Highways and Byways
“Are we there yet?”
“He’s touching me!”
“My stomach hurts…I think I’m going to throw up!”
“I’m bored.”
Yes, we were off once again on our biennial, 1500 mile road trip to visit our Utah relatives. We liked visiting them. We just didn’t like riding in the car for three days to get there.
Mom spent days organizing everything for the trip. The house had to be left clean and the car packed perfectly. Back then our car was a station wagon. Over the years we had several types of station wagons. The first had two bench seats and an open cargo area in the back. In one half of the cargo area, Mom made a soft bed where we could play or nap as we rode along. It was easily done then as cars didn’t have seat belts and kids didn’t have to sit in special car seats. It’s a wonder we survived! That is not to say car seats didn’t exist. My brother Mark sat in one. It had two hooks that fit over the back seat and had a little steering wheel to play with and a tiny horn that beeped. It’s main functions were entertainment and allowing the young child to sit high enough to see out the window. Safety was not an issue. We even had a car bed with similar hooks to fit onto the back seat. It was about the size of a small bassinet and was a perfect place for a baby to sleep as we rode along. Another station wagon had three seats with a place behind the third seat for a little bed.
We always had to pack food along with us. I don’t believe I realized that it was possible to eat at restaurants along the way until I was nearly an adult. Eating out would have meant wasted time and wasted money. Dad had only two weeks of vacation time, so we wanted to get to our destination as quickly as possible. Often we picked him up at work at his quitting time on Friday afternoon on our way out of town. Our supper, eaten in the car as we drove along, was usually cold, fried chicken.
We could hardly wait to get to Illinois. First, it meant we were in a different state and thus closer to our destination. Second, it meant we were closer to our favorite road. Interstates were not built yet, so we made our way across country on roads of varying quality. One road in Illinois must have been poorly constructed. Years later, it reminded me of roads in Alaska which suffered from frost heaves. Whatever the cause, the road was rather like riding on a roller coaster with numerous dips for the unwary driver. We called it the whoop-de-doo road because every time we went over one of those dips, we all shouted ‘whoop-de-doo’ as the car became airborne at the top of each one.
Once we were past that road, we were ready to quit for the night, but Mom and Dad wanted to press on just a little further. When it got dark, it was time to find a motel for the night. I don’t recall any motel chains with their uniform rooms and services. Each little privately owned motel had its own idiosyncrasies. Mom wanted a clean motel. Dad wanted a cheap motel. We didn’t care as long as we weren’t in the car anymore. When we spotted a likely place, we’d wait in the car while Dad went into the motel office. If an acceptable price was offered, we’d see Dad go off with the motel owner or manager to view the room to make sure it seemed clean and that the toilet flushed properly. (I’m guessing Dad or Mom had had a bad experience with a toilet somewhere, so they always checked that.) In one town where all the motels were filled, we stayed in the last room to be found. Perhaps some of their motel phobias were not groundless as all the sheets and towels in the motel had been mended many times. During the night, the bed fell down.
Mom and Dad woke us up about 6 AM because the day was a’wasting. Motels didn’t come with breakfast back then, so Mom would get milk and hard boiled eggs out of the cooler. If we didn’t eat fast, we had to eat our breakfast in the car. Cereal with milk was pretty sloppy in the car, so Mom gave us each one our favorite breakfasts, Gerbers Baby Oatmeal in paper cups. It was gluey enough to stick to the spoon. As a special treat, before the trip started, she let each of us go to the store with her to choose our favorite baby food dessert. I always chose the plums with tapioca. Mark always got chocolate pudding. There were no such things as pudding cups back then.
Usually Mom drove because she got car sick when she wasn’t driving, but when it was lunch time, she sat in the back seat, opened the cooler and started making our lunch. Sometimes she made sandwiches ahead of time and sometimes she made them fresh on top of the cooler. I don’t recall her buying lunch meat. If she wanted roast beef sandwiches, she cooked the roast at home, then sliced it nice and thin before she packed it into the cooler. Strangely I don’t remember my favorite sandwich, but Mom loved roast beef, sharp cheese and dill pickles.
We didn’t have individual water bottles. Maybe they didn’t exist yet. We had to eat all our lunch and then we could have a drink of water from the gallon jug we always took along.
The idea of wasting valuable cooler space with ice was unthinkable for Mom. She bought large cans of apple juice or apricot nectar and froze them before the trip. They kept everything else in the cooler nice and cold. She’d take one can of frozen juice out each morning to thaw so that by afternoon it was a welcome treat. We were famous for spilling things, so we weren’t allowed to have cups for our juice. Instead, Mom used a punch can opener to make six holes in the top of the can and inserted a straw into each hole…one for each of us. Then we passed the can around and took turns drinking our juice until the can was empty. Of course, that also meant we had to watch our siblings closely to make sure they weren’t drinking longer than we thought they should.
Mom packed some sort of little treat or toy for each of us to look forward to every afternoon. I was always happiest when I got a book because that lasted the longest. When it was too dark to read or when we were bored, we sang. Favorites were “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” and “I’ve Got Six-pence”. Dad always sang along enthusiastically even though he was tone deaf. We especially loved to hear one that Dad ‘sang’ to us. I have never heard it anywhere else and I don’t know the tune, because Dad was the only one who knew the song, and as I said…he was tone deaf. For all I know it may have been a song my Grandpa Stephens made up. We loved it because it told a story. It went:
Two old maids they lived together
They were not to blame
Just because the old girls
Couldn’t change their names.
To their room their came a burglar
Not to steal, but hide.
He had a cold, he coughed out loud
And one old maid, she cried.
“Watch out, there’s a man in the room.
He’s come to get me I presume.
Don’t give me the worst,
For I saw him first
I’ll have him I will or my poor heart will burst”
He thought he had met with his doom.
Each gave him a kiss.
He said, What is this?
I must have got in the wrong room.
Driving through Nebraska was horrible. One of the highlights of driving was coming to a new state line. Nebraska was so long that it took the whole day just to get through it. Cars didn’t come with air conditioning then, so summer driving was hot and miserable. A couple of times we borrowed a little window air conditioner that was attached to the outside of the car window by pinching it in the window when it was rolled up. One time it was 110ºF. It was so hot that no one wanted to eat. Finally we stopped at a gas station and filled the cooler with ice. We spent the rest of that day just sucking on ice chips. We entertained ourselves by reading Burma Shave signs such as, “The Queen of Hearts now loves the knave. The King ran out of Burma Shave.” or “I proposed to Ida. Ida refused. I’da won my Ida if I’da used Burma Shave.
I thought the highways went right through the middle of every town along the way. Some of those towns seemed so anxious to be seen that the road wrapped around two or three sides of the town square before continuing on out of town.
At last we got to Wyoming. At least Wyoming had entertainment. We watched for antelope. Grandpa Freeman always gave each kid a dollar so treat the family to ice cream cones each day, so we always stopped at Little America for 10¢ cones. Once we pulled over to the side of the road and just went running in the desert where we found bits of gypsum to collect. At one place we stopped at a bluff above a town where we found petrified shark teeth. (shark teeth were actually in western South Dakota...but similar terrain)
The end of Wyoming was a time of celebration because it meant we were in Utah at last and would soon be free of the car. Usually we watched for Devil’s Slide as that meant we were getting close. Once in a while we were able to talk Dad into going down Logan Canyon instead where we always had to stop by Rick’s Spring to get a drink of cold water.
Now with the interstate system the small towns are rarely even seen. Finding a Dairy Queen for an afternoon ice cream cone is difficult. Driving across country is faster and easier, but we now pass by small town America. Sometimes I miss it.
