What do a flat tire, a cloth diaper, a nuclear cooling tower, a gargantuan jug of maple syrup, and a poet’s grave have in common? The answer is “road trip.” On a recent family adventure via a silver Nissan, old memories of trips long past were recalled, and new memories were made.
My passion for road trips began in 1979, when I left Connecticut in a packed Chevrolet Vega and headed out west via the asphalt Oregon Trail, accompanied only by an AM radio and an AAA map. It was an uneventful, scenic trip until I was within several hundred miles of my final destination — Hood River, Oregon. My trusty Vega (which on this trip had carried me over 2,500 miles without a problem) began shaking uncontrollably. Climbing out of the car, I discovered that I had a flat tire. Thankfully, a Good Samaritan from northern Idaho helped me unload the back of the car to extricate the spare, and then proceeded to jack up the car and change the wheel. I continued on to Les Schwab’s, and then to Oregon.
A 28-year old cloth diaper, which I now use to clean the bathroom floor, once protected our daughter’s bum. On one particular road trip to Montana, Rose was at an age when potty training had begun, necessitating cloth diapers at times, and “big girl pants” at others. Traveling on a highway in eastern Washington, Rose informed us that she had to “go.” We pulled off onto the graveled shoulder and battled the wind as we opened up the car doors. Placing the potty seat on the ground and our child on the potty seat, we encouraged her to poop. Blowing dust and tumbleweeds were not her idea of an idyllic place to relieve herself. No amount of coaxing could convince her otherwise. We resorted to pinning her into a diaper and continued on our way.
In 1982 my husband and I decided to take “The Mother of All Domestic Road Trips.” We outfitted our Dodge truck with a plywood bed, curtains, and a camp stove and set off on a month-long adventure around the U.S. We slept in highway rest areas, public and private campgrounds, and when we needed some pampering, inexpensive roadside motels. We bought regional foods whenever we could, including a bag of pine nuts we purchased from a vender on the side of the road in New Mexico. Days later, sitting on a picnic bench in the shadow of a nuclear cooling tower in Arkansas, we dined on Chicken Dardanelle, a delicious concoction which featured the prized pine nuts.
This spring, our daughter and her husband invited up to join them on a trip to Boston and Vermont. With only a week available, we were forced to travel cross-country via airplane. Of the four of us, only my son-in-law travels with ease on a plane. To survive the experience the rest of us resort to positive visualization, distracting movies and books, and once in a while, pharmaceuticals. Happily, our flights were without incident, though the sustained turbulence on the trip east had me clutching my seat handles.
After a car-less evening in Boston, we rented the silver Nissan sedan and headed north destined for Vermont. We stopped in New Hampshire at an elegant public rest area and attempted a visit to Hanover. Every tourist in New England must have had the same idea — after a frustrating search for a parking space, we gave up and headed across the river to White River Junction, Vt. At a lovely café there, the occupants of another table took up conversation with us. Our mention of “Hood River” proved once again that there are less than “six degrees of separation” in the modern world. The woman’s daughter had recently met, and traveled with, Hood River’s own Barb Williams, our intrepid mail carrier who recently retired.
Daughter Rose and I had small bucket lists of “must dos” while in Vermont. Rose wanted to visit the Maple Syrup Museum, and I wanted to find my grandparents’ graves, and their home, in Bennington. The Museum proved to be more sizzle than steak, but the King-Kong sized maple syrup jug was a perfect backdrop for family photos.
Arriving in Bennington, we used Tom and Rose’s GPS talents to locate the Old First Church, where my grandparents are buried. Thanks to a sketch my brother made, it was easy to find my grandparents’ understated gravestones. Just a row away lays Robert Frost, a fitting eternal friend for my grandparents. My mother introduced me to poetry by reading Frost’s poems. On this trip to Vermont we tried to follow “the road less travelled,” and indeed it did make “all the difference.”
Rose would have appreciated traveling on “the road more traveled” as the rural highway leading to Bennington, full of curves and hills, caused her to take Dramamine and close her eyes. She was a trooper, though, and I was able to find my maternal grandparents’ home, a place I last visited almost 50 years ago. To my surprise, it was almost unchanged, and I found myself in tears as I gazed at the typical white Vermont house and surrounding red dairy barns where the Palmer family once lived.
On our return to Boston, our car began to make small lurching motions when traveling at a slow speed. We crossed our fingers that we’d make it back across Massachusetts without incident, and named the formerly nameless Nissan “Buck.” For the rest of the trip, we offered encouraging words to our silver steed. With a sigh of relief we pulled into the rental car return lot and handed over Buck’s keys.
Outside Northshire Books, a wonderful bookstore in Manchester, Vt., a chiseled slab of marble read, “Nothing Is Written In Stone.” The clever sidewalk message drew us into the store, where I purchased Tom Robbins’s memoir “Tibetan Peach Pie.” I first read one of Robbins’s zany novels in 1977, when the idea of a road trip was merely my fantasy. Though the Washington author wasn’t physically with us on this trip, he joined us in spirit, as we travelled in search of “Another Roadside Attraction.” Back home, we’re already planning our next excursion on four wheels.
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