Road Trip!

Few modern inventions have appealed to Americans more than the automobile.  By the 1960's, we had expanded our national road system to include fast and efficient freeways, and what was once THE route to take to anywhere, became the back road.

When I was growing up, one of our family's favorite things to do was to get in the car and go.  Most of the time our trips were short explorations of our surrounding area in western Washington.  We were treated to lush forests, full of shady maples and ever-steady Douglas firs.  In between the woods were fields of berries, hops, and various vegetables, along with a cattle ranch here and there.  Traffic was pretty non-existent on the back roads, since everyone else wanted to take the fast and easy way to where they were going.

I always enjoyed going through the small towns along the way.  Whether the houses were neat and trim, or dingy and falling apart, each one had a story to tell.  So did the people I saw on the sidewalks.  To this day, I find myself making up stories in my head about what I see on the back roads.

My dad was a Volkswagen Beetle enthusiast.  We had a few Bugs over the years, and it seems like they were all beige.  My dad would spend hours in our driveway, tinkering on the engine in the back-end of the car.  Then he would declare that we had to test it out, so into the car we'd go, all four of us.  More than once we'd smell a sickening oil-burning smell, and soon after that the car would putter out and die, right out there in the boonies.  We females would panic and wonder how we'd ever get home, but Dad always stayed cool and collected.  He'd go to the back of the car and tinker, right alongside the road  He always got it going again, on his own, with just the tools he had on hand.

There were two things in the 60's that we didn't have a use for.  Cell phones didn't exist at all.  We likely wouldn't have had one if they did!   Who wanted to be tethered to the normal world when you were on an adventure?  The other thing that no one used was seat belts.  Some cars had lap belts, but that was it.  There were no shoulder belts at all.  Our lap belts were usually tucked behind the cushions of our seats, simply because that's where they ended up after being shoved aside.  I can't say how many times my sister and I heard my dad's "no scuffling back there!" as we giggled and wrestled around in the back seat.  It's a wonder Dad could keep the car on the road with all the roughhousing!

We were lucky to have an AM radio in our car, and sometimes our cars were without even that small luxury. Radio stations were much harder to come by back then, so there were times out on the road that there wasn't any music to be had.  My sister and I developed the habit of singing in the car.  We had a "repertoire" of songs, and we'd keep at it for most of any trip.  Looking back, I guess we probably just about drove Mom and Dad crazy!  But I don't remember them ever stopping us or telling us to be quiet.  Sometimes they'd even make requests.  If Mom knew the song, she'd sing along.

Back then, when gasoline cost less than a dollar a gallon, taking drives was a wonderful way to spend some time, keeping up with each other and bonding in a way that seems to be nearly unknown now.  If your kids are like mine, they would roll their eyes at me if I told them to put down their technology, let's go for a ride!  Then again, maybe they'd forget and enjoy themselves...