Everyone in the suburb where I grew up, just north of Chicago, took trips in the summertime. It didn’t matter whether they went to the Wisconsin Dells, or the Indiana Dunes, or to exotic places, such as Yellowstone, or that Mecca of our childhood, Disneyland—they went somewhere. Except our family. Dad was a travelling salesman who covered the Upper Midwest for the Signode Steel Strapping Company of Chicago.

Now any of you who’ve ever bought a large appliance--such as a washer, a dryer, or a refrigerator—that came in a big cardboard carton, with 1-inch strapping around it (straps that used to be made of steel, but now are made out of plastic)—strapping made by Dad’s company wrapped it. Well, we were lucky to see Dad one weekend a month. So his idea of the "perfect vacation" was painting the house (with perhaps a day trip to Wrigley Field). Mother was lucky to get him out to dinner. So we had something to work against when we kids brought up the vacation trip idea.

But we did have an ally. Our maternal grandmother, known as Nana, lived with us . She could give guilt lessons to anybody—and poor Mother was a sitting duck. What helped to weigh the scales, in that wonderful year of 1959, was that we bought a new car—a pink-and-white 9-passenger Mercury station wagon with push-button drive and a luggage rack on the roof! Now there was no way you could not take a trip in that car. And the final thing that promoted the decision in favor of a trip was that Nana really wanted to visit her widowed sister, Aunt Florence, who ran a dress shop in St. Petersburg Beach, Florida. Now it just so happened that Nana and Florence had a first cousin, Marie Bauer, who lived across the bay in Tampa. Cousin Marie owned a motel. And since no one in their right mind drove to Florida in July before cars were air-conditioned, Cousin Marie had vacancies, and would rent 2 units to us at cost.

We were scheduled to leave on July 12, 1959. That would be Dad’s last weekend before going on a new circuit of his territory, and we would be back before he returned. In a burst of exuberance, Mother even called up her brother, Jack. He was a building contractor, so of course his family didn’t go on summer vacations either—it was his busy season--and invited the cousins. After all, it was a 9-passenger station wagon. Well, Jack Junior (14) balked at the idea of spending several thousand miles trapped in a car with younger siblings, young cousins, his aunt and his grandmother, and decided to stay home with his guitar, and practice emulating Elvis in his bedroom. And Aunt Betty didn’t want Laurie (4) to go without her. So picture us, on that morning of July 12, 1959, standing in front of that pink-and-white Mercury station wagon: Mother (smiling, not knowing what fate has in store for her); Nana, looking forward to seeing her sister, Florence; myself (12); Cousin Judy (11), Cousin Ricky (10); my brother Michael (9); my sister Debbie (4)—and you know none of the rest of us would sit with her; and Jeffrey, the 7-month-old white miniature poodle, who had two favorite positions in the car—sitting on the driver’s lap, with his ears flapping out the window in the breeze, and sitting on the driver’s right foot, with his full weight pressing on the accelerator. Well, Dad looked at us all, shook his head, and asked "Is everyone positive they have everything in the car that you’ll need on the trip?" And we all agreed we did. So Dad climbed up on the roof of the station wagon, and he took everything—the suitcases, the hatboxes, the beach toys, the beach chairs—and he made a 5’x5’x5’ cubic bundle, covered it with a tarp, and strapped it solid (so we wouldn’t have any problems with it coming undone on the way down to Florida). And then we set out for our first stop, which was to be Evansville, Indiana, that night.

And we made it, on schedule. We kids had our comics—Superman, Superboy, Supergirl, Scrooge McDuck, Betty and Veronica—we had games to play (license plates, white horses, black-and-white cows)—I mean we just rolled along. We listened to the AM car radio—high on the hit parade was Johnny Horton’s "Battle of New Orleans", and we’d all sing along. So we got to Evansville, checked into the motel, and began to unpack (you all know what’s coming, right?) Yes, Aunt Betty had packed all of Judy and Ricky’s clothes for the trip in one suitcase—which was in the 5’x5’x5’ bundle atop the car roof.

Mother didn’t even try to cut the strapping until she’d driven to the nearest hardware store and bought yards and yards of clothesline. Judy and I and Mother (because Judy and I were Girl Scouts, and knew our knots) tied the bundle back together with the yards and yards of clothesline, while Michael and Ricky climbed on the car hood and kibitzed, between watching the drive-in movie playing next-door to the motel, because they could see over the fence from atop the hood.

Jeffrey, Judy & Debbie in front of the motel in Evansville

We did get started on time the next morning—and we must have been two hours into Kentucky when Michael let out a shout, and we looked, and about a mile back, strewn along the highway, was most of our stuff from the roof. After we gathered it all up, Mother retied all the knots herself. But even if that hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t have made as good time that day. We’d read all our comic books, counted all the license plates, white horses, and black-and-white cows we cared to, and there were new and exciting things to check out—Stuckey’s, petting zoos, outhouses! And every roadside cafe had jukebox extensions in the booths where you could play "Battle of New Orleans" three times for a quarter! By the time we crossed the Tennessee border, Nana was mentioning it was time to stop for the night. But Mother was bound and determined to stay on schedule, and make it to Chattanooga that night, because they was no way she could face more than one more day in the car with 5 cross children. So we kept going--even though through every village, hamlet, town, and even crossroads—Nana kept asking if Mother didn’t think we should stop.

We arrived in Chattanooga about 10pm, in a downpour. Now, this was in the days before 800 reservation numbers—but not before conventions. Nana was real strong on I told you so—so about the 3rd motel Mother threw herself on the mercy of the desk clerk. This sweet Southern lady took one look at the rest of us, phoned around and found us two rooms—on top of Lookout Mountain! So, Mother gunned this overloaded pink-and-white 9-passenger station wagon up the side of Lookout Mountain in the pouring rain, in the dark. We could tell there was nothing (I mean nothing) but air on the side of the road. Nana was strongly suggesting we were going to die. Debbie (who was only 4, let us not forget) was in tears, because Nana had convinced her of this. We did, however, arrive at the motel safely—fortunately in the dark, because I don’t believe Nana would have checked in if she could have seen anything. The motel, you see, was cantilevered out over the side of Lookout Mountain. The next morning, the only way that terrified elderly lady would let us leave our rooms was by sliding our bodies, backs to the outside wall, away from the edge of the balcony, all the way to the stairs. It was, however, an incredible view.

The next morning, after breakfast, Mother decided we could spare an hour to visit Lookout Mountain State Park before we continued on our way. Biggest mistake of the trip. In 1959, Lookout Mountain State Park contained a genuine, Indiana-Jones-style rope bridge over a deep gorge. I was not stupid enough to set foot on that rope bridge. Neither were Nana nor Cousin Judy. But Mother was feeling brave that day. So when she and 4-year-old Debbie were in the middle of the bridge, 9-year-old Michael and 10-year-old Ricky begin jumping up at down at each end, to see how much they could make the bridge sway. Mother says her whole life passed in front of her eyes. They did, eventually, stop the vibration enough to exit the bridge, but you can understand why Mother decided to gun it the rest of the way to Tampa.

When the Georgia highway patrolman stopped her for speeding, and 4-year-old Debbie asked him, "Are you going to arrest my mommy?", he took one look at frazzled Mother, Nana, us 5 kids, and Jeffrey the dog, and replied "No, honey, but I am going to ask her to drive a little bit slower".

The only other incident of note on the trip down was when we abandoned Jeffrey the dog at a North Florida gas station, and didn’t notice it for 20 minutes, then returned to find him sitting patiently on the curb, waiting for us. We arrived at Cousin Marie’s motel, and checked in. We saw Aunt Florence, saw the Weekee-Watchee mermaids, the World’s Biggest Drugstore, and the Gulf of Mexico. We contracted the worst sunburns any of us had ever had, and brought home souvenir holy-water-fonts made from seashells and glow-in-the-dark plastic crucifixes. And that year we were all able to write the best essays ever on "How I spent my summer vacation".

(c) 1989 Marsha J. Valance. All rights reserved.