Skip to main content

Vinyl Seats

 

(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.

Star Liner

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Iron Fist in a Velvet Glove

  Despite both of us having science backgrounds, my wife and I share a leaning toward the artistic, though we may express it in different ways. In her life, my wife has been a painter, a poet, a singer, an actor, and a fiction writer. Not to mention a mother. I don’t remember what precipitated this event, but my wife, my son, and I were at home in the front room. My wife was responding to something my son said. She said, “remember, you get half your brains from me. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be a complete idiot.” To which my son started howling with laughter and said to me,” I think you have just been insulted.” Sometimes I feel like Rodney Dangerfield. I get no respect. But that is not an uncommon state of affairs for fatherhood. When my son was going to middle school and high school, my wife was always the one to go in with him to get him registered for classes. One time she was unable to go and I had to be the one to get him registered. “Ugh,” he said. “why can’t Mama do i...
1 comment
Read more

Empathy

  Websters defines Empathy as: “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another.” Empathy is what makes us human, though lord knows there are many humans who don’t seem to have any. A person without empathy is like a caveman, only concerned for himself. Selfish. It is a lack of community and by extension, a lack of the need for civilization. The person who lacks empathy can have a bit of community, but only with others exactly like himself. It seems like societies go through cycles of empathy and less empathy. Sometimes a single event can change the course of society. Prior to America’s involvement in WWII, the general feeling in America was not very empathetic. We had our own problems. We were still dealing with the lingering effects of the Great Depression, and had been for years. That kind of stress makes it hard to think of others. Hitler was slashing through Europe. He and his fol...
1 comment
Read more

All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu

My first experience with cyberpunk as a genre of science fiction was Neuromancer by William Gibson. Neuromancer was one of the early works that defined the cyberpunk genre. It was insanely influential. It won the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award. But for me, it just did not resonate. I had a hard time visualizing the concepts. It left a bad taste in my mouth for cyberpunk. I mostly avoided the genre. Then a couple of years ago I read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson which is cyberpunk (although some people say it is a parody of cyberpunk). Whatever, I liked it. I recently picked up All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu and it immediately became apparent to me that this was cyberpunk. Julia Z is the main character, and I think this is going to be the start of a series following her. She is a hacker (hence cyberpunk). She has got herself in trouble and so she lives on the margins, barely making it. Then a lawyer asks her for her help. His wife has been kidnapped. The ...
Post a Comment
Read more