell of woodsmoke wafted through the car windows. When we got to our road, since nearly everyone who lived on it was a relative, my father would honk the horn at every house we passed until we arrived at my grandparents’ house, where Grampie’s dog Dinah would rush out to welcome us.

3. When we went to Germany again in the mid-60s, I hung out at the post library a lot. The librarian and I became friends and the summer before my senior year we took a little road trip in her VW Beetle. Since we were in Stuttgart, we took a wonderful trip around Bavaria to the south, visiting Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Oberammergau, and two of Mad King Ludwig’s castles, Schoss Linderhof and Schloss Neuschwanstein (the latter the model for Sleeping Beauty’s Castle). We also got as far as Lake Constance and looked across to Switzerland. At night we would stop wherever we were and find a Gasthaus mit Zimmer Frei – I just remember one town, Bad Kohlgrub, the name of which my parents found hysterically funny. Riding through the Bavarian Alps was a bit scary for me but we sang folksongs and musical theatre numbers which distracted acrophobic me at least a bit. It was a great trip.

4. Our third Christmas together, Onkel Hankie Pants and I headed for Maine from southern Minnesota, in our little Austin America. Our first child was on the way. I had checked out the Mobil Travel Guide from the library and planned a route through Toledo, Ohio (our first stop) and then a stop in Fairfield, Connecticut to see my friends whose families still lived there. In Toledo we even had a motel reservation – unfortunately in the same motel where some bowling club was having a loud Christmas party. Not much sleep there. Driving through the Poconos in a slushy snowstorm was interesting, to say the least. Also, the muffler gave up the ghost so our stop in Connecticut included a visit to the muffler shop; as I recall, the repair didn’t exactly work and the Wisconsin-Minnesota portion of our return trip was a little noisy. However, we had a fine time in Connecticut even though we all went to see a Bergman film, and a wonderful Christmas in Maine.

This is a picture of the Austin; imagine it bright orange.

5. I’ve enjoyed many road trips since, and hope to have a few more, but the one that stands out is a “shunpike” tour we took when our son was 4 years old. With the help of Jane and Michael Stern’s book Roadfood and a few other guidebooks, we planned a fun and educational trip. (And I know my daughters are jealous now. There are advantages to being the eldest.) Some highlights of the trip included visiting the reproduction of the Ingalls family cabin in Pepin, Wisconsin (we had already read all of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books to SonShineIn), followed by riding the ducks at Wisconsin Dells. We went swimming in Lake Michigan at Indiana Dunes State Park, rode a barge on the Erie Canal (where SonShineIn covered himself with glory by loudly bursting into “I’ve got a mule, her name is Sal, Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal” unprompted); and on the return trip, Niagara Falls. Below, a few photos from that trip.

Indiana Dunes State Park

Onkel Hankie Pants and SonShineIn at the Ingalls cabin reproduction in Pepin, WI.

Looking back, I can’t remember a road trip that I didn’t enjoy most of the time. I’ve been fortunate in my traveling companions!

From Atlantic to Pacific, Gee, the Traffic is Terrific

(I’m concentrating this post, which deals with Holiday Travel, the writing prompt for December 13, on one particular Christmas. I can’t warrant that everything took place in the order stated or even that it took place on that particular Christmas, but it’s all true one way or another.)

Holiday travel for my family in 1957 covered a lot of ground, sea and air and started early. By Thanksgiving, our apartment on Mississippistrasse in the Hainerberg housing area of Wiesbaden, Germany was denuded of all but the most necessary items and the furniture provided by the Army. We even ate Thanksgiving dinner in the mess hall of my father’s unit. (This was the infamous raw-shrimp-cocktail Thanksgiving, about which I think I’ve written previously.) We had all had our shots updated and been tested to make sure we hadn’t contracted tuberculosis from injudiciously eating ice cream on the street. For a few days, after moving out of our quarters, we stayed in a once-magnificent spa hotel downtown, where I think there was a fountain of dreadful-smelling mineral water in the lobby. At last our port call came, and we made our way to nearby Frankfurt and Rhein-Main Airport. We were fortunate to be flying, as my mother and brother were prone to seasickness.

The flight home was not without incident. I’m not sure why, but we had a layover in Montreal that I’m pretty sure was unscheduled. We were put up in a motel, and when we tried to get something to eat in the restaurant, we were met with “So sorry m’sieu, the kitchen, she is in the fire!” I think that night ended with our first experience of take-out fried chicken.

We did eventually reach McGuire AFB and neighboring Fort Dix, and after the usual Army “processing,” we were ready for the next leg of our journey. We children were excited to learn that this would be in a new (to us) car. And not just any car – it was a two-tone, blue and cream, 1956 Ford Fairlane Victoria in the hardtop convertible style. It wasn’t really convertible, but it looked as cool as one. V-8 engine, just enough chrome, and take a look at those cool headlights! I couldn’t limit myself to just one picture. Here’s an old advertisement I got from Uncle Phil; ours, however, was a two-door model, we think. I seem to remember the car as having a lighter blue in the blue parts, like one of the photos below; but I may be confusing it with the Edsel that replaced it.

This one could use a little restoration. You may think this a small car for a family of seven, but none of us were very big at that time, ranging in age from 7 to 3 1/2.

Take a look at those cool headlights! Thanks to Uncles Phil and Carl for helping me figure out the make and model of this car.

Since I don’t remember the exact dates of any of this, I’m not sure exactly what happened next. I think we drove to Bridgeport or New Haven where my father would be working as a National Guard Advisor, and he reported in. Then we looked for a house to rent. They found a dark green duplex, two-story, with one very large bedroom in the front that could be divided into a boys’ side and a girls’ side, a couple of blocks from the beach and our school could be seen from the back door. I think they probably went to a used furniture store for beds and such. AND, because Brother #1 was sick (not seriously, but he was pretty miserable, poor little fella) Daddy brought home a color television! Since we had basically had no television for two years (very little was broadcast in Germany then and of course, it was all in German) this was a very exciting development for all of us. I think we stayed in Milford, our new home, long enough to get a bit settled and for my parents to enroll four of us in school (the twins had turned 5 in October so they hadn’t started kindergarten in Germany, but the principal of Point Beach School decided they could begin in January). Then we headed for Maine and Christmas.

There was no I-95 then as far as I know; we started out on the Wilbur Cross Parkway and continued on various turnpikes, parkways, and US and state routes. Some of the more outstanding advertising structures (a giant Indian, a giant steer, and so on) would become familiar landmarks over the next seven years, but they were all new to us then and to be pointed out and exclaimed over. At last, we paid our dime and crossed over the Piscataqua River, and we were in Maine.

There’s one family story I must tell that we think took place on this trip. We were only about 30 miles from Bowdoinham, near Exit 9 on the Maine Turnpike at Falmouth, when we saw a lone airman in uniform hitchhiking north. My parents briefly considered picking him up, but decided our car was really too crowded with kids, luggage, and Christmas presents. Not long after we arrived at my grandparents’ house, there was another homecoming – my uncle Carl, who was then an airman stationed at Pease AFB in Portsmouth, NH. Ayuh. He was the hitchhiker we had passed by. My mother always said, “If we had known it was you, we would have made room!” But he hasn’t held it against us.

Ah, Christmas in Maine at Grammie and Grampie’s house! My memory is that we actually stayed there, though we had our own little house up the road. In addition to Carl, my aunt Kate was still at home since she was still in high school, and my bachelor (at the time) Uncle Dick lived there as well. There were still two large bedrooms free upstairs, and since the house boasted no central heating, crowding in together could help keep you warm. The kitchen stove, living room stove, and a small one in my grandparents’ room were the only woodstoves in the house as far as I know. Bricks and old flatirons were heated on the stove in the evening, wrapped in newspaper, and used to warm the beds and our chilly feet; we huddled under mounds of Grammie’s homemade quilts until we got warm enough to sleep. Aunt Kate had a pair of ski pajamas, or that’s how I remembered them; she assures me that they were really red flannel with white snowflakes, made by my grandmother, in place of the kind you could buy in stores which cost $3.77 in the Sears catalog.

But what of cold? It was Christmas! I don’t remember any of the presents I got that year, though I’m sure I enjoyed them at the time. I recall a few we gave – the cuckoo clock brought from Germany that played “The Last Rose of Summer” on the hour in Grammie’s living room for many years; and the smoked dried German sausage my parents had smuggled in. I think perhaps we had Christmas dinner at my aunt Celia’s farmhouse on the Ridge. I know it was great to be there, to hear the grownups talking and telling stories, to see the cousins (all older or younger than I was), and most of all for me, to have such a wide choice of reading material! I had been sadly deprived during those weeks of moving and travel, and now it was all here – the children’s books from my mother’s childhood, (this may have been when I first read Little Women), the green-bound set of Dickens in the hall bookcase (I never got beyond the first few scary pages of Great Expectations until I was in my 20s!), Grampie’s Life magazine and Westerns, Uncle Dick’s Argosy, True, and Field and Stream. I dipped into them all.

We didn’t talk a lot about homesickness in my family. Our parents took the line that wherever we were together was home, and avoided complaining about any place we lived, at least where we could hear them. But I know it was a special Christmas for all of us, to be at home in Maine again with all our loved ones nearby.

Friday Five: What You Absolutely, Positively, Can't Leave Home Without

Over at RevGalBlogPals, Singing Owl writes:

We will be at a chaplain's convention when you all are answering the Friday Five Questions. I'll look forward to reading your answers next week when I get home. At the moment we are trying to get the car loaded so we can hit the road, so this will be a simple F.F. This running around madly in order to leave has me wondering: what are the five things you simply must have when you are away from home? And why? Any history or goofy things, or stories?

1. Books. I always take books, even though just about everywhere I go has books available. Since all my travel these days is to visit friends or family, you might think I would not need so many books, but I do.

2. Camera. This is a new "must-take" for me since last year when I got a digital camera. I usually remembered the film camera before, but I didn't always take a lot of pictures. Now it's different.

3. Notebook and pen(s). I need this for a lot of things. Now that I keep track of my reading and write little reviews for DorothyL and Goodreads, I need something to write on. I may also acquire genealogical information new addresses, etc. I might even write out a blog post!

4. Microfiber glasses cleaning cloth. I'd include the squirt stuff too, but it doesn't fly, so sometimes I buy some when I get where I'm going. So I can read.

5. Here's another new one: lunch! Anyone who has flown recently will know what I mean. Last spring we had a lot of spreads left over at the end of our beach week, and I made sandwiches for all of us to take along. It proved to be a great idea and OHP and I did the same on our trip to the Midwest. No expensive (and often bad) airport food, not to mention the lack of temptation to buy the $5 "snack" on the plane. I will definitely keep doing this. Even on road trips, I think, should we ever do another -- I do like to go out for breakfast, but a picnic lunch or supper is much more fun than Mickey D's. Probably healthier, too.