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| (Look how happy these kids are.) |
Whatever generation you are: Baby Boomer, Gen-X, Millennial etc., the family road trip is a rite of passage that every child has to go through. But I would argue that the Boomers had it the worst. For one thing we tended to be in bigger families, had no air conditioning, and the cars had vinyl seats. Road trips invariably took place in the summer when school was out. Driving across the country in the heat of summer meant inevitably everyone was wearing shorts. Pealing your skin off the vinyl seats was bad enough, but then returning to the car after a burger stop meant finding a way to sit on the near molten vinyl without letting it touch your skin.
Then there was the smell. That unmistakable odor of six
people in a car for seven hours a day in the heat. I am not quite sure how my
parents stood it. Nor how they stood the constant refrain of “are we there
yet?” The reply they gave was always, “about fifteen minutes.” I swear every
destination whether it was a town with a burger joint, a motel, the Grand Canyon,
or the giant ball of twine, was always fifteen minutes away. And after I had
been not so patiently waiting for what seemed like thirty minutes, when I asked
“how long now?” The reply was, “about fifteen minutes.” Complaining that, that
was what they said last time, did no good.
But looking back on it, I can scarcely remember the long
tedious hours riding in the back of an Oldsmobile station wagon. I can remember
I didn’t care much for the Badlands or the great Plains, but what I do remember
is seeing Yellowstone, Mount Rushmore, The Space Needle, Disneyland, the view
from the top of the Sears Tower. Even though the time spent at Rushmore was
miniscule compared to the time it took to get there, that is what I remember. I
think the brain shunts the unpleasant repetitive memories into a hard-to-access
box. But the sites we saw, did those moments make it all worthwhile? If you had
asked me then after an eight-hour hot car ride, I would have said no! Let me
stay home and watch TV. But if you ask me now, I would unquestioningly say yes.
Did the boomers have it the worst? Well, maybe not.
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