Yep, through the Four Corners area. That's how we got to Grandma's house. And boy was it an adventure. Why am I telling you this story? Well, I went to lunch with some of my coworkers today. As the six of us pulled out of the parking lot, Melanie asked us if we wanted to watch some TV on our way to the restaurant. (She has one of those fancy minivans with the TV screens built into the headrests so that when she travels with her kids she can put in a movie and lull them into complacency.) She was completely kidding- but I couldn't help but think back to when I was a kid and how things have changed since then.
Part of what I am about to tell you may be heresy. It is secondhand information that I don't have any specific memory of myself. But I have heard the stories often enough to believe that it really happened...and it is just too funny not to share.
When we were young, my mom's parents lived in Pueblo, CO. It was a thirteen hour drive from our house to theirs. We didn't make the trip often, but when we did we had to fit the whole fam-damily in our single cab pick up truck (did I mention there are nine of us???) and we liked to leave at 4 am and drive all day so we didn't have to pay for a hotel room. In fact, I don't remember staying in a hotel room till I was around 14 years old and went on tour with my choir. I do, however, have vivid memories of sleeping on the side of the road on more than one occasion... Anyway back to the story at hand.
If I'm totally honest here, I can't remember us ever taking the entire family to Colorado in a single trip. Mostly because my oldest brother is 21 years older than I am, and by the time I was old enough to actually remember going to Colorado the 4 oldest kids in the family had stopped going with us. Still, I got to hear the stories about when they would take everyone.
Are you wondering yet how they managed to take six kids on a thirteen hour trip in a single cab pick up truck? (If you're not, I haven't set the stage properly and my confidence as a writer will be shot- so lie!) The answer is fantastic. Are you ready for this? My parents would ride in the cab while the kids rode in the back of the truck! Put down the phone. There's no need to call child protective services. It's not as bad as it sounds. My parents would put the camper shell on the truck, load the kids inside and be on their way. It was actually quite perfect for the first few hours of the trip- while everyone still wanted to be asleep. But eventually the kids would wake up and the torture would start! I don't know the details of the torture, but I do know that when it started they would put a pillow over the camper window so that my parents couldn't look back and see what was going on. The thing I always wonder about is the bathroom issue. As far as I know, they were using a paper cup or a plastic bottle that they would empty when my parents would stop for gas. Maybe they would just bang on the camper window till my parents were forced to pull over and find out what all the fuss was about? I do know that we always stopped in Four Corners so that we could take awesome stinkbug style pictures of each of us. You know the one I'm talking about? With our tushes high in the air standing in four states all at once- one per foot and hand?
When I finally got old enough to remember the trips, it was usually just my mom and I going. I would spend the trip reading books out loud to her. Pollyanna, anything from the Nancy Drew files. I always loved to read to pass the time on a long trip. In fact, as it would get too dark to read I would wait with my book in hand till a car pulled up close enough behind us that I could use their headlights to illuminate my pages- it never occurred to me that there could be value in just packing a flashlight...
I never would've dreamed that there would come a time when DVD systems would be standard entertainment in the car. In a way, it almost makes me sad for those kids who are missing out on the fun of being trapped in a camper shell with their siblings while the windows are covered and mom and dad are blissfully ignorant of what is really going on. Sad that Pollyanna and Nancy Drew have been shelved in favor of something more visually stimulating. These were great times and great memories.
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