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Trips as a child were different than traveling today
My most recent trip went something like this: I helped my daughter and grandson load a few pieces of luggage in the trunk of the car and we headed west. We made a couple of quick stops for gas and burgers, and after about 10 hours of cruising the interstate we pulled into Dallas. As for my grandson, his trip consisted of three videos and a couple of naps. Only in about the last hour did he start asking the standard questions, "Are we there yet?" "How much further?" Making that same trip when I was a child was quite different. My mother would start making preparations a couple of days before our planned departure. In addition to packing for herself and most of my father's things she had to worry about everything for my brother and me. Early in the morning on the day that we were to leave my mother would start preparing a basket of food to take along as my dad rarely stopped to eat anywhere because of the delay it caused. Fast food joints had not yet arrived on the scene. Our basket usually contained steak sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches; maybe some fried chicken and some kind of cookies. There was no need for an ice chest. We didn't own one anyway. A one-gallon thermos jug of water and a few empty coke bottles rounded out our supplies. Why the empty coke bottles, you ask? We traded them in when we bought drinks so that we didn't have to pay the two-cent deposit on the bottle. My father always liked to start our trip in the early afternoon and then drive all night, especially in the summertime, because it was cooler traveling at night. Air conditioning in automobiles was also something that had not yet arrived on the scene. Also, there was less traffic at night, which was a big help because all highways were two lanes and getting caught behind slow moving trucks on a crooked road could really slow you down. We usually only stopped for gas and restroom breaks. Inevitably, boredom and squabbling set in amongst the back seat passengers. This usually occurred about 30 minutes into the trip. Dad was busy driving, so mother became referee by default (a fortunate circumstance for the combatants). As long as there was light enough we could usually be persuaded to occupy ourselves reading comic books or inventing games to play that didn't require any equipment to fight over. Most games involved counting something. We would each choose a make of car and see who could count the most in some period of time, or maybe choose a certain color of car. We might also count how many horses or cows we saw on our side of the road, or how many telephone poles, or whatever. Reading Burma Shave signs was also entertaining. There seemed to be at least one set of them every few miles. Kids today probably wouldn't find them amusing, but I did. I sort of miss them. It seems like they disappeared about the same time all of the See Rock City signs started to fade away. The onset of darkness usually quieted things down a bit and brother and I would sleep for a while. Mom and dad traded driving chores every few hours during the trip which usually took anywhere from 16 to 18 hours to cover the 700 miles from where we lived at the time. All of the highways were two-lanes back then, the speed limit was 55 and the road passed through every town, large and small, along the way. Automobile travel was a slow and agonizing ordeal in those days, especially for young kids. I can still hear those plaintive cries from back then as clearly as if I had made them only yesterday. Are we there yet? How much further?
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