March 11, 2010
Yes, that was always a thrilling period. Trips we three siblings looked forward to for weeks on end grew more and more exciting during the wait. We counted down days as they slipped by one bye one before THE day. Rising at dawn we were to finally pick up everything, pack up the car, jump in and leave. We were so ecstatic with anticipation the night before that losing sleep wasn’t an unusual occurrence. Personally, I tossed and turned with no sleep to relieve the anxiety.
It was always a seven day vacation because of the time off our parents had from their daily work duties. After a few years of memories past to have only seven days again for us kids didn’t really seem enough time to do the same things and more we wanted to do this next trip.
It seemed like a daunting task trying to visit each one of over a dozen aunt, uncles and cousins houses. Most years our favourite with a room to spare was at Aunt Liz’s home. This is where we roamed up and over the hill behind the house with cousins who were guides of their backwoods. It was our vacation central with countless memories like mmy first taste of bark from a side yard birch tree.
Most relatives female or male didn’t matter, married and bore children at an early age so that by a few years of parenthood which was around seventeen or eighteen years old their babies climbed out of every crevice or hung out of windows like the story of old mother Hubbard who lived in a shoe.
At times any one of us had hoped that the one week vacations were longer. Unfortunately, the short holiday never continued more than a single week when the whole family was involved. As a five year old I was left for a few months to stay with grandparents. When parents came to pick up junior, I didn’t want to return to ‘their life.’ Grand pap’s mmusic changed the boy in the photograph.
Vacations were usually five full days of fun. It took one day to travel and one day to drive back the four hundred and fifty or so miles distance; one way. The first day’s drive seemed like the last day was an eternity away. Sunrise was the writhe when we were to awake and get ready to leave for the long journey.
I can vividly remember the sights of mom while peeping into the kitchen through an opened by a crack bedroom door. Mom was making piles of sandwiches; stuffing them in plastic bags the night before. There was no time to do anything the next morning. She typically did this before going to bed. The refrigerator was crammed; ready for a quick packing in coolers the next morning.
The food varied from year to year. There was always something to munch on during the long trip. Already cooked chicken, roast beef, ham, cheese or tuna sandwiches on white bread were made at different trips to fill our hunger. Thermoses were capped with mixed juice to be carried with chips, and cookies.
Mom would be packing everything the whole family needed for the entire trip. She packed pants, squirts shirts, dresses, skirts, sneakers, shoes, socks ‘n frocks; all the clothes for every family member that fit in square spaces of a few luggage cases that would carry supplies for the next seven days.
If anything got dirty or soiled during the trip our relatives modern washing facilities those first years were the kind with big handles turned by elbow grease to squeeze the water out. Drying was by the sun on sunny days in the back yard.
We paused to eat at different points that changed from year to year. Usually at one of those family picnic tables that used to sit in the middle of nowhere on the side of the highway. Sometimes there was never a rest stop sign, or a before warning where they were placed. We found one, stopped and took a food break family style. Every food dish was spread out, whished on the table while other travelers in big semi-trucks, cars with luggage racks and motorcycles sped bye.
Other vacations at a slower pace we’d eat at a Howard Johnsons motel where the folks would buy a family lunch. We’d have a sit down at the restaurant chain that exists in very few places now days. Back then Ho Jo’s were at all the convenient locations. Lines of travelers would stop to eat or for a quick gas refill.
Along the way of typically family fun we’d test each others citified math abilities. We counted cows in every pasture they roamed; didn’t matter if it was left or coming right ahead of our destination’s direction. No cow was left behind. To be uncounted was to not exist at all. As long as they were close to the highway, they were subject to our adding, multiplying, subtracting or undivided attention.
Unless there were a very small number it would more frequently than not, be a guessing game. Following years when slightly older we would be questioned as to the name of the next tunnel out of the seven we would have to drive through and always encountered on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Allegany - “Quit that! Gimme!” sounds of kids who got bored or teased some time to pass the time.
Although we played those guessing games and others like clockwork every single year, if anyone were to ask mme about those tunnels now I could probably name a few but certainly not all of them. Fuhgeddaboudit if you want them in correct order like after years of knowing beforehand was the challenges of knew.
Like many family vacationers traveling by car, we kept ourselves occupied with all kinds of games. Nap times we tried to catch up on lost sleep before arriving at the first relative’s house. When the grandparents were still alive, they were the one’s whose house or farm actually, is where we headed to or landed initially.
Driving to the grandparents as opposed to our Aunt Liz and Uncle Norms house where they and their gaggle of kids homesteaded, was a different but not much further away road. Its view was the first wave of a familiar hello that welcomed us ‘back home again;’ the familiar term one parent and I in later years knew.
Coming around ‘that bend’ again was the easily recognisable old barn that seemed like it would fall down the next day. All the years we traveled past, it never did. It was still greeting us those many years later. Whenever we reached that point, the steep wall like hill to the right appeared. It was a forever sight of a gray board’s barn leaning fatefully to one side. Now? I couldn’t say differently.
To Be Continued:
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